War: The Expansion Series Book 4
Author: Devon C. Ford
Date: 2019-02-27 05:00:00+00:00
Description: The universe has expanded dangerously beyond belief The fracturing of order back home sends Earth into turmoil, the tension affecting both near and far solar systems. Suffering from the political situation and kept mostly in the dark, the former crew of the Ichi are scattered to other roles. Commander Kyle Torres, after the shocking discovery of the true nature of the Va'alen, is tasked with the difficult job of negotiating with the Kuldar. Meanwhile, Admiral Dassiova is kept away from the Centauri system for a mysterious and secret purpose even he doesn’t yet understand. The rest of the team
Publisher: Independently published

HUNTER

©2021 DEVON C. FORD

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Contents

ALSO IN SERIES

Prologue

1. Hangover from Hell

2. Back to Basics

3. Homicide 101

4. Letting It Show

5. Lines of Enquiry

6. The Great Divide

7. Medical Examination

8. Political Pressure

9. Collateral

10. Singing Like a Canary

11. Re-Evaluation

12. Topside Food

13. Learning

14. Hot Trail

15. The Right Way

16. Showdown

17. Out, Out

18. Be Careful What You Wish For

19. Stores

20. The Wastes

21. Nocturnal

22. Ambush

23. Success… Kind of

24. Thinking It Through

25. Not Rocks

26. Salt Lakes

27. Bureaucracy

28. The Way of Things

29. Benjamin’s

30. Postmortem

31. Shut Down

32. A Different Way

33. Complicated

34. Customs

35. Deputized

36. Forging Your Own Path

37. Cold Trail

38. Rogue

39. The Chase

40. Trapped

41. Hidden Truth

42. Desperate

43. Keeping Promises

44. Long Night

45. The Cold Light of Day

46. Dawn

47. Never for Free

48. Warm Reception

49. Better Prepared

50. Hospitality

51. Making It Look Easy

52. Supply and Demand

53. Social Divide

54. Recovery

55. Learning

56. Resupply

57. Outsider

58. On the Road Again

59. Earning a Wage

60. Currency Exchange

61. Visiting Dignitary

62. Switchback

63. Respite

64. What Am I Doing?

65. The Bitches of Eastwick

66. A Different Kind of Lowers

Epilogue

Thank you for reading Hunter

More In Post Apocalyptic

ALSO IN SERIES

Hunter

Traitor

Fugitive

Hunter

/ˈhʌntə/

noun:

“a person or animal that hunts”

Prologue

Murder

Shadows were easy to come by in the lower levels of Zion City. They were plentiful, they were deep, and they hid all manner of sins.

The senator was a simple mark to follow, taking an elevator down to seventeen, then taking the greasy stairs down another level. It wasn’t hard to keep tabs on the procession because of the noise they made, and following the same pattern of behavior made what was going to happen partly his own fault.

The research had been thorough, and there was no need to stick close to them because the senator was a creature of habit. He worked late every Tuesday and kept his Wednesday mornings free from all public engagements. The only thing the person in the shadows didn’t know was what stories the senator told his family and staff to excuse his curious office hours.

He was the senator for sector three, but every Tuesday night, without fail for the last six weeks, he’d visited the same establishment in the bowels of sector nine. All the watcher had to do was confirm how many guards he took with him and keep an eye on the elevator to see that he’d gone to the expected level. The job of finding the best way to complete the task in the sealed city built into Zion canyon had been easier than expected, because the senator failed to vary his routine. That either meant he was stupid, or that he failed to understand the danger his activities placed him in.

The watcher didn’t get in the elevator after them. Up there, the cameras recorded high-definition footage. Instead, the watcher took the ladders down, one after another, until the air grew thick, tinged with the stench of chemicals from the circulation ducts struggling to keep the atmosphere as fresh as it was topside.

Breathing heavily, the observer couldn’t help but sneer with derision at how these people treated their own; how they could see people from their own city as somehow lesser than, and force them to the lower levels, where the quality of life, much like the quality of the air, was poor.

Hood pulled up, the watcher moved slowly so as not to attract attention and to avoid the staggering water plant workers who’d spent their silvers and were dragging their exhausted bodies back to wherever they called home.

The watcher could afford to give the senator a head start. His business hadn’t been concluded quickly on any of the previous occasions, so there was no reason to believe it would be on that night.

It wasn’t, and by the time the watcher had taken the ladders all the way down and proceeded slowly to the cathouse, the senator was still engaged in the urgent meeting behind the thin door guarded by two suited thugs.

Urgent, the watcher thought, given the usual nature of the business conducted behind these kinds of doors.

The third goon with the senator was nowhere to be seen, and the watcher stayed in the shadows, waiting for patience to be rewarded by the third one coming out of another nearby room to exchange smutty mutterings with his two goon buddies and begin the expected loop of the block as a patrol. He was a big man, bigger than the ones the senator had used as bodyguards before.

That’s new, the watcher thought, but it doesn’t change anything.

The fact that the senator had either allowed one of his guards to gamble that he wouldn’t get the pox, or whether he’d been unaware of the fact made no difference; the watcher had eyes on all three complications before the main event.

Inside the deep hood, head and face shrouded, the watcher rolled both shoulders until the pressure built up by inactivity cracked something back into place. Hands clenching and unclenching to increase blood flow, the observer reached inside the long coat to draw blades from under each arm, and stepped out to paint the dark hallways red.

1

Hangover from Hell

Quinn

It’s a hell of a thing, to be called up to the big leagues.

I was on my first day off, what we all called our Saturday, when the news swept through Zion City like a wildfire. This being my first day off, my Saturday, even though it was actually a Wednesday, I woke with a bitch of a headache and an instant urge to throw up.

We all did that, it wasn’t like I had a problem like a lot of the other Rangers did, but making it through the week was a big thing, so a belly full of ’shine was how we all unwound after our last shift.

We worked Friday through Tuesday, alongside eight others on my section who were joined by eight more when their night shift ended. They were the ones who spread the news first; the news that last night, a council member had been killed.

Someone banged on the door to my room so hard, it threatened to come off its runners. Convinced I was neck deep in shit—else who would be interested in my hungover ass on a Saturday morning?—I growled, “Alright, dammit.”

Groaning, I rolled off the bed and landed on the cool floor. The chill of the metal on my bare ass shot up to join the ache inside my skull. The two sensations met, exchanged a few brief words on how best to make my life worse, then decided on heading hand-in-hand to my gut and start dancing.

My next words were cut off as I clamped my lips tightly together to stop something very unwanted from coming out of my mouth. The banging started up again before I could stand, and it was all I could do to cover my bare, cold ass with the sheet from the bed, and make my way over to unlatch the door.

It flew aside, and three guys I didn’t know from other Ranger sections walked in without asking to cast their eyes around my place.

Well, screw you too, I told them inside the safety of my own head before some modicum of sense kicked in and I asked myself why they were looking around my place. They had the same look I had when I’d bust into some casino debtor’s place. That thought cut through my mental fog, leaving only the stabbing pain behind to sharpen my senses.

“What the hell is this?” I demanded, searching my brain for recent memories and playing them as fast as I could inside my head.

I remembered getting home. Remembered that the night had seemed pretty average, and that I hadn’t tossed my clothes in an incinerator or cleaned my hands with bleach like I’d committed some act I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t think of any reason why my own people would be busting in on me like they were.

“Guys,” I tried, hands fumbling to tie the sheet around my waist before bringing them up in a gesture of mock surrender, “give a man a break, huh?”

Their answer was to stamp to attention as the light from outside the door flickered out.

I felt my mouth drop open, my head pounding and my gut twisting. It wasn’t my lips I had to clamp shut this time but something else, so I didn’t void it all over my floor.

“At ease,” growled the harsh voice of the woman who ducked under my doorway. I say woman, but the deputy director of the Zion Rangers had a head on me in height and a good sixty pounds of meat. She was a beast, but nobody would dare utter that word or even think it in her presence as I just had like an idiot.

“Quinn?” she rumbled, fixing me with a hard stare for a second past comfortable, before she broke her gaze away and looked around my tiny room for something. She found it, sweeping my uniform pants off a chair where they had ended up inside out after I rolled into bed only a few hours before. She sat, looking at me like there was an unpleasant smell in the room, which I had to assume there was, then gestured for me to sit on my bed. The door behind her shut and I stumbled backwards to sit.

The fleeting look of repulsion—or embarrassment, I wasn’t sure which—that swept over her face told me I hadn’t quite secured the sheet around my waist well enough and I’d just treated the deputy director to a glimpse of my boys, which I was sure as shit she hadn’t enjoyed.

“Ma’am,” I croaked, crossing my legs and feeling even more exposed by the unnatural movement, I promptly uncrossed them and adjusted the sheet to save us both from further embarrassment.

“I’ll get to the point,” she said, still looking like she wasn’t sure where the smell was coming from. “Last night there was an incident.”

I said nothing. There was an incident every night in Zion City. Multiple incidents, actually, but in eight years of service I’d never known of any incident that would bring someone like this to my door, unless it was something I’d done.

She said nothing. We just stared at each other until her eyes rolled and she uttered the words I won’t forget as long as I live.

“It seems as though a senator decided to visit the lower levels last night,” she said carefully. Well, that was hardly a surprise; I’d dealt with enough of the topsiders getting down and dirty in the lowers for that kind of thing not to be news, and the rumor had started going around the bars late last night.

Still I said nothing, which seemed to make the deputy director even more annoyed.

“Senator Byers was… Senator Byers was killed. In an establishment on level eighteen in sector nine.”

My brain spun up like one of the computers the administrators used. Nine/Eighteen. Waterworks area. Full of hard workers and harder drinkers. A place that had more than the average number of cathouses because, you know, supply and demand.

“Ma’am… what…?”

“The senator went with a small detail around twenty-two-hundred last night. That detail—three men, one of whom was an off-duty Ranger—were stationed outside a… a room when a person or persons unknown entered and killed him.”

The way she used the terminology from the crime reports we submitted made me feel like I wasn’t getting the whole story, and that made me question why the fuck I was getting the story from her at all.

“Ma’am, with all due re—”

“I hadn’t finished,” she cut me off, making some parts of me that still felt pretty exposed shrivel up.

“The senator’s body was displayed in a way that sent a clear message to the council. His guards were killed with a ruthless efficiency that implies a high level of training on the part of the killer or killers.”

Despite all the questions I had, and despite the mother of all hangovers I was currently suffering, something in the back of my mind woke up and told my mouth to start firing off questions.

“No footage? Any witnesses?”

The look she treated me to was even more sympathetic than the one she’d given me after getting a peek at my junk.

“You new, son?” she asked mockingly.

I wasn’t, she knew that, but I also knew that there wasn’t a working camera below level ten that wasn’t privately owned. As for witnesses, well, like the cameras, anything below ten took silvers or the threat of violence to jog a person’s memory.

“Initial enquiries are being conducted now,” she told me woodenly.

I nodded thoughtfully and tried to clear my throat, which made me cough so much that it felt like my brain was trying to kick a door in behind my eyes. The deputy director snapped her fingers without taking her eyes off me, and one of the uniformed Rangers from the upper levels stepped to my sink and clattered the dirty dishes aside to swill water from the faucet into a dirty cup, before thrusting it in my direction.

It tasted stale and warm, but I drank it.

“You’re probably wondering what this has to do with you,” she said.

I was, very much, and I wanted nothing more than to thank her for letting me know so I could crawl back into bed and wake up that evening. I guessed they were calling in all the off-duty Rangers to show some force and knock on some doors. Maybe even bend some heads.

Then the fact that the second-in-command, answering only to the president himself, was below level ten and sitting on my only chair threw those basic assumptions right out. I stared back at her.

“Yes, ma’am, I am.”

“We’ve assigned Junior Commander Rivera to lead the investigation, and we’re taking his team from the off-duty roster.”

My heart sank, my ass threatened to release the tension I was still holding, and I wanted to throw up.

“Junior Commander Rivera?”

“As you might know, he’s an up-and-coming officer in the Ranger Corps,” she began.

Up-and-coming, my ass, I thought. If my mom’s brother was married to the president’s sister, then they’d call me something like that.

“And, as such, a high-level investigation such as this requires some ruffled feathers to be smoothed.”

“And requires some Rangers who know the lowers to actually get any results,” I said with a scoff before I could shut my mouth. “Ma’am, I apologize, I… I…”

“Relax, Quinn,” the deputy director said, wearing something resembling a smirk. “It’s obvious you’re not fully awake yet, so I’ll give you a half hour to get yourself cleaned up and report to central command.”

She stood, dusting off her uniform like my place had soiled it. I wasn’t offended. It probably had.

* * *

“Quinn,” I said to the two guys on duty at the doors of command. “I have orders to report to Junior Commander Rivera.”

We were the same in so many ways, but the look these level-two guys shot me spoke volumes. I was scum to them. A lower level guy from the ass-end of the city. It was written all over their topsider faces, like they might catch something from me just being this close to the surface.

One of them consulted a list before shooting his buddy a knowing look and nodding over his shoulder.

“They’re waiting for you. Try not to steal anything,” was all he said. I went through the doors, stopping as I stepped inside the fresh interior of the Ranger headquarters, but turned back and decided to unleash a little of the headache on them.

“You know what?” I asked in a voice loud enough to attract the attention of just about everyone in the lobby. “When shit goes down below ten, how do you think you’ll get along, huh? You think people will talk to you because your uniforms are all clean and nobody in your family ever got sick?”

They exchanged another glance, their anger and superiority fading into embarrassment.

“No. When real shit happens, you have to drag up the real workers. What’s the worst you’ve dealt with recently? Someone walk mud on the carpet, and you had to issue a citation?”

“That’s quite enough,” said a peevish, nasal voice behind me.

I hadn’t even turned around to see the man it belonged to, but knew I already hated him. Probably.

My body spun and my feet stamped to attention. No way a voice like that didn’t belong to an officer. My eyes met the top of a head fluffed with dark hair thinning much sooner than the age of the person would have indicated. I adjusted my gaze down, seeing that the face was just as bird-like as I might have guessed.

“Ranger Quinn?” he asked, glaring up at me past his pointy nose. To complete the look, his chin was nonexistent, and his eyes bulged like someone was squeezing him too hard.

“Sir.”

“You’re late. Follow me.”

I fell in step behind him, fighting the urge to lean over and get a better look at the premature balding of a man who seemed to be about my own age. If I were losing my hair at twenty-six, I’d just give up and shave the lot down to the wood.

I followed him through the lobby and up a flight of stairs to a briefing room where the raised dais up front was occupied by an officer who radiated privilege.

The door shut behind me as I entered, serving only to draw the attention of the twelve uniformed men and women in the room. They stared and I stared right back.

“As I was saying,” the man on the dais said in a loud voice designed to reinforce his well-bred influence over his subjects. I had met men like this before. Men born into power with a plan to weasel their way into Zion City’s the top echelon in less than three decades. They liked to tell a few war stories about how they brought justice to those poor lower levels. Seemed to think it legitimized their path to power.

“… and I’ll recap for the benefit of everyone,” the guy went on smoothly, earning a few sycophantic chuckles from the ass-kissers standing up front, “this homicide was a clear message to the authorities here in Zion. Thi—”

“Homicides,” interrupted a voice from somewhere in the middle of the small pack.

“Excuse me? If you have something to say, Ranger, by all means speak up.”

A hole opened up around the speaker to expose a woman about my age. She was slim, like a lot of the women from the lower levels, with shoulder-length hair tied back in a hurry, but she stood tall and didn’t shrink under the combined gaze of everyone in the room.

“The report said five people were killed, sir,” she said. “Not one.”

All eyes turned back to Junior Commander Rivera who, blessed by his twenty-one years of clean living and good food, blushed bright pink.

“You’re absolutely right, Ranger,” he answered, hands spread wide to concede the point. “We lost five souls to this murderer, not just the senator. Our job is to find out who was responsible and bring them to justice. Now, intelligence will come under the guidance of Lieutenant Kumar. Those of you assigned to the tasks of footage and customs review, report to him directly.”

A murmur rippled through the room as people muttered to their immediate neighbors.

“Those assigned to me, be ready to move out in five.” With that, Rivera stepped down from the stage. People began to move, and the ambient noise level grew.

“Where do I…” I asked, turning to the micro-officer who’d brought me in, only to see that he was ordering people around and pointing at different monitoring stations. That made me think that he was Kumar, and hope I was going to get a nice gig in a soft chair with headquarters coffee as I watched days of footage for anything helpful.

I should’ve known better.

“Quinn?”

I turned, doing the opposite of when I’d met the lieutenant, and having to look up to meet the bright gaze of a guy a few years younger than me but just about better in every conceivable way.

Rivera had none of the rough texture to his skin like we got in the lower levels, probably because all of his immunizations were better quality than ours and he got more than the bare minimum when it came to anti-radiation meds. Add to that some actual sunlight and decent food, and this guy was a fine specimen.

“Yes sir,” I said, my voice cracking into a croak that betrayed how shitty I felt.

“You’re assigned to me,” Rivera said, looking me up and down and seeming neither impressed nor disappointed. The fact that hungover me was what he’d expected stung a little and made me want to prove the guy wrong. “Sergeant Forge will fill you in on the details as we walk.”

With that, a procession of five people breezed past me, each giving me the same look of disappointment, like I was the godparent who’d forgotten their kids’ birthdays. The last in line was the young woman who’d had the stones to speak up.

With a sigh, I followed. This was going to be a long day.

2

Back to Basics

“The senator and his detail entered this elevator at a little after ten last night,” Forge said, pointing at the elevator in case I didn’t know what one was. “They went to level seventeen and that’s where the trail goes cold.”

“Maybe if you cheap bastards up top stumped up the cash for more cameras,” I murmured under my breath.

“And the infrastructure to support it?” Rivera said in a conversational tone over my shoulder, making me jump. “And the extra support staff to monitor and maintain it? The cost isn’t just limited to the hardware, Quinn.”

“S-Sorry, sir,” I stuttered, “I didn’t mean to—”

“Think nothing of it,” he said magnanimously with a dismissive gesture, like he’d just sent a half-eaten meal away. “Truth is, I wanted some of you people on this investigation so we had all perspectives covered.”

Some of you people…?

“And who knows?” Rivera went on patronizingly. “Maybe you might learn a new perspective in the process, Ranger?”

“Yes sir,” I said respectfully, my instinctual self-preservation kicking in. I made a mental note to keep my thoughts inside my head where they couldn’t get me in trouble.

Officers like Rivera, they enjoyed visiting the lower levels for all of five minutes so they could add it to their list of family accolades and legitimize their standing when they eventually ran for the senate. It was nice while it lasted—no, scratch that, it was nothing but annoying and false while it lasted. Some commander decided that last week’s crime stats were too high in one sector or another, brought a load of Rangers down from the casino levels—probably reallocated taxpayer funds to pay for the overtime—and cleaned house for a few days. That meant inspections, surprise visits from people whose clean uniforms never went below level five, and a pain in my ass until they decided they’d done enough to fuck off back to their clean air feeling full of themselves and already planning a speech at the dinner thrown in their honor.

“We know from witnesses that nothing happened until a little after eleven, and then the reports are conflicted,” Forge went on. He turned to Rivera and anticipated his next order. “We have the day section down here rounding them up and bringing them to central command for a more thorough debrief.”

“Good,” Rivera said. He walked tall, hands clasped behind his back and his chin up so everyone who passed could see him walking proud and unafraid below level twenty.

We arrived at the end of a maze of lefts and rights, following Forge’s lead from the stairwell until the all-too-familiar sight of crime scene tape blocked the walkway.

“Names?” demanded a bored Ranger with a battered clipboard and a gut making a bid for freedom south of his jacket.

“Commander Rivera’s team,” Forge said with an authority that threatened retribution for anyone who dared ignore him.

“Sorry, Sergeant,” the Ranger answered, smartening up and allowing us to pass. As the procession went through and the importance of our group diminished, the guy’s scowl grew, but his expression suddenly softened at whoever had fallen in behind me.

“Heyyy, Valentina, how’d you land a sweet number like this?”

“Eat a dick, Woolman,” came the angry snap from directly behind me. I stifled a laugh, not very well, and half turned to see the harsh, sharp features of the young woman who’d spoken up in the briefing I’d caught the end of.

“And you can go fuck yourself too,” she added kindly. It took me a half second to realize she was talking to me, given that all I’d dared to do was find her funny.

“Charming,” I grumbled at her. She had an answer for that too, which I was glad I didn’t hear so I wasn’t compelled to come up with a smart comeback. Truth be told, my head pounded like a recirculating pump, and if I even thought about throwing up, I knew it would become a reality.

“Okay, listen in,” Rivera said as he brought our journey to an end. “We have two bodies here, one around the corner and Senator Byers is inside the, er, room here.”

I looked around the uniforms blocking my view and felt my stomach flip as the sweet, metallic tang of blood assaulted my senses. I wasn’t squeamish, and I’d been first on scene to plenty of homicides that weren’t pretty but having my alcohol-induced slumber cut short had messed me up enough that this one got to me.

The two guys outside the room had clearly been standing guard on either side of the door when they bought it. Both fell where they stood, which told me whatever went down here happened fast, so fast that one didn’t see it coming and the other didn’t have time to react. Poor bastard still had his hands in his pockets.

Without thinking, I pushed my way through the group, swallowing the acid bubbling up my throat as I squatted down to look at the bodies. The one on the left had his eyes open wide in shock, but there was nothing behind them, like the power had drained out. He was sitting back on his feet, his back against the wall and his hips thrust out forward unnaturally. The front of his chest was sheeted with thick, sticky blood dried into a film. The fact that his hands were still in his pockets offended me on a professional level. He’d been entirely unprepared for anything to happen.

I turned to the other one, careful not to kneel in anything I didn’t want to get on my uniform and saw an almost identical story.

Almost, but not quite. And those differences said a lot.

“The third member of the detail is around here,” Rivera went on, striding confidently to the nearby junction and gesturing with a blade-straight knife hand.

I rose, fighting off the moment of unsteadiness, and went to look.

The third guy was facedown, arms and legs an awkward mess, and his death was much messier than the others. I stepped aside to let the others inspect the body just as Rivera and Forge bowed their heads together and muttered a rapid conversation before the sergeant addressed the entourage.

“Alright, who wants to tell us how this shit went down?” he growled. I heard the challenge in his voice, so I kept my mouth shut. I paid attention to some lessons in life, and one of those was never to volunteer.

“Well,” a Ranger I didn’t know said in a voice that I guess he thought sounded confident. It didn’t; it just made him sound like a smartass.

“It’s obvious to me that there were at least two killers. They took out the guards at the door at the same time but failed to notice the third man. He disturbed them, and they chased him down and killed him. Then they must have killed the senator.”

Rivera and Forge said nothing, neither did their facial expressions, and I opened my mouth to point out the obvious mistakes in that assessment before I remembered my own rule about volunteering.

Beside me, not quite under her breath, the young woman with the bad mouth scoffed a laugh.

“Got something to add, Valentina?” Forge demanded.

“Add, Sarge? No. You can’t add anything to that bullshit assessment. You have to throw it out and start from scratch. For example, if it went down like he said, why is the third vic facing the wrong way? He turn around when he was running away and still get stabbed in the back?”

The Ranger she’d offended shot her a fighting look, which only seemed to make her even more amused.

“By all means,” Rivera said, “enlighten us.”

“Sir, you don’t want to know if anyone else here can read a crime scene?” she asked, fixing me with a deliberate look as if she wasn’t done humiliating people just yet.

“As it happens, I do,” Rivera answered. “Quinn, your assessment?”

Being volunteered, I reassured myself , wasn’t the same as volunteering. I cleared my throat, feeling the scratch at the back of my mouth threaten to make my voice croak again.

“Single assailant,” I said, pointing back down the corridor, “came from this way, most likely hidden back there in the shadows.”

“How do you know that?” Forge demanded. “They could’ve been anywhere.”

“Light’s out in that section,” Valentina said, pointing up at the missing plastic dome on the ceiling before I could say it.

“First guy went down before he had a clue what was happening,” I went on before the angry girl pissed on my performance again. “Died with his hands still in his pockets when he got his throat opened up and probably bled out in seconds.” I pointed to the spray of dried blood on the opposite wall. “Second guy had time to get his hands free at least. See how he was reaching inside his jacket with his right hand? But he bought it when he was still turning this way.” I walked through the scene as if I were the killer, miming the cut of the first death and the thrust of the second. “Throat cut on one, stab straight through the neck of two—both down and unable to shout—then onto the corner where they waited for the third to come back around—”

“He would’ve been the roving patrol,” Valentina cut in, deliberately not making eye contact with me.

“Killer stepped out of the alcove back there, only this time they didn’t have a clean shot at the vic’s throat, so they had to hit him a few times until he went down.”

“Does anyone else have another theory?” Rivera asked. He didn’t look at me or say anything that would give me a clue what he thought of my assessment. But even if I’d got a couple of tiny details wrong, I was certain these guys had died in the order I’d said.

The other three people in our little group, even the one who’d already spoken up, had nothing. They kept their opinions to themselves and their eyes down.

“Thank you,” Rivera said, nodding to Forge as he stepped away. The sergeant took a pace forward and drew himself up to his impressive height before dismissing them to report to Lieutenant Kumar for tasking. Falling for the wishful thinking on my part, I stood to attention to acknowledge the dismissal before hearing my name barked out by the officer.

“Not you,” Rivera added, watching the other three go. “You two are officially assigned to this task force under my orders,” he said as he glanced between Valentina and me. “Now that the wheat’s been separated from the chaff, it’s time to see the main event.”

He nodded to Forge, who used a key to open the door in between the two dead men side by side. Metal clanked as the mechanism moved and the door slid open to reveal a sight I’ll never forget.

How I managed to keep the contents of my stomach inside my body right then, I will never know.

Senator Byers was on the bed, his back against the gaudy purple headboard, his wrists tied to the corners and his legs crossed. As it was, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the senator was a kinky old dog, and that he visited this establishment to see a certain young lady who could accommodate his less than mainstream desires.

You’d think that, if it wasn’t for the blood, and for the fact that Senator Byers’s hands had been severed and both sprouted out over his shoulders with the fingers clamped tight around the hilts of two knives driven diagonally downward into his body.

As if that wasn’t enough, and as though I’d focused on the hands instead of the real show, the senator’s head was sitting neatly in his lap, looking out at the room and wearing an expression of something close to sadness, if sadness had little energy to expend and found its eyelids suddenly heavy.

“Okay,” I said, “that’s… that’s seriously fucked up… sir.”

“It is indeed, Quinn,” Rivera said. Clearly both he and the sergeant had seen this already, as neither seemed to be affected by the sight or even shocked by it. Valentina, even if she was a hard-nosed bitch, at least demonstrated that she was human when she did a double take at the guy covering his junk with his own head and turned away to the corner of the room.

I thought for a second that she was just taking a moment, but it turned out I was wrong.

“She’s… different,” Valentina said. I looked past her to see a thin woman, older than I would’ve guessed to be doing this line of work, sitting in a threadbare gown on an armchair as if watching the show.

Her eyes were closed, and her head was tilted to one shoulder as though she’d just fallen asleep there.

“Single puncture wound to the base of the skull, from what we can tell without disturbing the scene,” Rivera said, his back still straight as a support steel and his hands clasped behind him. “Very little blood. Almost like the killer was doing her a kindness. We’ll have it all thoroughly photographed before we move the bodies up to the central command medical facility.”

“No struggle?” I asked, looking around the room for the telltale signs of a fight. No furniture was disturbed, nothing on the floor where it didn’t belong, nothing broken…

“Might be he was tied up when the killer got in,” Valentina offered. Oddly, the first time she’d spoken to me like we were equals and it felt a little creepy. She quickly recovered herself, however. “That’s what you topside men come down here for, right? The freak show?”

I sucked in a breath through my nose even though it wasn’t me she was insulting. But the two men she offered the direct insult to didn’t react. She was referring to the seedier side of the seedy underworld down below the level the elevators went to. That specific line in prostitution where the ones born different were in high demand. Birth defects caused by the residual radiation poisoning closer to the ground, resulting in missing arms and legs or extra fingers and toes, among other differences.

“She, er, she got everything? No extras?” I asked.

“You want me to strip her off here?” Valentina asked with a snarl. I held up my hands, wanting nothing of the sort to happen.

“Better that we leave such matters to the medical examiner, wouldn’t you agree?” Rivera asked gently, as if being polite wouldn’t make it sound like he was giving orders. Forge had no such manners and opted for the direct route.

“You think the senator had a thing for fucking muties?” At the mention of the derogatory word for those born with mutations, Valentina’s head whipped around to fix on his center mass like she was about to draw a weapon. Unlike me, Forge held her gaze and gave nothing away, like he was daring her to say something.

“It’s possible,” I said, glancing between the two of them and hoping a subject change would break the tension. “Like the junior commander said, best we leave it until the doc’s had a look at her before we test that theory out.”

“Agreed,” Rivera said, like it wasn’t his idea in the first place. “So, Rangers, where do we start with the investigation?”

I glanced at Valentina and saw her looking right back at me. It dawned on me then why we were here, and specifically why he’d dismissed the others and kept those who displayed the aptitude he wanted. We had to solve this, because the officer hadn’t done a day’s dirty work in his entire privileged existence.

“At the beginning, sir,” I said. “No other place to start.”

3

Homicide 101

The majority of homicides are perpetrated by someone the victim knows intimately. In many cases, it’s the level of intimacy—either with each other or someone else—that’s the motive behind said murder. In this case, I had to admit that the homicides were actually just one, the rest of them being a means to an end. There was no way the senator, especially given how he was presented to us, wasn’t the main event.

I had to run all this through my head first, because it didn’t do anyone any good to spitball with a hard-ass sergeant like Forge. Thinking out loud with the junior commander was a quick way to spend the rest of my career doing exactly what I’d done for the last five years, and Valentina… well, Valentina scared the shit out of me.

She was hot. Not what I’d necessarily call pretty, but then again, I didn’t know what she’d look like if she wore makeup or normal clothes.

Or smiled.

No, she wasn’t pretty, but she was hot.

There’s a big difference, at least there is in my opinion. A pretty girl you could show off to your buddies on your days off. You could take her out for food closer to the surface, if you’d saved up or borrowed the silver, and enjoy all the rich folks looking at her like they wanted something I had when only their money made them attractive. A pretty girl was a thing of wonder, but a hot girl kept you guessing.

I daydreamed, wandering off on a major tangent to my line of thought, and imagined what it would be like to hook up with her. She was tall, she was obviously strong by choice and my guess was that she lifted weights, and her bone structure made her what I’d call ‘striking’ more than attractive. She’d likely kick my ass if I wasn’t careful, but there was something about her resting bitch face that made me—

“Hey, earth to jerkoff, come in, jerkoff,” she said, snapping her fingers in front of my eyes and dragging me out of my guilty thoughts.

“Sorry, what?” I said, seeing her angry, impatient face staring at mine as the elevator car thumped its way upwards.

“I asked you what you were thinking,” she said, seeming to fight the urge to hiss the words through clenched teeth. My headache won through and took over control of my mouth.

“What the hell is your problem with me?” I demanded. “You’ve been giving me shit since we met. Have I done something to offend you in a previous life?”

She rolled her eyes as I spoke, like she was switching off, wearing the same expression I’d have if a really small dog was barking at me.

“Whatever, forget it,” she snapped.

“You wanna know what I was thinking?” I asked, knowing full well there was no goddamned way I was going to tell her what I’d been thinking. “Fine, I was thinking that the four homicides are really only one, with three more in collateral damage.”

“Four?”

“What?”

“Four other murders, or do women below ten not count in your world?”

Shit. How the hell could I forget her?

“Sorry,” I said. “Four other murders, you’re right.” Something else she said hit me then. “Wait, what did you mean by my world?”

“Topsiders,” she spat. “You only come down here when someone important gets themselves killed.”

“Hold the fuck up,” I said, allowing the anger back into my voice as I fully rounded on her. “I was born below ten and I still live there. I’m no topsider. You see a tan?” I dragged up the sleeves of my uniform to show her my bare arms, instantly regretting it when she shot out a hand to grab my wrist and turn it over, while her eyes narrowed at the puckered, pink skin running in random, jagged lines. I pulled my hand back and pushed my sleeves back down, pissed at her for making me lose my cool.

“I… I’m sorry,” she said, making each word sound like it took a quart of blood from her.

“Forget about it,” I answered sullenly. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is finding the asshole that did it. The point I was trying to make was that we need to concentrate on the senator because the other vics are peripheral.”

“They’re what?”

“Peripheral. You know, on the edge of the main thing?”

The levels ticked by slowly on the digital readout, counting up from sixteen to fifteen. We’d used Ranger override controls so the damn thing didn’t stop on every other floor, and the silence inside the elevator stretched out as far as I could stand it.

“You sure you’re no topsider?” she teased, ramping up the lower level accent to make herself sound dumb. “Use dem big fancy word like? Make a girl feel clever knowin’ a man who use dem big fancy word.”

“Shut up,” I snapped, although the laugh that escaped my mouth with the retort kind of took the edge off it. “No,” I relented, deflating a little as if we’d both cleared our chests of the things we wanted to say. “I’m no topsider, but there were two things my mom taught me before she passed and making me read was one of them.”

“What was the other thing?”

“What?”

“You said she taught you two things. Reading and what?”

“Reading and… and making sure you don’t skip on your anti-rad meds.”

“Oh. When?”

“Years ago,” I said. Losing a family member to cancer didn’t make me special. If anything it made me just the same as almost everyone in Zion. The lower you got in the city, the lower the life expectancy was. None of us could afford the lifetime meds they had up above five, because if we could afford that, then we’d be living up there where the risks from radiation were low anyway. Knowing that my mom went without the meds so I could have a full dose left me with the illogical guilt that I was directly responsible for her death. What came after her death was hard to live with too, but I tried not to think about it.

Ten. Nine. Eight.

The digital counter crawled upwards in its numerical descent, making me wish it would either stop and let me out or hurry the fuck up so this woman didn’t have me spilling my guts about everything else in my life that made me want to cry.

“So, we concentrate on the dead asshole, figure out who wanted him dead, and we can nail them for the other murders as a bonus. Like a side quest?”

“I think it’s a little more than that,” I said, ignoring her attempt to be funny. She was funny when she was being mean—to other people, at least—so the bad joke was easy to ignore. “I think it wasn’t just an assassination but something… something more.”

“Like cutting his hands off, making him stab himself in the back, and putting his head on his own spike?”

I chuckled involuntarily.

Okay, I thought, you can have that one.

“Exactly like that.”

“Political rival?” Valentina offered, thinking out loud with me and playing the game well.

“Why bother? Just take pictures of him in a cathouse and go public. That way his career is ruined.”

“Jealous wife?”

“You know any topside ladies capable of navigating the sub-tens in the dark and playing butcher?”

“Meh,” she said with a lopsided shrug. We lapsed into silence as we probably both imagined the women of high fashion taking time out from doing nothing in full makeup to go on a killing spree down where the air was thick.

“Contracted?” she asked, delving deeper into that last train of thought.

“Retrospective surveillance on the wife,” I said. “Access all communication logs from her home.”

Valentina nodded agreement. As far as our first guesses went, looking at the wife was the obvious bet.

The majority of murders are perpetrated by someone the victim knows intimately.

The elevator counter ticked over to four and stopped with a jolt before the doors slid open and cool, fresh air rushed in. I had to admit, I was happy about this part of the job. What I wasn’t happy about was the fact that my stomach was still empty, and it was lined with the gutrot they served at my favorite place on eleven that had the twin bonuses of being cheap and close enough to my place that I could crawl home if I had to.

The two Rangers standing pretty on the doors to central command didn’t give me shit this time, but I wasn’t sure if they knew about our appointment to the super-secret special task force, or whether they just didn’t want Valentina to dick-punch them. She kind of radiated that impression when she wanted to.

“You two,” a voice snapped as we crossed the lobby in matching stride. “We’re over here.”

We turned and followed the world’s shortest lieutenant into a wing that he accessed with a card reader. Kumar turned and held out both hands to us, each bearing a worn, white rectangle of plastic that I guessed gave us access to the doors we’d just walked through.

“Don’t lose them,” he warned, “or their replacement costs will be deducted from your next pay.” We exchanged a look which quickly melted back into stern professionalism as he whipped his head back to us. “And one more thing. You two will be armed from now on.”

As one, our four eyebrows shot up into our hair.

“For real, Lieutenant?” Valentina asked, sounding somehow younger than she looked.

“Do I need to repeat myself?” Kumar asked, summoning all the impotent rage of a man so far below average height.

“No, sir,” she said, straightening. “Does the lieutenant wish for us to report to the armory immediately, or will that wait until we’ve seen the junior commander?”

Kumar deflated, losing the extra inch he’d managed to conjure through sheer bad temper. “It can wait,” he said, pointing at a side room with glass partition walls. “The commander is through there, and he wants an update before he formulates the investigation plan.” He went to turn away but paused, adding, “And if I were you, I’d drop the word ‘junior’ from the commander’s rank. It’s only a matter of time, anyway, and he’s expressed the opinion that it streamlines matters.”

We stayed where we were as Kumar walked away before exchanging another look. I hadn’t been issued a weapon for over a year, and that had only been for two days until a minor riot had been quelled down on sixteen.

“You two plan on eye-fucking each other some more or you gonna get your asses in here like you’re goddamned paid to do?” barked Sergeant Forge from the doorway of the room we should have been in already. We hurried in, finding a spot to stand down one side in the room filled with people who looked like they belonged behind a terminal more than they did investigating a crime.

“Shinies, all of ’em,” Valentina muttered in my ear. Given that we were almost identical in height, whispering privately to one another was surprisingly easy. Plus, it gave me a waft of the scent her warm skin gave off.

Focus, I told myself.

“Yeah,” I agreed, seeing very few beaters like us.

It was a stupid slang term now that I thought of it, but us idiots who beat the levels day and night—mainly guarding governmental shit worth stealing or else breaking up brawls between the delightful citizens of Zion—liked to have something to call those members of the Ranger corps who wore the asses of their pants smooth on chairs all day.

“People,” Rivera announced in a clear, powerful voice that sounded like it was made of silvers. “We have little time and much to cover, so forgive me for not formally introducing everyone on this task force. You all know me, and you should all by now know who your immediate supervisors are. We observe the chain of command, and the flow of information up and down is sacrosanct. There will be no skipping links in that chain, and that is all I will say on the matter. Now…”

“Mister Big Shot doesn’t like the little people darkening his day,” I muttered, earning a tiny scoff of laughter from Valentina.

“These are the facts,” Rivera said loudly. “Between ten and eleven last night, Senator Arnold J. Byers visited a freelance entertainment establishment on level eighteen, sector nine. He had with him a detail of three personal guards, two of whom were Rangers, and all were respected men who lost their lives just prior, we believe, to the senator himself. An… entertainer was also a victim of homicide, and all five bodies are being recovered for medical analysis as we speak.”

I lost focus for a second as the imagery of the crime scene came back to me before Rivera’s words managed to anchor me in the present.

“Our investigation will focus on the following: Footage of all relevant areas will be meticulously searched and searched again. The senator’s personal dwelling and correspondence will be subject to investigation. All persons either residing in or near or known to frequent the area where these crimes took place will be questioned, and any responses or people of note will be followed up on.

“Now, I don’t have the luxury of time to go into the finer details, but your relevant supervisors have your tasks. We will work twelve-hour shifts tirelessly until this matter is resolved, and all of you must consider yourselves on call throughout, so from now on there will be no drinking,” somehow, as if the son of a bitch had homing vision, his eyes found mine in the crowd for a second, “and anyone not making themselves available when called for will answer to the deputy director in person.”

A murmur rippled around the room as everyone collectively shuffled their feet or otherwise fidgeted at the thought of facing off against the head of the corps who only answered to the president and whatever deity she prayed to.

“Lastly, and I’m certain I don’t need to remind anyone of this, the matters we are investigating are sensitive,” he said, drawing out the word like it held a whole raft of other meanings. Anyone who hadn’t had the scene described to them by then would doubtless get caught up on things quickly, “and as such, you are all expressly forbidden from discussing this case or any single part of it with anyone not in this room. Is that understood?”

A murmur of, “Sir,” and other affirmations went around the room which seemed to pull the pin out of Sergeant Forge’s personal detonator.

“The commander just asked you a fuckin’ question!” he bawled. “Did. You. Hear. Him?”

“YES SIR,” the room barked as one, loud enough to silence the building for a heartbeat before normal service resumed.

Forge retreated, giving Rivera a smug nod as if his presence had just earned him a presidential citation.

“Good,” Rivera said. “To your duties. Dismissed.”

4

Letting It Show

Valentina

We were ordered to Rivera’s office to wait, and as we walked, I wondered if I should apologize to Quinn again for coming across as a bitch.

Not that I’d actually apologize, just more that I’d acknowledge that sometimes I let my emotions get to the front. I wasn’t sure about him by a long way, but I doubted he deserved all of what I’d thrown at him.

He didn’t know why I hated men who stank of booze and had a hard time keeping their face from registering how much they despised the world, but nothing about Quinn told me he was the kind of man to take it out on another person. And seeing as how I reckoned he didn’t have kids, then there was no chance of him taking out his alcohol-fueled temper on them.

I looked at him, stumbling occasionally like he’d been woken too early and still had too much of the cheap drink in his system, hoping I was wrong about him. I decided to make some conversation to be sure, but that wasn’t to say I was inviting him around for dinner or anything.

I just wanted to know who I’d been saddled with to partner up on a murder case.

5

Lines of Enquiry

Quinn

We were told to wait in an anteroom which seemed to be a large and comfortable waiting area for the big office beyond double doors. A secretary, dressed in a white skirt and jacket over a light blue shirt so flimsy I swore I saw a nipple from ten paces, occupied a simple desk as if standing sentry to the office. The skirt was short, and as I sat, I couldn’t help but fire a glance in the right direction to find that she was more accomplished than I was and had her knees pressed together and pointed off to one side.

“Will the ju—ahmm,” I coughed to cover my own correction. “Will the commander be seeing us soon, or do Ranger Valentina and I have time to report to the armory first?”

She smiled, warm and wide and false as a silver that bent in your pocket.

“The commander will be but a minute, I’m sure,” was all she said, telling me exactly nothing, other than politely reminding me that I should sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. Valentina heard it too, and she slumped down with a resigned sigh to lean back in the chair opposite mine which was more comfortable than my bed.

There was one bonus to waiting for one of the brass to have time for us, and that was the drinks. I fetched a look of disdain for my evident greed, asking for both a pitcher of water and a strong coffee when Valentina only asked for a glass of water.

“Heavy night last night?” she asked quietly, glancing at the secretary who was no doubt listening to our conversation but making an expert show of not reacting.

“My first off-duty day.” I groaned as I leaned back to stretch. “Didn’t get in until late, or early, and woke up to the deputy director hammering on my door.”

Her eyebrows went up in shocked amusement at that fact.

“My last day off,” she countered. “Got pulled out of my breakfast by some commander. Hey, look at it this way—we’re on OT.”

“Hell yeah, we are,” I said, allowing a smile to creep across my face as if the concept of time-and-a-third pay hadn’t been literally the second thing to cross my mind when I was told to report for duty.

“No wife and kids in your ear about working extra?”

“No wife or kids period,” I answered, wondering why she’d asked and not having time to ponder it before the doors opened and a gaggle of suits and uniforms filed out, each of them shooting us varying looks of amusement or disdain as they passed.

“The commander will see you now,” the secretary announced without even looking up from her desk. We stood, straightened our uniforms, and nodded to one another like we had to face whatever was coming our way as one or we might not survive it.

The commander’s office was bigger than my entire home and decorated far better for that matter.

“Take a seat,” Rivera said, dropping all formality and waving us down before we could salute him. “I’ll be brief, so forgive me for forgoing the formalities. What do either of you know about the old ways?”

The question threw me, so much so that I stammered my answer.

“The... the old ways, sir?”

“Pre-Zion,” he said. “Investigative tactics of the twenty-first century. Pre-collapse.”

I looked at Valentina who looked back at me as if searching for the right answer in my face.

“Er, assume not much, Commander…”

He didn’t seem annoyed at my answer and stood to pace as he talked.

“Back before everything, before we built this place, this country was vast. It was so vast, in fact, that it was cut up into fifty different pieces much like our own sectors here. Those fifty places had cities like this on the surface who had their own soldiers keeping law and order, but because the place was so vast, there were wide stretches between those cities and towns that each sector—they called them states—had another force of soldiers who oversaw everything in that place. Each sector was the same, but over all of these states was another force who had the ultimate authority.”

I said nothing, listening intently to the history lesson which may or may not have been entirely fictional.

“This force, this thing they called a bureau, had a rule book for how they investigated crimes. I am of the opinion that we should follow these old ideas—these new ideas in many ways—to solve the murder of the senator.”

Again, I said nothing, but wondered whether Rivera was taking too many anti-rad meds.

“The core principles should be adhered to,” he went on, really into it now, “and they are as follows: victims, scenes, suspects, witnesses, physical evidence, and intelligence. Each area of investigation is to be overseen by the most experienced minds involved and that, that, is how we solve this case.”

“Yes, sir,” Valentina said, helping me out before I made an involuntary noise because my mouth was hanging open. “You just tell us what you need.”

“You two are part of that oversight, along with myself and Sergeant Forge. All the legwork will be conducted by others and we will jointly oversee their results and follow up on whatever we feel needs closer examination. I’d like you both to work in plain clothes, if you think that will benefit the investigation, but at all times you will act according to your positions, and nothing will be done that would jeopardize the case or your personal integrity. Is that understood?”

“Sir,” we chorused.

“Good, we n—”

A knock at the door was followed by Forge stomping in wearing dark blue pants and a black jacket. He wore a pistol on his belt and dropped two more in holsters on the desk in front of us before adding four spare magazines.

“As I was saying,” Rivera went on, unfazed by the arrival of either the sergeant or the weaponry, “we start with the victims. We need a full rundown on each person, learning as much as we can about their lives so that we can establish a motive. We do the same with the scene, logging and preserving everything we can for future reference, then we can formulate a list of potential suspects to cross-reference against the intelligence and hopefully link a suspect to the scene and the victims through physical evidence, all the while maintaining a detailed record of our decisions and the rationale for them.”

He leaned back, excited and proud of himself as if he’d been rehearsing the speech for days.

“Start with the victims,” I echoed, “yes, sir. Might I just ask one little thing…”

“Ask, Quinn. I can only say no and kick you out of the corps in disgrace.”

I shut my mouth just before Rivera burst out laughing. The joke would’ve been funny, if say, he didn’t have the power to mention my name to some family member and have me kicked out of my home, my job, and dumped out of an airlock to the surface.

“I jest, Quinn, what is it?”

I still said nothing, too confused as the coffee and water hadn’t fully restarted my brain yet.

“Sir,” Valentina said, saving me from further embarrassment. “We were discussing something along the lines of what you suggested on the way here, and Quinn is of the opinion that we should focus our attention on the senator as we believe the others vics were collateral damage. He thinks that we should look into the senator’s family and home life, specifically Mrs. Byers…”

Rivera and Forge looked at each other as if deciding which one of them got to send us both out of the office to discover the challenges of finding new employment before Rivera faced me and darkened his expression.

“You heard what I told everyone in the briefing,” he warned, “and this goes tenfold for you two. Nothing we discover, nothing at all, goes beyond the four of us unless I say otherwise. We have to step lightly, because the widowed Mrs. Byers is an influential woman with connections up as high as they go.”

Yeah, same as you, I thought.

“If you’re implying what I think you’re implying,” Rivera warned, “then she cannot know she is a suspect.”

“I wouldn’t say I was implying as such…”

“Insinuating? Intimating? Call it whatever you like,” Rivera said. “The senator’s wife is a prime suspect any day of the week. Only, she can’t know that, understood?”

“Loud and clear, sir,” Valentina responded.

“Absolutely,” I echoed.

“So what did you have in mind?” the commander asked, leaning back again to see if his chosen team had what he was looking for.

“Retrospective surveillance on both her comms and her movements,” I said.

“A search of the family home,” Valentina chimed in.

“Both are fine,” Rivera answered. “We’ll conduct the search ourselves to keep it low-key. The digital work I’m having done by Kumar’s team. Now go get changed into something worthy of level one. Get something to eat and meet me at the medical center in sector two, level two, in an hour.”

We stood, and I was unsure if I should salute, given how the formality between us and the officer had been broken down. I opted for safety, guessing it was better to be told not to bother than be pulled up for not bothering, and saluted him before turning away.

* * *

“You believe this shit…?” I asked through my hands, which were clamped to my face in the elevator as I rubbed my tired eyes.

“Nope. Not one bit. This isn’t happening, is it?”

In answer I drew back my uniform jacket to show her the piece I’d strapped to my waist. She looked down at her own and stared for a second.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “It’s really real. Where’s yours?” she asked as her finger hovered over the keypad.

“I’m on thirteen,” I said. “Sector five.”

“Fancy,” she said mockingly, not offering where her place was. Because she avoided it, I guessed she had to be ashamed of what level she lived on. On any other day I’d leave it there, only we were thrown together into the thick of something unprecedented, so there couldn’t be anything we couldn’t say to one another.

“And you?” I asked, seeing that she hadn’t pressed any other buttons.

“I’m…” she hesitated, “I’m on four/nine.”

My eyebrows met above the bridge of my nose as I turned on her.

“Stop me if I’m wrong,” I said, allowing my headache to dictate my tone of voice, “but weren’t you the one giving me shit for not caring about the lower levels earlier?”

“I didn’t grow up there,” she said quickly, offering an explanation. Level nine and level thirteen weren’t exactly a world apart, but generally anything above ten was considered to be where the better class of people lived.

“It’s a shared space,” she went on, eyes focused on her boots, “and it’s… it’s subsidized.”

“Subsidized by who?” I asked, clearly overstepping the mark by the way her face darkened.

“What the hell’s it got to do with you?”

I fought with every muscle in my face not to roll my eyes and failed. I wasn’t sure how I’d be coping on a normal day without a sour gut and a drumkit inside my brain, but today she was pissing me off royally. She swung between being pretty cool and switching into the uber-bitch like she had a rep to maintain, and I’d had enough of it.

“Whatever,” I said, hitting the button for level nine so she could get out and head left for her own sector, “just don’t give me shit about who comes from where again.”

She said nothing as the elevator clanked past each level until it slowed abruptly to stop at nine.

“My family came here when I was eight or nine,” she said quietly. “We fled Helena Crossroads during the last war with Cheyenne, and I spent the first five years here on nineteen.” I said nothing, just looked at the side of her face as she stared straight ahead and waited for the doors to open. Stepping out, she half turned over her right shoulder.

“See you back on two,” she said, her lips parted as if she wanted to add something, before the doors closed and the elevator kept on chugging downwards to thirteen.

6

The Great Divide

With the amount of time I had, I opted for a rapid shower before digging through the pile of clothes on my closet chair. My small apartment had an actual closet, but I didn’t know what the hell was in there. Besides, it was easier to find my clothes on the chair.

I had six uniforms, given that was what I wore almost every day of my life anyway, but my other stuff fit into two categories: dressy and scruffy.

Since I was heading for the upper levels and was probably going to see some actual sunlight, I opted for dressy with black pants and a blue shirt under a leather jacket. The shirt was creased beyond the stage where a steaming could recover it, but I always found that my body heat served to flatten it out enough after a while. I had no other choice on the footwear front, because I sure as hell wasn’t wearing my slippers, so I put my duty boots back on.

Pausing to look at my reflection, I was… underwhelmed. I looked for a way to pin my Ranger’s star on my jacket but didn’t want to wreck the leather—that stuff was pretty expensive on any level—and decided to pin it to my shirt, just inside the jacket so I could show it easily.

Uniform or not, the gun made it obvious. No way to hide that.

I took a handful of coins from one of the stash spots in my place and left, going along on level thirteen past the residential part of my sector to where the smell of cooking oil thickened the air.

“Queenn! My friend!” the old guy without any front teeth greeted me like we were old friends. “You want eat in or take away?”

“Hey man,” I said being casual, mostly because I’d never learned the guy’s name, “I’ll need something to go.”

“You got it,” he said, slurping up his spit that had leaked out of his toothless mouth as he smiled and talked. I intentionally ignored thoughts about how much of his drool I’d ingested over the year and a half since he’d opened up his ramen spot there. He was cheap, his place was close, and I liked ramen.

He filled a scratched and faded plastic cup with some sloppy noodles and grinned wetly as he handed it over to me.

“My granny’s secret recipe,” he said with a conspiratorial wink.

The secret that the meat wasn’t actually meat was a badly kept one.

“Hey, you hear ’bout dat senator man who get himself kill last night?” he asked. I tried to keep my face neutral while remembering to look shocked at what was obviously gossip that was spreading like a surface wildfire.

“Oh?” was all I could manage as I bent my head and sniffed in the broth’s aroma. Processed meat substitute or not, it smelled good.

“Yeah, dey say his bodyguards get demself kill too, you know? Naaaasty business, you ask me.”

I said nothing, waiting for him to fill me in on the rest of the rumors without giving anything away. He didn’t, so I risked a little prompt.

“What else do they say?”

He shrugged as if disappointed that I didn’t seem horrified, or more likely that I didn’t tell him anything he hadn’t already heard third hand.

“Dey say it was a bloodbath, down in there.”

That part was accurate, at least.

“Remind me not to go down there,” I said with a false smile before changing the subject with talk of payment.

“Dat one on the house,” he said, surprising me. He’d never given anything away for free before. “So long as you tell me sometin I don’t know…”

I looked around as if expecting to see somebody watching me before I leaned in. He mirrored my movement, straining his old neck over the counter to hear what I was going to say. I smiled when our heads were close, sliding a single coin toward him and standing up tall.

He retreated, smiling back at me, and wagging a finger like he was telling me off.

“Oh,” he chuckled, “oh you a clever one. I see you.”

I shrugged apologetically and turned away, slurping some of the broth as I walked and feeling like an idiot for not remembering to get a plastic fork to eat the noodles with.

Truth was, I’d been given a chance to be on something good for pretty much the first time ever, and I had no intention of screwing it up by shooting my mouth off for free food or attention.

I walked as I ate, tipping the cup up to try to hoover some of the noodles into my mouth, which served only to make me bump into someone carrying a heavy box coming the other way.

“Watch yourself, prick,” he snarled as he recovered and carried on.

“My bad,” I called after him, hearing the half-muttered response expressing the opinion that I was an asshole. I looked down, groaning out loud as I saw the dark patch on my shirt where the ramen broth had spilled on me. I dabbed at it, brushing away the chunks but I was sure it would make me smell like “chicken” for the rest of the day.

Yes, I just did air quotes in my head.

Reaching the divide to sector four, I hit the call button for an elevator as I tipped the cup up vertically to recover as much ramen as I could without a spork. I tipped a little more on myself as I did it, but I guessed the damage was already done by then. Besides, filling my stomach was a very necessary task.

The elevator arrived and I stepped inside, impressing the woman in there by hitting the single digit for level two when she was only going up a few levels.

As fate had already decided to make me look like a dick by covering me with not-chicken noodles, it chose to make me look like a stalker when the other elevator occupant got off on nine and Valentina stepped in. She froze, fixing me with a momentary look of horror, then recovered and stepped in to look at the keypad to check if I’d already keyed in level two. Seeing that I had, she seemed to relax a little but decided not to let our happenstance meeting pass without comment.

“You plan on drilling a hole through my bathroom wall, too?”

I laughed, probably too much at a bad joke to sound natural, and she doubled down on her look to make it clear she still thought I was creepy.

I’ve already mentioned she was hot, even if I couldn’t tell which way she was swinging on the psychobitch meter from one minute to the next, but wearing her own clothes sent her into another league entirely. It was always like that with women in the Ranger corps; you spent so long working alongside them, wearing the same drab uniform, that when you saw them wearing something that hugged their figures—their long-legged, toned, tight figures—guys tended to lose their shit.

I, on the other hand, seemed to only disappoint her further.

“We should discuss what we’re planning to wear if we have to stay in our own clothes,” she said, looking me up and down before glancing down the length of her own body. I saw it then. She wore black jeans and boots which had a little heel making her a half inch taller than me, a blue shirt, and a black jacket. Compared to me, she looked great, and that only made me feel more like I was way outside my comfort zone.

At least nobody will be looking at me when she’s wearing those jeans…

“Difference is,” she said with a tone that suggested she was leaning back towards being nice to me, “I make this look good.”

“Yeah you do,” I blurted out, managing to stop myself from actually clapping a hand to my mouth as soon as the words came out. She stared at me for a few seconds, right up until the point where I didn’t know if she was going to laugh or punch me in the throat, when the elevator shuddered to a stop on five and the door opened to let two guys inside.

We backed away to the corners of the elevator to let them have the middle and continue their conversation.

“Which is exactly my point,” one said to the other. He was the fatter of the two, and both seemed as though they weren’t exactly surviving on ramen. “Hard facts are, the income versus expenditure is more favorable the lower our establishments are situated.”

“So you’re saying we should abandon plans for the casino on three and build what? Illegal gambling dens in the lower levels?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” the other one said. “I’m saying if we delay the opening, slow down the process up top, and divert funding to just two more clubs, then we’ll be in the black when we do the grand opening. That way we won’t be gambling everything on a successful launch.”

“Delay how long?”

“A month or two?” the guy answered with a shrug that didn’t fill even me with confidence, and I had no skin in their particular game. That answer didn’t seem to bother the thinner of the two, who seemed to be coming around to the idea.

“After last night’s… incident… there’ll be more than a few people looking for a safer spot to enjoy themselves.”

“I know, right?”

I risked a glance at Valentina, who kept her eyes down but was so still she had to be listening to every word.

“And we have enough staff to make this happen?”

“Easily,” chubby said, “we only need to put a few key personnel in place, because the rest of the, er, positions are filled by off-the-books cash.”

“So, what you’re telling me is that we’re actually supporting the underprivileged workforce by offering supplemental employment and earning opportunities?”

Way to spin your bullshit, I thought.

The elevator stopped on two and I cleared my throat to let them know this was my stop. The fat one turned, looked me up and down ready to dismiss my presence, when his eyes stopped at my waist and bulged. I made no attempt to hide my weapon, but to stop him from panicking, I pulled back the edge of my jacket to fully expose the ramen broth patch and the star hidden beside it.

“Ranger,” I said in a low voice to explain why I was carrying an illegal firearm—illegal for anyone else at least—but it served only to drain the remainder of the color from his face.

“Officer, I… what I just said about…”

“Forget it,” Valentina said as she pushed past the two men frozen to the spot. “We’re not tax inspectors. Go about your business.” It was hard not to detect the loathing in her voice, but I was out of the elevator before fat and fatter could say another word.

“God bless capitalism,” I said as I caught up with her. She was walking fast like she was late for something, making me glance at my watch to show we had almost twenty minutes to make the meet. “Those guys, right?” I tried again, but still she didn’t answer and kept pumping her legs like the floor deserved everything it got.

“I was just sa—”

“Save it,” she snapped, her pace faltering before she stopped so suddenly, I almost bumped into her ass. She rounded on me, bringing our faces a little too close together. I could smell her shampoo.

“Assholes like that are what’s wrong with everything below ten,” she hissed, adding to her point by jabbing a finger into my chest. “We’re just cheap labor, cheap entertainment to them. We’re disposable.”

“You think there aren’t hookers and gambling dens up top?” I asked, trying to temper her argument with a little logic.

“Of course there are,” she said, resuming her walk. “Only up here, they’re called escorts and casinos. Up here the people in those lines of work are actual people, not just some freak show. How many hand jobs can you get up here from a girl with three tits or seven fingers?”

The mutant thing again. Her reaction to what Forge had said earlier was a red flag, but this was literally signposting it for me. My eyes involuntarily scanned her up and down as if I could see any disfigurement through her clothes. Luckily, she didn’t see me do that, because I guessed she’d have taken a swing at me if she had. Our arguing had attracted the attention of a pair of uniformed Rangers who were making a bad show of approaching us covertly. I’d never worked up above ten for anything more than a couple days, but the guys who lived and worked closer to the surface liked to keep things quiet. No rich asshole wanted to be strolling along, minding his own investment business, with two people raising their voices at each other and disturbing the peace.

“Heads up,” I said, cutting through her anger.

Her eyes danced across the crowd until she saw what I’d seen.

“Idiots,” she said, making a beeline for the nearest Ranger. Her hand went into her back pocket briefly, making me feel a little jealous of the hand, and came back out with her star which she waved at the guy. He peeled off, giving her a nod like he was cool after all.

Valentina slowed down after that, as if the encounter had drawn her out of whatever memories and thoughts were making her angry and dumped her right back in the present. We walked on in silence toward sector two, still at a fast clip, until we reached the white paint and clean glass of the medical center. Something was off about the place, and then I figured out what—two armed Rangers at the door, wearing their best level-two smiles and pretending everything was okay to the people who faltered at the sight of them guarding the entrance.

Rivera was right inside the entrance lobby waiting for us. A cursory glance at his watch told him we weren’t late. Stepping inside and adjusting my eyes to the harsh, white light, I saw that our new boss was also dressing down for the occasion.

The difference between me dressing down and a rich topsider—a prince of the elite, if rumors about his family were true—was that his clothes were so deliberately understated, he’d likely had them made for the occasion.

“You’re here,” he announced as if we didn’t know. “Good. Follow me.”

Valentina and I didn’t even exchange a glance as he turned on his heel, a clean boot sole squeaking on the polished surface, and walked purposefully towards a set of double doors that opened before he reached them.

“I had the bodies brought here,” Rivera said as soon as we were alone in the empty corridor. “At my own expense until the corps reimburses me, which I doubt it will, because the facilities and staff here are second to none.”

No shit. We’re lucky on thirteen if we have a qualified nurse to stick a rad shot in our butt cheeks when we need it.

“Doctor Lopez is a fine physician who has been my family’s personal doctor since I was a child. She’s begun the examinations already,” Rivera went on before stopping at a door and pressing a call button that flashed green until the door buzzed and clicked open.

“No Sergeant Forge?” Valentina asked before we stepped inside.

“The good sergeant is looking into something else for me,” was all he said before the doors opened to a butcher’s scene.

7

Medical Examination

“You’re late,” a woman in blue scrubs said without looking up from the gray-skinned body she was bent over.

Rivera checked his watch again. “We’re on time, actually.”

“On time is late. Early is on time,” the woman—Doctor Lopez?—said as she stood and tipped a pair of magnifying glasses up onto her head.

“So what’s late?” I asked, unable to get control of my mouth before it shit my thoughts out.

Her gaze switched from Rivera to me. “Late,” she said as her smile widened, “is pregnant or dead.”

“Always the optimist, Doctor,” Rivera said and resumed his parade rest posture. Valentina stood close but not next to him, her own version of his pose involving cocking one hip out as if she was leaning on something invisible. I was suddenly so self-conscious of my own appearance that I just stood there until my brain made my hands dig into my pockets.

“Not much to be optimistic about,” Lopez answered with a gesture to encompass the five bodies all covered in white sheets. She was probably older than she looked, with long, straight hair that was shiny enough to make her gray seem almost metallic. She was slim, but there was a slight stoop to her back, like she’d spent five years too many leaning over patients in beds.

“Anything at all?” Rivera asked, sounding a little worried and suddenly less confident than his usual privileged air suggested.

Lopez sighed and stepped to the farthest body down and pulled back the sheet. The blood had been washed away, probably at the same time the clothing had been removed, but I recognized the open-eyed look of shock and the clean slice across his neck.

“All of these people were killed in a dazzling display of in-depth anatomical knowledge. Male, thirty-six, former Zion Ranger according to ID records,” Lopez said without referring to any notes. She leaned over to point at the slash wound. “Cause of death, massive arterial hemorrhage through the carotid being cleanly severed. Poor bastard would’ve known pain and terror for about three seconds before he blacked out and died.”

She whipped the sheet back over the eyes, which made me relax a little, and stepped to the next one, uncovering the face as she had before.

“Similar story for this poor bastard. Forty years old, worked security. Jugular vein and carotid cut, but with the trachea punctured at the same time.” She mimed a forward stabbing motion at head height, just as I’d guessed it from the crime scene. “He’d have lived a little longer, maybe half a minute if he grabbed hard enough, but he couldn’t shout for help. Literally. Cause of death is acute blood loss, but he would’ve been pretty close to suffocation with the amount of blood in his lungs.”

“What can you say about the murder weapon?” Valentina asked, earning her a shocked but appreciating look from Rivera.

“Good question,” Lopez answered with a smirk, as if enjoying meeting another keen intellect. “By comparing these two wounds alone, I can tell you that first off, it was sharp as hell to do this. All that sinew and muscle in your neck doesn’t easily give way to a sharpened spoon, if you follow me. Secondly, it was at least four inches long and tapered to get wider the closer it got to the hilt. You know how I know that?”

It took me a second to see that she’d directed the question at me, and I stammered my answer.

“Oh, er, because the second guy’s wound was smaller the deeper it went in, but it didn’t go farther than four inches?”

“Two for two. You intentionally picking smart ones, Claude?”

Rivera inclined his head noncommittally, like he didn’t want us to know what he thought about us.

“You’re right,” Lopez said. She covered the corpse and moved on to what I guessed would be the third guard.

“Male, twenty-eight, system flooded with stims. Off-duty Ranger from sector seven in the lowers, worked private security as a side gig.”

Rivera seemed to hold back an opinion on that; his shifting body position gave him away. The rules on Rangers not taking additional employment were there for a reason, and even though the guy had died horribly, I could tell Rivera wanted to leave a permanent discipline entry on his record, all the same.

“Eight separate wounds.” Lopez uncovered him to display a body facedown on the bed and pointed a finger. “Smaller wounds, seeming like they weren’t designed to kill but distract, on th—”

“How do you know that?” Rivera interrupted.

Lopez sighed, making it clear she wasn’t a fan of questions until the lecture had ended, and turned to face him. “As these two have already figured out, the blade was sharp as a laser and at least four inches long. It was capable, as was the person holding it, of puncturing the chest cavity with ease, so the only conclusion I can draw from all these wounds is the wielder didn’t intend for the initial strikes to be fatal.”

“So his death was an accident?” Rivera asked.

“Unless you consider severing the spinal column between the fourth and fifth bones of the neck to be mere bad luck? No. The other strikes were—again, just my opinion—designed to disorientate and distract the victim and get his hands away from his neck and face.”

“How?” I asked, trying to encompass a lot of information into one word. I hardly even felt my headache any longer as my interest soared through her analysis.

“Axillary ganglion, sciatic and gluteal clusters… all received multiple short blows with, I assume, the same weapon, but none were fatal.” She bent to heave the body up onto its side. “See the damage to the nose? I don’t think that was caused by a fall. See how the nose is twisted? I think your killer went for the infra-orbital nerve to debilitate and disorientate him.” Groaning, she lowered the body again. “Threw in a few more stabs, which would’ve hurt like fire and confused him even more—maybe even forced his hands down away from the attack on his face—and that allowed for the stab to the solar plexus.”

“So…” Rivera said uncertainly, “the stab through the neck didn’t kill him?”

“Are you even paying attention, Claude?” Lopez chided him, turning to Valentina. “You want to tell him?”

“Sir,” she said, then paused, looking at me in a way I didn’t particularly like, and gestured for me to turn around so she could demonstrate. She stood behind me and reached her left hand around so that it pushed upwards under my nose and forced my head backwards, painfully.

A “Gnph,” came out of my mouth which was embarrassing.

“Disorientate,” she explained before she jabbed a pen multiple times into my lower back, the bottom of my ribs and my thigh, recreating where the stab wounds on the victim were. Again, she poked a little too hard for my liking before reaching around to jab the pen into my abdominal muscles. I reacted naturally and bent at the waist as her left hand released my nose.

“The solar plexus shot would’ve made him bend forward, involuntarily. He—”

“Ah yes,” Rivera cut in, “I understand. That makes the killer right-handed?”

“Very good,” Lopez told him. “Looks like you were paying attention.”

“Seemed less professional when he was face down, covered in blood,” I said, shooting a sour look at Valentina who pointedly wiped her left hand on the leg of her jeans.

“I saw the report,” Lopez answered. “Hard to see how precise the attack was when faced with the scene. That’s why I prefer medicine over law enforcement.”

“And the senator?” Rivera asked, darkening the mood in the room even further.

“Yes,” Lopez said with a resigned sigh. “The senator. Stab wounds to the abdomen, again too shallow to be fatal. Long cuts to parts of the body with no medical vulnerability as such. Given that dear Senator Byers’s head was removed, and for the fact that I can find no other wound capable of causing his death, I can say with a degree of certainty that his throat was cut, and the little darling just carried on going. Multiple cuts, blade score marks on the bones of the cervical spine. It was hacked off with a short-bladed weapon, as were the hands.”

“The knives…” Rivera started, hearing the waver in his voice and coughing to reset. “The knives in his back. Are they the murder weapon?”

“Not conclusive,” Lopez told him, patting her hand thoughtfully on the sheet still covering Byers as if she was considering how necessary it was to display his gruesome injuries. “Possibly, yes, most likely no.”

“So the killer, potentially killers, took out three trained guards very fast with, what was it you called it? Complex anatomical knowledge?”

“Close enough.”

“And butchered the senator after inflicting nonfatal injuries designed to cause pain, which would indicate that he was tortured for information?”

Lopez nodded slowly.

“We’re forgetting one thing,” Valentina said, a hint of her earlier anger creeping back into her words. She pointed at the fifth body under a sheet. “Her.”

“I thought we’d surmised that we needed to focus on the main victim and not the, what did we call it? The collateral?” Rivera asked.

Valentina said nothing but her nostrils flared twice, a warning not to be within arm’s reach.

“Only one issue with that,” Lopez said, breaking the deadlock.

“What’s that?” Rivera asked.

“She’s not from here.”

“Of course not,” Rivera said with a surprised chuckle to his voice, “she was working as an unlicensed prostitute on level eighte—”

“No,” Lopez said, cutting him off. “She’s not from Zion City.”

8

Political Pressure

The deputy director waved an aide out of her office without breaking eye contact with Rivera. He may have been up-and-coming, and well connected through family, but he’d just uttered words that the deputy director did not enjoy hearing, so his future political standing stood for precisely nothing.

I was a little surprised Valentina and I hadn’t been banished, and decided to stand very still at parade rest until my presence was noticed and I could gratefully flee the office with a hasty salute.

I’d met the deputy director before, that morning in fact, even though it felt like days ago, but something about seeing this dangerous animal in its own environment made it all worse.

“You want to reconsider what you just said, Junior Commander?” she asked, dry ice flowing off every word.

“Sorry, Deputy Director,” Rivera went on, “but the facts speak for themselves in this matter.”

She stood and leaned over her desk angrily.

“The facts you’ve presented to me are a collection of circumstantial observations and more than one leap to a conclusion that you don’t have verifiable evidence to prove. What you have, Junior Commander, is a theory. It’s a theory with more holes than… than…” Her eyes fixed on me and her finger shot up to make a direct accusation. “Than his socks!”

I opened my mouth but shut it quickly, remembering that I’d already unintentionally exposed myself to the most senior Ranger in all of Zion City that morning and still had a job. I still had my balls too, which I considered a personal bonus.

“Deputy Director, if I ma—”

“You may not, Rivera,” she said, regaining her composure and sitting down. The damage was already done, because her face had gone so red with the effort of shouting at him that her cheeks were a mess of white blotches among the crimson. “I thank you for the update, but I’ll leave you with a little advice: tread carefully. You may have connections, but you’re on the trail of, from what you’re telling me, a very accomplished killer. I wouldn’t make too much noise about being the great hunter if I were you. Dismissed.”

Did she just threaten him? I asked myself, before I woke up in time to snap to attention and follow my officer out of the room. Being back at central command and having to flank Rivera updating the boss, and then having to stand there and listen to him throw out a wild theory about how the senator had a thing for prostitutes and was a sexual deviant, and how the murder was potentially endorsed by a political opponent, left me puckering my ass so tight that it was still clenched.

“Sir,” I said, hoping the familiarity he’d shown us lowly low-level Rangers would be a door that swung both ways. “May I say something?”

“Not here,” Rivera said, walking fast and wearing his best confident smile as he strode through the building like he hadn’t just been chewed up and shit out. I said nothing, neither did Valentina, until we walked past his secretary and the door to his office closed.

“Goddamned bureaucrats!” he exploded, kicking a metal vase across the floor where it spewed out the plant it had held and spun to a gentle stop against a wall. “Why can’t they see the truth?”

Valentina pretended not to have heard, so I guessed it was up to me to be the one to pretend I didn’t know what a rhetorical question was.

“Well?” Rivera demanded.

Okay, not a rhetorical question.

“Perhaps, sir…” I started, seeing him freeze and stare at me like he was impatient to hear what I had to say. “Perhaps it would be best to limit our updates to senior command to the things we know?”

“Such as?” he snapped, angry at the world and focusing that all on me. I shot a pleading look to Valentina, who made it impossible for me to catch her eye.

Thanks for the backup, partner.

“Sir, my sergeant on my sector, he likes to do what we call micromanage. He wants to know every step of what each of us is doing with every case we catch, only if you did that, you’d spend half of every shift explaining what you wanted to do instead of—”

“Yes, yes,” Rivera interrupted, “I get the point. So what are you saying?”

“What he’s trying to say, Commander, is that you should keep your reports brief. For example, we know how many bodies we have, we know how they died, we have a feasible theory on the number and skill set of the suspects. Everything else is what we’d call—”

“Ongoing enquiries,” I interrupted, giving her a taste of her own medicine for hanging me out to dry. “Digital surveillance, historical checks, associates, witness interviews, all of that stuff is ongoing enquiries,” I explained with a knowing smile.

“I see,” Rivera answered, sitting down behind his desk. “So you’re telling me that you intentionally keep relevant facts out of your reports to your supervising officers to save yourself the time of having to explain it?”

“Only so we have the time to actually get out there and follow those leads, Commander.”

“Speaking of which,” Rivera said as he glanced at his watch and checked the time against the clock on the wall of his office, “we have an appointment with Mrs. Byers.”

He stood, all fluster and frustration gone from his appearance as he strode back out of his office.

“Has Sergeant Forge left word?” he asked his secretary as he breezed past.

“No, sir,” she replied smoothly.

“Very well, you know where we’ll be.”

And with that he was gone, leaving us scurrying along behind him like he was on stims.

* * *

“I am so terribly, deeply sorry for your loss,” Rivera said. He was perched on a stiff sofa in the massive lobby of the senator’s residence—the kind of furniture that didn’t get sat on but was only there for show. We watched from a polite distance, our heads bowed out of respect.

Mrs. Byers, at least fifteen years her late husband’s junior and around my own age, was pretty. Pretty in the way she liked to wear dresses, even the form-fitting black mourning one she wore now. Pretty like the kind of well-mannered rich girl you’d have to take to fancy eateries five nights a week. The kind of girl your parents wished you’d find and settle down with.

“Thank you, Commander,” she said, her hand breaking away from his comforting clasp and rubbing his thigh gently.

I saw it but managed to keep my head down. That she was getting herself a feel of the commander’s legs wasn’t the funny thing. The fact that his eyes went wide, like he’d just jacked twice the dose of whizz recommended for his weight, almost made me lose my shit right there. I could see the struggle on his face, the way he colored up and didn’t know whether to try to ignore the fact that he was currently being molested without his consent or to politely break the contact.

“Erm, erm,” he gasped, dragging a coughing chuckle from Valentina, who’d obviously seen the discomfort he was in and was enjoying it as much as I was.

“It’s just so terrible,” Mrs. Byers sobbed—sobbed with dry eyes, who the hell does that?—and doubled down on her groping by faking more tears and dropping her head pitifully into his lap.

I nearly shit my pants when I saw Rivera’s face. His eyes literally pleaded with me to help him, to save him. His eyebrows had gone up so high they must’ve been a part of his perfectly trimmed hair.

“Sir,” I announced in a loud, confident voice as I stepped up. “Would you like us to begin?”

“Begin?” she asked, sitting up out of his lap with still-perfect eye makeup in place. “Begin what?”

Rivera, grateful for the interruption, stood and drew himself up formally. “It’s all standard procedure, ma’am,” he lied convincingly. “When someone of… of such high standing is tragically taken from us, we must do our due diligence and ensure that no threats or other… surprises, have been left undiscovered.”

She fake-sobbed again and threw her arms around his neck, forcing him to hold her tightly to stop her from falling. She was, without doubt, the worst actress I’d ever seen, and I’d watched a play they put on years ago where the people were cats. Swear to God, I hadn’t slept properly since then.

“Ranger Valentina,” Rivera said, “a hand, please?”

Valentina paused long enough to shoot me a death stare for no good reason, before trotting over to save the junior commander from being accosted.

Mrs. Byers regained herself remarkably fast when Valentina helped her back to the sofa, after letting out a little yelp when her bony ass bounced back up from the cushions.

“Valentina here will take your statement,” Rivera said, stepping back with an exaggerated movement so he was outside of her fighting arc. He walked towards me wearing a look that said he wanted to break into a run but was just too well raised to do it.

I turned and walked with him, heading for the senator’s study before he slowed down out of sight of the widow and deflated.

“I… I’m sorry you had to see that, Quinn,” he said, making my face twitch as I forced the smile off my mouth.

“Grieving women, sir,” I said dutifully, “they react in very different ways. Never can predict how it’s going to go down…”

He fixed me with a look, waiting to see if I could keep my face straight long enough for him to accept it. Somehow, and I have no idea how, I did.

“What are we looking for, sir?” I asked, knowing how to toss an office better than most but wanting to see if he knew what we were looking for.

“Diary, appointments book, any letters that don’t look official… anything linking him to business below level ten that isn’t directly linked to the senate or family interests.”

“And what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“The family business, sir. What is it?”

“Oh,” Rivera answered, unsure why I didn’t know and probably re-running his memory to see if he’d explained it in a briefing. “His family is in the entertainment business. Some of the more prestigious establishments, as you might imagine.”

“Roger that. So, err,” I looked around before lowering my voice and leaning closer to him. “If she’s that good-looking and clearly pretty horny, why’s he down in the bilges tapping hoo—” I stopped as his face went cold.

“Ranger,” he hissed. “Remember yourself and remember where you are.”

I swallowed, annoyed at myself for thinking the divide between us was just rank.

“Sorry, sir.”

As far as the official story went, even if the rumor was all over the lower levels like that time we had an outbreak of scabies, the senator and his detail were attacked when they were surveying a regeneration project for the most poverty-stricken areas of Zion. The fact that he was there adding to the poverty by paying pennies on the silver to what the “escorts” up top were charging wasn’t to be mentioned. It’d come out eventually, these things always did, but without an official public report saying it was what it was. History was written by the people with the power and the silvers.

“I… I suspect she might have known,” Rivera said quietly as he began methodically opening the first book on the top shelf on one wall and leafing through each page individually.

I stopped what I was doing. “What makes you say that, Commander?”

“Because she was basically looking for her great protector to become her next husband before the scandal hits. It’s… it’s just how things are… up here.”

And there it was. He needed us to navigate the lower levels for him just as much as we needed him to explain how these weirdos with their tanned skin and money saw the world. She was looking to attach herself to the nearest rich guy with power and influence as soon as she could, even if that meant jerking him off in front of two of his people, so she wasn’t left behind when the vultures descended.

“She got money of her own? Or her family?”

“No,” Rivera muttered after checking over his shoulder to make sure they couldn’t be overheard. “That’s the thing. I mean, her family has some wealth, but her commodity to trade is her looks.”

“How so, sir?”

“Think about it.” He placed a book back carefully and selected another. “What does she stand to gain by having him killed?”

“You saying she didn’t do it herself?”

“Quinn,” he said with an air of pity, “I doubt that woman has ever been below level three.”

“Fair assessment, sir. So… nothing, if she doesn’t have his money?”

“Exactly,” Rivera said as he swapped books again. “His family won’t pay her or keep her, this place is owned by the senate, and she has no children to demand all-o-money for. She’s riding on her looks alone and she’s desperate. Chances are she did know he was… about his infidelity, but what did she have to threaten him with?”

“Either way,” I said, “we need to know everyone she’s spoken to for the last month and what money she has hidden away.”

“Already in hand.” Rivera picked up another book. He was being methodical, thorough, clinical. He was doing it just how I’d been taught to do it eight years ago in the academy. I, however, had learned a lot more since I left my training than I would’ve done if I were still there.

I went to his desk, a beautiful thing of dark wood and ornate little metal handles, and pulled out the drawers all the way. Tapping the bottom of each drawer to make sure my finger went all the way down in case there was a false bottom, I was reminded about the doctor explaining about how far the knife went into the neck of the senator’s guy.

“What’s your theory on motive, Quinn?” he asked, surprising me.

“It’s part of an ongoing enquiry, Commander,” I assured him with a straight face.

He said nothing after answering me with the annoyed huff of laughter I expected, just concentrated on his systematic search of the bookshelf while I went straight for the obvious spots to hide something.

“I had a dog,” Rivera said slowly, making me turn around to face him like he’d gone insane and suddenly lacked the ability to internalize his thoughts. “And its name was Bingo!”

“Er, what?”

“Here,” he said, ignoring my ignorance and carefully picking up a thin piece of paper with gloved fingertips before holding it out towards me. “What do you make of that?”

“I make it a receipt,” I said, squinting to make out what and how much for.

“It’s a bill of sale,” Rivera said. “A handwritten one.”

I looked closer, trying to make out the scribbled words.

“Oh, shit!” I said.

“Exactly. I think we need to get back down to the lowers and have a talk in person with the owner.” He slipped the piece of paper into a clear bag and pocketed it, heading for the door to the study.

“Sir,” I said, not wanting to believe I had to point out the obvious.

“Quinn?”

“You know what I learned about searching after I left training?”

His face twitched as he controlled himself from slapping me down, as if he remembered why he brought me and Valentina up for the job.

“What’s that?”

“You see, sir,” I explained, careful not sound patronizing, “when you’re turning someone over for contraband and you find a single bag of rock salts in his pocket, do you detain him for that right away?”

“I’d hope, Ranger, that as soon as you’d discovered evidence of contraband after correctly identifying yourself and explaining your probable cause, you’d read them their rights immediately on discovering suspected illegal substances.”

Quoting the manual, I thought, trying not to roll my eyes at the guy I worked for and the textbook world he existed in.

“Sure, but do you stop searching when you’ve found the easy stuff?”

“Correct procedure wou—”

“I’m not talking about correct procedure, sir,” I interrupted gently, “I’m talking about the real world. You see, people leave the obvious things on display, so they go up for a misdemeanor…”

His facial expression changed as what I was saying dawned on him. He turned back and continued searching until we found what was actually hidden.

9

Collateral

“Find anything good?” Valentina asked, still clearly pissed at having to babysit the vapid harpy while the boys got to do the fun job.

“Not here,” Rivera reminded us again. He was leading the way fast back to the medical center on two after saying a hurried goodbye to the Widow Byers, having properly kept a safe distance with at least one person in between her and himself.

We retraced our steps back to the room with the five bodies but had to wait for Doctor Lopez, who was with a paying patient. Rivera went to an empty section of the steel counter and laid out the few items we’d taken from the senator’s study, all in fresh bags.

“Handwritten bill of sale,” Rivera explained. “The writing is awful, as is the spelling, but it appears to be a record of a cash purchase. A contract, paid in full. Up front, if you like.”

“What for?” Valentina asked.

Rivera didn’t answer but moved on to the next item, which had her attention from the moment it clanged onto the counter.

“Firearm, unlicensed, but it’s not uncommon for the more affluent families to possess such things for protection, especially those who frequent the lower levels.”

“How is that legal?” Valentina asked, betraying a little naivety.

“It isn’t, but if they used it and the Zion Rangers attended, you think the senior officer wouldn’t make sure these things never became evidence?”

“You’re talking about payoffs, right?” I asked, having heard a dozen stories about it but always hearing them thirdhand like, “Oh I used to work with a guy on four/twelve who said his lieutenant made the jump after he detained a guy who never went into the system. The next week he was wearing an officer’s uniform and blah, blah…” I always assumed it was bullshit because I was never lucky enough to bag a rich perp in my section whose family would pay me a few year’s salary to look the other way. Not that I really knew what I’d do if that actually happened.

I picked up the weapon still in the bag, turning it around as I held it up to the light to examine it.

“It’s a little like ours,” I said, thinking out loud. “Only… little.”

“Same composition and construction,” Rivera answered as he drew his own sidearm and held it up for comparison. “But this one is compact, likely designed to be carried covertly.”

“So, dumb question: why wasn’t he carrying it when he was killed?”

“I assume he assumed he was safe with three guards all carrying batons,” Rivera answered with a shrug.

“And this?” Valentina said, tapping her finger on the final bag. “The senator was a rock-hopper?” The small bag of rock salts, a refined drug which we’d been chasing the supply of for as long as I could remember.

“It appears so,” Rivera said. “More people than you might realize use it recreationally. It’s only when people use it too much that it overtakes their very existence.”

“And when you can’t afford it, you turn to crime and live in the pipes,” I added, sharing my own experience of those addicted to the sharp shards of powder.

“So, what’s the contract?” Valentina asked.

“That’s what we need to ask her,” Rivera said, pointing to the last body under a sheet.

* * *

“I hate to break it to you,” Doctor Lopez said, “but you can’t interrogate a dead body.”

“I can’t,” Rivera said, “but you can.”

Lopez stared at him, then us in turn, then back at Rivera.

“Your forensic pathology theories again?” she asked, sounding bored, as though they’d been through it more than once already.

“I need to know if she was a drug addict, for one. Also, it would help if we knew her name.”

“Her blood will tell me the answer to the first question, if you give me a couple hours, but the second one is all on you.”

He stood tall, nodding to the doctor, and marching out of the medical center with us hot on his heels. He said nothing, heading straight past the nearest elevators towards the next sector, still on level two.

“I’m hoping Sergeant Forge is still down there,” he said when the foot traffic had thinned out. “I’m starting to think there’s more to this than we first thought.”

He stopped at the elevator on sector seven, politely asking the two people waiting to get another, apologizing with all the charm his topside upbringing afforded him and stating official Ranger corps business. He used the override function to make our downward journey an express one and allowed himself to deflate into temporary relaxation when the general public couldn’t see him. He sighed as if tired and turned to us. The elevator clunked as it passed the levels heading for eighteen.

“I’ve left orders with Forge for everyone identified as being in the area last night to be detained and secured for interrogation. I have another team doing that, so we don’t need to worry, but it’s the establishment owner I want to focus on.”

“What do we know about them?” Valentina asked.

“Nothing, but we’re about to find out.”

“How do we want to play it?” I asked, not sure if the privileged topsider approach could scare a level eighteen cathouse madam.

“Let’s take it as it comes, shall we?” Rivera said with a confident smirk I didn’t truly believe.

The elevator carried on clunking down, the digital readout giving rolling progress reports as we went until Valentina broke the silence.

“May I ask a question, sir?”

“Fire away,” Rivera said.

“Why us?”

“Why you two specifically out of the group I took to the crime scene? Simple. The others didn’t know their backsides from their belt buckles.”

Our displays that morning made that part believable, but I knew what she was getting at.

“Okay, but why us?”

“How many Rangers does the corps have?” he asked.

I ran the numbers in my head. Zion City held about a hundred, maybe a hundred and ten thousand people, and maybe half of those lived on the lower levels, which were never originally designed to act as living quarters. There were about two hundred Rangers out of that. Now I thought about it, that number seemed pitifully few.

“Two fifty?” Valentina guessed.

“A little under three hundred,” Rivera said, “with the same number in support staff. Out of that three hundred, how many do you think were on their days off?”

The shift pattern for the sectors flickered through my head, telling me to take a fifth of the total number.

“Almost sixty,” Valentina answered before I had to take my boots and socks off to count.

“Fifty-one to be exact,” Rivera said. “Out of those you can discount anyone working above ten for obvious reasons. Take off those who aren’t up to date with firearms qualifications, and you’re left with about fifteen. From that fifteen, I picked the first and last names with a few others taken from the list at random intervals because I didn’t have time to handpick my team as I would’ve liked.”

“Hence the field interview,” I said.

“Precisely, and that left me with the first and last people on that alphabetical list. Do you believe in fate?”

I pondered that for the next five seconds before the elevator banged to a stop and the doors juddered open. The thick, dank quality of the air filled me with part revulsion and part comfort as I was reminded of home. An overweight Ranger leaning against the wall, reading something, shot upright and threw a hasty salute as Rivera stepped off the elevator.

Rivera walked past him, ignoring him because he knew what he’d done wrong and the officer didn’t see any value in spending his time reprimanding the man.

I glanced back at him, seeing the Ranger’s color return to his face in the dim light. He shot an envious look at me. But no—it wasn’t at me. Valentina threw up rude gestures with both hands, making me realize this was the guy who’d tried to give her shit that morning.

Stuck on corridor guard all day, I thought. That’s usually my luck.

Forge met us at the part where the scene tape blocked the way, and filled us in.

“This place is shut down,” he said gruffly. “Only people still in situ are three of the hookers—the only mutie ones, in case they’d seen the Senator another time—and the old bitch in charge.”

“Very good, Sergeant,” Rivera said. “I believe we’ll start with the proprietor.”

* * *

“Maaaan,” the toothless old woman chuckled as we walked into the room she was sitting in, “you so topside, you shiny. Me can smell the clean on you, bruddah.”

“Madam,” Rivera said in his formal voice, “my name is Commander Claude Rivera. My colleagues are Sergea—”

“Oh, me know old Forgey hyah,” she chuckled again, treating us all to a grin of mostly gums, “’im and me go waaay back, don’t we now?”

“Shut your dick storage, Marcia,” Forge said without any real venom. “Stop stirring the shit and listen up.” He turned to face our officer and explained. “This old lizard used to run a shop in sector five before I got promoted. Every damned shift, there was trouble around her, and nothing ever stuck.”

Marcia turned to treat Rivera to the smile and gestured for him to continue.

“As I said, my name is Commander Rivera, and these are Rangers Quinn and Valentina.”

Marcia knowingly glanced first at the rank insignia on Rivera’s collar, then at Valentina, looking her up and down as if assessing how much to offer her to drop the uniform and work a different gig, before finally resting on me. Her wet tongue shot out and licked her fleshy lips.

Out of everything I’d seen that day, since waking up with a bitch of a hangover to find a representative of God himself in my shitty apartment, to seeing dismembered bodies, that one single action freaked me out the most. I couldn’t help it. I gave in to the shudder rippling down my spine.

She let out another dirty chuckle.

“Tell me what an old woman can be doin’ for you, big boss man?”

“We’d like to talk about last night,” Rivera said, wasting his breath. “Specifically, I want to know everything about your girl who was killed.”

“Really? You don’t want to know ’ow much dem other girls ’ere charge? You want me sort you biiig discount, yeah?” Her eyebrows waggled and she licked her lips again.

Then Rivera did something I didn’t expect. In fact, if I had to guess on what he’d do next, what he did would come so far down the list, I’d probably come up with something to do with him riding a dragon first.

He smiled, pacing around the room with his hands behind his back, stopping to look at the fish tank behind the desk Marcia occupied during work hours. He picked up an ornament, weighing it in his hand as if appreciating its value.

His face contorted in rage as his body exploded in movement, hurling the ornament hard at the glass and smashing it. Water and fish flooded the old woman and her carpet.

“You piece of shit!” he roared. “You’ll tell me what I want to know, or you’re finished. I won’t even arrest you, I’ll just kick you out into the wastes and never lose a second of sleep over it.” He looked around to find something else heavy to throw and found nothing, so he drew his sidearm and swung as if to bludgeon her with it.

Valentina screamed, throwing herself over the wide-eyed madam, and shrieked something I didn’t hear in my rush to do something.

I reacted, not consciously deciding what to do but just jumping in like I had so many times before. I ducked under Rivera’s gun hand, throwing my right arm over his shoulder as my hip checked his advance and I tipped his bodyweight backwards.

“Don’t do it, sir!” I yelled, forcing him back. He fought me like a madman, slipping out of my grip and forcing me to get behind him and pin his arms to his chest, all the while shouting for him to come to his senses. He fought free again, turning the gun around like he was going to shoot a witness for giving him shit. I knocked the gun out of his hand by chopping my own down onto his wrist, deciding on a cellular level that I’d played nice enough. No way, no fucking way, was I going to lose my job for some asshole officer who couldn’t handle a little sass.

I hammered my fist into his collarbone like I was banging on a door during a raid, following it up with a knee up to his gut, which folded him in half. I grabbed the wrist on the arm he’d been holding the gun with and wrapped it around his neck to drag him gasping from the room.

“What the fuck?” I asked as I let him go against the wall and took a stance with my right hand on my gun and my left held out in a warning to stay the fuck still.

And the asshole smiled at me.

His breath came in gasps, but in between the labored breaths came small laughs. He waved his hands at me, making me as confused as I was scared, as I realized I’d just beat on a rich officer with connections somewhere up in the clouds compared to me.

The fat guy Valentina liked to piss off came wobbling down the corridor and stopped as he realized he had no idea what to do.

“Fuck off!” I said, pointing at his face. He glanced at me and then Rivera, who straightened up and waved him away.

“Relax, Quinn,” he said, rubbing his wrist and standing upright in obvious pain. “Damn, I chose well with you!”

I relaxed, dropping the defensive posture and feeling a wave of hot anger rise.

“Sir, respectfully, what in the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

“Like I said, Quinn, relax. Valentina’s probably getting everything we need right now, and she won’t even have to try that hard.”

As if on cue, Forge walked towards us from the room and gave a smirking nod to Rivera as he handed the officer his weapon back.

“You…” I said as I backed off and breathed hard, unable to believe I still had a job after what I’d just done. Hell, it was hard to believe I wasn’t wearing a set of plastic zip ties around my wrists after what I’d just done.

“You… played me?” I asked, anger rising in my chest as my skin started to tingle and my face flushed hot.

Rivera straightened himself again with a slight grimace, no doubt feeling the immediate effects of me half kicking his ass and resumed his privileged officer-like aura once more. “Ranger,” he said, talking down to me with that upper-level sneer they seemed to be born with, “to misinform you regarding the tactical approach to questioning was a necessary ruse. You, you’ll be pleased to hear, reacted perfectly and just as I had anticipated. There was a reason I chose you instead of Valentina to act in this capacity, and you didn’t let me down. Well done.”

Good dog, I thought sourly, there’s a good boy. Have a fuckin’ treat.

I could feel my face contorting with anger before his words sunk in and curiosity became more important.

“Wait, why not choose Valentina?”

“Because, Quinn, I rather suspect she would’ve held the old crone so I could bash her skull in.”

10

Singing Like a Canary

Valentina

When Rivera told me what he was planning to do, I admit I was a little excited. Then I was a little pissed off that he didn’t choose me to stop him. Why couldn’t it be my turn to get the free pass to knock a rich officer on his ass and call it my duty? Then I realized it was probably because he didn’t want a girl to own him.

Fair enough.

Forge knew, obviously, because he was so far up Rivera’s ass I guessed he had to sleep facedown so the sergeant’s boots didn’t get in the way. Shit, he was so far up there, he knew what the guy’s food tasted like before it got digested.

When he launched for her though, much sooner than I thought he would, even though I knew it was faked, my body reacted like it always did. Adrenaline burst into my system like a stim, making my skin hot and my senses sharper than at any other time. I felt that coldness drop in my stomach, which my brain told me was the blood being diverted through a series of blood vessels tightening and forcing it back to my main organs so I could power up my muscles for the fight. I knew all of this, and I knew it wasn’t real, but I felt the kick of the hormones anyway and I reacted.

I hadn’t planned to do it like that. My embarrassment causing my cheeks to flush red was easily blamed on the shock, but when he went to do the old bitch in, I threw myself over her, screaming for him to stop and pleading with my hands stretched out and my back pressing the sack of old leather I was protecting into the wall behind me.

I froze, pinning her there, as I watched Quinn step in.

I have to admit, the little prick surprised me as much as I’d surprised myself. He checked Rivera’s advance like a veteran Ranger who’d been in the middle of a hundred drunken brawls between water treatment workers and recyclers and never had his nose broken. I guess I mistook his good—well, moderately decent—looks for him being young and new, but I was clearly wrong about that. Rivera went down quicker than the working girls when someone tossed them a silver, and Quinn dragged him from the room so fast that the old bitch was still screaming before she realized they were gone.

I swallowed my pride, which was harder than I thought because I’d embarrassed myself for protecting her, and put on my game face.

“Oh my God, are you okay? I’m so, so sorry! I promise he won’t be allowed to come near you again, right, Sarge?” I asked, turning my doe-eyed look on Forge, who looked like I’d just offered him something off the menu even he wasn’t down for.

“Sure,” he grumbled. “Ma’am, on behalf of the Ranger Corps I extend my apologi—”

“Save it, pig,” she snarled. “Me always good to you! Me let you see the girls witho—”

“That’s enough,” Forge snapped, silencing her again. “I’ll go see to the Commander,” he told Valentina. “You keep her here until I can get another officer to question her.”

With that, he left the room, stooping to retrieve the dropped sidearm, and slammed the door behind him. I shushed her because she’d started crying—more out of anger than genuine fear, it seemed—and told her again how sorry I was.

“You tink dem good but dem all bad, y’know?” she said, sniffing and cuffing away the few tears she’d shed. “Dem politicians, pigs, all same as each other.”

“Like that senator,” I scoffed, hoping that the woman-to-woman approach might open a door. I didn’t ask it like a question but said it like a statement. Knowingly. Like I was just another young woman growing up in Zion, stuck working under powerful men who treated us like shit, even if her definition of “under” was a little different from mine.

“Yeah, ’im and all dem other.”

“He came here a lot, didn’t he? With his guards too.”

“Every week,” the madam admitted, her eyes focused in the distance on nothing. “Regular as clockwork. Me tell dem, ‘you want de same girl at de same time. You needs pay me so’s I keep her free,’ y’know?”

I nodded, rolling my eyes, like I knew just what it was to run a whorehouse on eighteen.

“’Im say,” she stopped to laugh her toothless cackle, “‘I’m need a receipt!’ Y’ever hear o’anyting like dat?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Well, me give ’im ’is receipt. Me sell dat senator ’im ‘room hire’ like ’im say he want.”

“And the same girl every time, right? The one who went and got herself killed?”

“She no loss to me,” the madam said sourly. “Pay for a room outright, no cut, and she done never take customer ’less she want see dem, y’know? ’Er tink dis place an ’otel.”

“So… she wasn’t one of your girls?”

“Pfft! ’Er? No, she what she call ’ersel’ a freelancer.”

“Was she here for long? What was she called?” I asked, knowing instantly that I’d pushed too hard and burst whatever bubble had been created around her.

“Y’awfully curious all’a sudden,” she accused me. “What dis to you, eh?”

“I just want to catch the fucker who kills girls,” I said, my own eyes seeing her coldness and raising her a flint edge. She bought it.

“Girls?” she asked, her interest piqued. I’d misspoken but continued with the mistake to make it a lie and get the information I needed.

“I can’t say,” I told her in a hushed voice, “but I need more to go on if I can convince these self-important pricks to catch them.”

She bought it again.

“She call ’ersel Diana. Turn up ’ere two month ago. Pay in cash, y’know?”

“Is there anything else you knew about her? Did she leave anything we didn’t find in the room?”

She hesitated, pondering whether to give away something valuable no doubt, but I didn’t expect it to be something of physical, tangible value.

“’Ere,” she said, standing and walking to her usual perch as her shoes crunched over broken glass and wet rug. “Me say me want security deposit, y’know? More’n just silvers. She give me dis.”

She tossed me something. I caught it as it spun through the air, feeling the solidity and weight of it in my palm as I turned my hand over and opened it up. A large coin. It was like our own silvers only thicker, heavier, and it shone like a shaft of sunlight in my hand. I examined it closer, seeing it sparkle in my hand.

It was gold, my memory told me that much, and it was stamped with the image of a woman wearing a crest on her head over two intersecting roads. I quickly slipped it into my pocket as she gasped.

“Ah! Dat belong to me, y’can’t take dat!”

“Thank you for your time,” I said, straightening. She didn’t know what she’d been given, but I thought I did. I left the room, seeing a very red-faced Quinn standing in the corridor under the baleful stare of Forge. Rivera, smiling in spite of the pain he must have endured after Quinn put him down like a diseased animal, stepped up to block my path.

“What did you get?” he demanded.

“Not here,” I told him, repeating his own words back to him before adding, “sir,” and walking for the elevator to take us back towards fresh air.

11

Re-Evaluation

Quinn

“Sir,” I said as soon as we walked into Rivera’s office and the door closed behind us, “firstly, I wa—”

“It’s quite alright, Quinn,” he said with that dismissive little wave he used too often for me to like the asshole. “As I explained down on eighteen, it was a necess—”

“No, sir,” I interrupted, “I was going to say that firstly, what you did down there was unacceptable.”

He stared at me expectantly, saying nothing as the room filled up with heavy silence.

“And secondly?” he said after I’d failed to finish my sentence. I didn’t really have a “secondly” when I started talking so I made one up on the fly.

“And… secondly… if you want me to be a part of some… some ruse in the future, just tell me the plan first. Sir.”

Rivera nodded his head in a tiny bow with his eyes closed like he was accepting responsibility.

“I apologize, Quinn,” he said in a tone that still made me think he thought it was my fault for overreacting. “I was recreating an old law enforcement method utilized in the twentieth century known as ‘good cop, bad cop.’”

“… What?”

He gave me his trademark hand wave again, making me unsure if I was supposed to take away his empty coffee cup or just stop talking.

“Valentina, your report,” he instructed. Beside me, I felt her stiffen as if coming to attention before she stepped forward and spoke.

“Well, it worked,” she started, to state the obvious.

“And what did you learn, Ranger?” Forge growled.

Valentina sighed. “Arrived roughly two months ago, called herself Diana. Rented a room outright but didn’t work for the brothel. The senator visited regularly and paid the madam a fee for ‘room hire,’ which I’m guessing links with the receipt we found.”

Rivera nodded, watching her intently as she spoke.

“Paid in cash, but the madam wanted something as a security deposit.” Her hand slipped into her pocket. “She gave her something which she thought was money, but it isn’t.”

She rested something on Rivera’s desk that dropped with a heavy thud.

Nobody said anything at first. We all just stared at it until Forge asked, “Is it gold?”

“Yes,” Valentina said, “but I don’t think it’s a coin.”

Rivera picked it up and held it close to his eyes as he ran his thumb over the image embossed on the surface.

“Diana, you say?” he asked.

“That’s what she said.”

Rivera hmm’d and slipped the not-coin-thing into his pocket before I got a better look at it. “Go get some food,” he ordered to dismiss us. “Meet back here in one hour.”

“Where are you going, sir?” Forge asked, sounding concerned, as if the officer were somehow a target in all of this.

“I have some enquiries of my own to conduct,” he answered, “but feel free to eat at the central command cafeteria and bill it to our operational budget.”

All thoughts of coins and bodies and beating on a well-connected junior commander evaporated when he said that. Free food? At a topside cafeteria?

Sold, to the hungover Ranger in the ramen-stained shirt!

“What is our operation called, sir?” Valentina asked.

“Operation Hunter,” he answered, sweeping from the room and leaving us in silence again.

I looked at Forge, hoping he wouldn’t go for what I was about to suggest but feeling obligated to offer anyway. “You joining us, Sergeant?”

“Fuck off,” he growled, as if the prospect of lunch with us was ludicrous, before he too left the office.

We both let out a sigh and relaxed before she turned to face me.

“What in the actual fuck just went down?” I asked her.

“Well, we got to play good cop, bad cop, apparently.”

“Who was who?” I asked her.

“I think I was the good cop, and you were, like, Rivera’s prop to make him the bad cop.”

Like I couldn’t feel any more stupid about it. I changed the subject.

“If that coin wasn’t a coin, then what was it?”

“Remember… remember I told you I wasn’t originally from here?”

I nodded.

“Well, my family came down from the north west when I was young, me and my sister… we came from Helena Crossroads.”

The glimpse I’d had at the not-coin-thing flashed in my mind, and the two intersecting lines attached themselves to the word “crossroads.”

“So you think our vic came from the outside?”

“I think there’s a lot more to it than that,” she admitted, frowning because she probably didn’t know exactly what it was she was thinking yet. “But I can’t think on an empty stomach.”

12

Topside Food

Now, whatever you’re imagining about the cafeteria at command where the rich officers ate, I can tell you it’s probably wrong.

We have this thing down below ten that’s called a cheeseburger, only the cheese is a processed dairy substitute that’s like rubber—no, it’s more like old silicone sealant—and the “burger” part varies depending on whatever out-of-date supplies the vendors can get their hands on.

I ordered a cheeseburger, mostly because it was one of the few things I recognized from the display. There were these bowls of leaves strewn with little round red things. More shredded green and orange stuff in a white paste. Little golden sticks that glistened under the lights and promised to be hot—I took a portion of those, finding out they were called fries—and long noodles like ramen only a lot more expensive.

I slid my plastic tray along, adjusting the dishes so I had room to add more, and ordered a fresh milkshake from the girl behind the counter.

“What flavor?”

“What?”

“Flavor? Banana, strawberry, vanilla, chocol—”

“Chocolate!”

She smirked, almost embarrassed for me as it was obvious I was there without adult supervision. The machine whirred and a tall glass of cold shake appeared on the counter. I looked at Valentina, my face lit up with excitement as the last of my hangover evaporated, to see her with a modest salad and a small side of cold pasta beside a bottle of water.

I dropped my grin as soon as I saw the look on her face. Sliding my tray along, I selected four little cake things that promised they’d be sweet and, just before I reached my turn at the checkout, I snatched up a clear cup of red jello, hesitated, then grabbed a second.

The woman rang it up, shooting me a couple of judgmental looks, and went to hit me with what she thought was the bad news. I stopped her before she could speak.

“Oh, and put my friend’s food on the same bill,” I said, suffering the raised eyebrows and the deliberate sigh through her nose as she added up the total for Valentina’s food.

Hitting me with the total, she smiled smugly, only for me to wipe it off her face.

“Orders of Commander Rivera,” I told her in a voice that was full of self-importance, “it’s to be billed to Operation Hunter.”

With that I walked off, only to have the moment ruined as Valentina muttered behind me, “Don’t worry about him. He didn’t have his nap this morning.”

I sulked for all of about eight seconds until I sat down at a vacant table and the sight of my overloaded tray threatened to force a childish giggle out of my mouth. I was looking at an entire day and a half’s wage spent just on lunch. Seeing as how I wasn’t paying, it already tasted good.

Valentina sat down opposite me, leaning on one elbow and poking a fork into her crisp salad leaves. She loaded it and raised it to her mouth but stopped as her eyes met mine. Her face took on a mildly appalled look which I didn’t register at first because the first massive bite of cheeseburger filled my mouth with a riot of flavors and sensations I couldn’t even begin to unravel.

“Sweet. Nectar. Of. Heaven,” I drooled after forcing down the first swallow without chewing it enough. It got stuck somewhere around my heart and made me pick up the shake to take a big gulp of the cold, frothy, chocolately goodness and letting it wash down the burger. I leaned back, trying to hide the resurgence of air that threatened to come up from my stomach.

“You animal,” she sneered at me.

“What?” I managed, right before a belch escaped. I’d tried to hide it, but the damn thing just got away from me. It wanted to be free, didn’t care who heard it.

Valentina dropped her fork back into her salad and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, looking around before shrinking back and letting her shoulder-length hair fall over her face as if it were a veil.

“Sorry,” I said, my grin kind of giving the lie to my words. Taking another bite of cheeseburger, I realized there was still room in my mouth, so I crammed in a pinch of the salty fries and chewed with them hanging out like teeth.

She rolled her eyes again and picked up her fork to resume eating her salad. I was too consumed with, well consuming, to notice that she didn’t cram in the big portions of fatty food. Given how tight those pants were already, I—

“Quinn!”

“Huh? What?”

“If you hadn’t already eaten yourself into a food coma, you might’ve heard me,” she said reprovingly. “I was saying, your theory about focusing on the primary vic might not work out now.”

“How so?”

She looked at me like I’d just stepped in shit. A mix of pity and revulsion.

“This woman,” she said, lifting her free hand and ticking off each point with a finger, “isn’t from Zion, is using gold from an outside city hundreds of miles away, was pretending to be a prostitute but wasn’t seeing any clients, and was killed differently from the others.”

“Keep your voice down,” I said in a hushed voice. Her mention of prostitution and murder in a room full of topsiders had attracted more attention than I liked.

She glanced around, wearing her bitch face so expertly that nobody met her gaze. Not even the woman wearing the insignia of a full commander sitting two tables away could survive eye contact.

“I’m saying,” she hissed, “that we need to reconsider the assumption that the senator was the mark.”

“I’ll run with that,” I said, glad that she wasn’t trying to bulldoze me into what she wanted to look at and ignoring anything I said. “It certainly warrants further investigation. But why was he tortured? He had to know something they wanted.”

She scoffed at me. “You’re starting to sound like one of them,” she accused.

“Sorry, boss lady,” I said in a bad attempt at ripping off the madam. “Me go along wid wha’ y’say, y’know?”

“Jackass,” she muttered before lapsing back into silence and picking at the food packaged as a Caesar salad, whatever the hell that was supposed to be. Honestly, I was happy with that because it gave me the time to get back to my juicy, tasty, dirty bitch of a burger, which I realized I’d been neglecting while I spoke.

I devoured it, licking my fingers with my eyes closed and making noises not dissimilar to those you’d hear coming out of the kind of establishment we’d been in earlier. I inhaled the rest of my food, one item at a time, all the while pausing to slosh chocolate shake down my throat to keep everything from sticking.

Valentina dropped her fork onto her half-eaten salad and slapped both hands on the table.

“I give up,” she said. “It’s impossible to enjoy any kind of food with you slurping like a pipe rat right in front of me.”

I grinned in response, allowing some of the wobbly red jello to escape my mouth and slide off my chin.

“Ugh, I’ll meet you back at the office. I’m going for some air.”

“Sure,” I said. “There’s a thing up there called cheesecake, and I don’t know if I’ll like it or not, but I am sure as shit going to go grab me a couple and see.”

* * *

The food was literally like nothing I’d ever tasted before. I usually only ate to fill a need, like adding biofuel to a generator, but this was enjoyment on a level I could only equate to one of the few fumbling encounters I’d had over the last year or so.

Even then, hell even combined, the food was actually more of a sexual experience than the sex was.

Something inside me said I was being greedy, that I was acting like an animal, but a louder voice back there told it to shut the fuck up and let me enjoy myself for once in my miserable existence.

It said that the kid who grew up with almost nothing, a kid who had only ever wanted to see his mom happy, had been left on his own as a teenager, and had to survive a couple of years on guile alone to finish school and get a job… that kid had managed to avoid the orphanages and landed himself a decent job as a Ranger, but that kid had spent too long going hungry and using a shard of metal to count the days he’d gone without food into the flesh of his arms.

That kid was long gone now, and I didn’t even like to think about him anymore, but whatever ghost of him was left inside my body was being driven out by the sweet, sticky cheesecake and the sharp tang of strawberry topping.

13

Learning

I was just on time to make the hour’s deadline when I staggered back into the outer office of Junior Commander Claude S. Rivera. My eyes felt like they were bulging, and breathing was difficult because for some reason. My diaphragm wouldn’t move like it normally did.

I felt a little giddy, like someone had dropped a stim in my coffee. My hands twitched by themselves and my face was itching so much I wanted to rub it with both hands.

Carefully, and with significant discomfort, I lowered myself into one of the chairs and politely declined the offer of coffee from Rivera’s secretary by grunting and shaking my head with my eyes squeezed closed.

“Enjoy your lunch?” Rivera asked as he breezed through the room, jolting my eyes open and forcing me to struggle back out of the chair to stand upright.

“Yes sir,” I blurted out, fighting back another burp which jostled free when I moved too fast. I was swept up along with him and I swear Forge leaned over and sniffed at me. I was too weirded out to turn and look at him, as well as being too full to turn without rotating my entire body.

Valentina was already in his office, sitting in a chair with one knee crossed over the other and a tiny coffee cup raised halfway to her lips. She went to put it down and stand, but Rivera waved her back to her seat.

“No time for formalities on this team,” he said, trying to sound like a cool boss but still coming across as a rich jerk.

I smirked, remembering how unexpectedly good it felt to hit an officer.

“I’ve consulted various sources over the last hour as well as accessed some archived material,” he said without preamble, “and I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the senator may not have been the primary target in this incident.”

Wow, just… wow.

I bit back the urge to ask, “all by yourself?” and glanced at Valentina to see she was just as underwhelmed as I was. The difference between her and me was that she said it out loud.

“We concluded the same, sir.”

Rivera looked at her for a second, his face unreadable.

“Until recently, we had no reason to suspect an outside player was involved in this investigation. However, I have it on respected authority that this,” he drew the gold coin out of his pocket and held it up, “isn’t, in fact, currency.”

The room was silent, waiting for him to reveal the rest of his discoveries.

“It is, I believe, a mark of employment. An identification, if you like.”

“For what?” I asked, hoping that the right questions at the right time would speed things up. I was beginning to make a discovery all of my own, that my guts did not like topsider food in vast quantities.

“Not what, whom.”

Picky, I thought, not trusting myself to say anything as another lurch in my stomach threatened my balance.

“I believe this,” he waggled the not-coin again for theatrical emphasis, “identifies the bearer as a member of the Royal Helena Guard.”

“Excuse me, sir,” I said, turning and bolting for the door. I ran—well, I kind of ran; it was more a stiff-legged hobble—for the nearest bathroom. I burst through the door, not really caring if it was vacant or not but instantly grateful that it was, as the two portions of cheesecake I’d eaten, each with a side of something called vanilla ice cream, began to fountain out of my mouth into the basin before I could get there.

Now, chasing my own projectile vomit wasn’t an entirely new experience for me, but I realized that doing it sober was way more horrific than I recalled. Twice more my stomach heaved, expelling so much mashed up, undigested food into the bowl that I was instantly glad I hadn’t spent a single silver on it.

As soon as the vomiting stopped, a deep, resonating gurgle vibrated my whole body and began somewhere low down inside me. I barely had time to get my pants down before… well, anyway. It was nasty, that’s all I’m saying.

* * *

“Welcome back, Quinn,” Valentina said, her nose scrunching up as I walked back in the office sweaty and pale. Any other time I’d have found the face she pulled cute, but right then all I could think about was not shitting my pants.

“I take it lunch didn’t agree with you, Quinn?” Rivera said.

I decided total honesty was the best option.

“My apologies, Commander. Last night was my last set shift and… and, well, me and some other Rangers got into it and it was a late night. Won’t happen again.”

His manners must’ve been screaming at him to stay in control, because he didn’t even twitch a cheek muscle.

“Quite understandable,” he said falsely. “However, given your temporary state, I’d suggest we switch the current assignments made in your absence.”

I looked at the others but neither of them seemed willing to fill me in. Valentina and Forge left the office, and I stared at Rivera.

“The sergeant and Valentina are heading back to the medical facility to answer a question that should provide definitive proof of the deceased woman’s occupation—or lack thereof—and you and I are required to provide an update to senior command before the end of the working day.”

I had a brief internal conversation with myself before I spoke, trying out the various ways my words would sound, and figuring all my options made me out to be either stupid or an ass.

“You want Doctor Lopez to tell you if she was a hooker?”

Rivera’s face paled at my vulgarity, but I couldn’t find a gentler way of saying it in the time I had available.

“Quite so,” he said icily. “Although, specifically, I have requested that Doctor Lopez investigate the deceased for signs of sexual ill-health as would be almost entirely expected in one practicing such an occupation.”

My brain swam with the big words even if I did consider myself to be pretty well-educated.

Sooo… if she doesn’t have at least one dose of clap, then she can’t have been a hooker? Gotcha.

I was glad I’d kept that one inside my head as Rivera nodded a dismissal to the others.

“And we’re to…” I asked, hoping he’d say something different this time around.

Rivera looked at his watch. “We’re to report to the deputy director in twenty minutes.”

I looked down at my shirt, which now had a little streak of cheesecake puke next to the ramen stain, and sighed. Twenty minutes wasn’t long enough to make it to my apartment and back, let alone needing the time to dig through my closet-chair and find anything appropriate to put on. Rivera, without much effort, read my thoughts.

“I have a selection of civilian clothing in my closet,” he said, lifting his chin to point it behind me. “I believe we aren’t too dissimilar in size, so I’ll allow you to select a change of clothes from there.”

I looked at the closed closet door over my shoulder then back at Rivera. My face must’ve been screaming something along the lines of, “for reals?” because he let out a little laugh.

“I assure you, it isn’t my entire wardrobe. I’ll give you a few minutes to wash up and change. Pick anything you like, but I’d suggest nothing from the right side. Just leave your own clothes in the bathroom laundry basket and I’ll have them cleaned.”

With that, he breezed from the room, leaving me alone in his office to wash up in his private bathroom and take my pick of his clothes. Right then, I wondered just who the fuck this guy was to intentionally let me hit him, listen to me throw up, and then let me borrow all his stuff. Perhaps I’d judged him too harshly.

I stepped into the bathroom, glancing at my watch and deciding that I could probably get away with a tactical shower. We called it that down where I grew up to make it fun. In truth, it was anything but. There’d been a water shortage for pretty much all of my life. A tactical shower was a ten-second soaking, followed by a furious soaping of the wet skin before you either froze or dried off too much, and completed by another blast under the cold water to rinse.

That was the plan, but damn if that water wasn’t hot. Lukewarm was the best I’d managed for as long as I could remember, so this shit was heaven.

I snapped out of it and reluctantly killed the water to towel off with something so soft and absorbent that I’d probably use it as bedding if it were mine.

When I opened the closet, I found nothing but suits and real fancy stuff on the right. I moved to the left and grabbed a set of dark blue pants and a black shirt which fit me better than the ones I’d taken off. Shoving my feet back into my boots, I looked up as Rivera walked in and gave me an appreciative look. He nodded, as if to say a thirty-second shower and some of his clothes made me look acceptable and went to the closet to retrieve a pair of tan boots.

“You’re an eleven, right?” he asked.

“Yeah. Er, yes, sir.”

He handed me the boots and made out like it was nothing. I laced them up, feeling sharper and more comfortable than I could in anything I owned, and added my leather jacket to the ensemble before strapping my gun belt back on and adjusting my jacket so it obscured the weapon. Lastly, I pinned my Ranger’s star on the shirt and smiled to show I was ready.

“Good,” Rivera said, slapping my right shoulder. “Let’s go see the boss.”

* * *

“The deputy director will see you now, Commander,” the secretary said formally as she opened the doors to the office. Rivera stood and straightened his jacket, making me involuntarily follow suit, like I was his clone. I ran a hand through my damp hair and ignored the acid rising in my gullet as I stepped inside and went to attention.

“At ease,” the deputy director said without looking up. We waited until she’d finished writing and finally bothered to glance at Rivera.

“Make it quick, Junior Commander. I have a dinner with some members of the senate.”

“Ma’am, enquiries are progressing into the murders,” Rivera began, sounding less like the rich kid and more like a tough Ranger. “Specifically, we’ve recovered evidence linking the senator to the establishment which, on further investigation—”

“You’ve what?”

“We’ve recovered evidence linking the senator to the establishment,” Rivera repeated, in case she hadn’t understood him.

Glaring at me, she uttered a single word which threatened to bring on another bout of the shits.

“Out.”

I drew myself up to attention and turned for the door, making damn sure I took a seat close enough to hear what was going to be said. I smiled at the secretary, who just shot me down with a glare that said she knew I was eavesdropping and seemed to add that “my kind” shouldn’t be up this close to the surface in any case. I broadened my own smile as if to add a “fuck you very much,” and listened closely.

“Your orders, Rivera, were to find me a killer we could quickly and publicly bring to justice. Your orders were not to embarrass a very powerful and very influential family that donates heavily to the upkeep of the Ranger Corps.”

“Yes, Deputy Director, I understand that. However, the course of the investigation has led me t—”

“No, Rivera, it has not. Am I making myself clear? Now, I’m going to let you start again from the beginning, and you’re going to give me the progress report I can talk about over dinner to reassure two other senators that they’re not in any danger in Zion City.”

Silence, broken by Rivera clearing his throat.

“Madam Director,” he said, genuinely starting over like he hadn’t just had his balls chewed off. “Our enquiries are ongoing into satisfying ourselves that the senator’s wife is in no way involved in the incident. We are trawling every electronic surveillance feed, conducting reassurance patrols on all levels affected, and are pulling identification of any characters acting suspiciously. We are interrogating all persons believed to be in the area at the time and prior to the incident, and I have a dedicated team overseeing all of this information to investigate any anomalies.”

“And you’re confident you’ll have a suspect soon?” It was a question, but it sounded to me more like an instruction.

“As I said, ma’am, our enquiries are ongoing, and we are as confident as we are dedicated.” I could almost imagine the smug jerk giving his little bow again as he gift-wrapped, and hand delivered a load of grade-A bullshit.

I had to admit, I was a little proud of him right then.

He appeared at the door and I stood, pulling my best “I wasn’t listening at all” face, and followed him out to the main corridor.

“Sir?” I asked, unsure how far I should push my luck, but given that I’d already hit him today and was wearing his clothes, I decided it was worth the risk. “Did you just intentionally withhold relevant facts from your report to your supervising officer to save yourself the time of having to explain it?”

“Only so we have the time to actually get out there and follow the leads, Quinn.”

* * *

We got back to his office in time to see the littlest lieutenant scurrying towards the doors with a report in his hands and both Forge and Valentina catching him up fast, even though they both seemed to be walking at half his pace.

Kumar saw us and called out to Rivera, waving the report.

“Give us a minute, Lieutenant,” Rivera instructed as he raised his eyebrows at Forge.

“But, sir!” Kumar insisted.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant, this’ll only take a minute. If you’ll wait outside.”

“But…”

Rivera waited until we all filed inside and shut the door in the lieutenant’s face.

“Well?” he asked, directing his question at Forge. Forge fidgeted and nodded to Valentina.

“The doctor gave Valentina the facts, Commander,” he said, looking distinctly uneasy.

“Sir,” Valentina said, appearing confident and stricken by none of the queasiness Forge evidently experienced. “Doctor Lopez has confirmed that Diana was not a working girl.”

“Specifically?”

“Specifically, in that she’s, from what the doctor can tell, intact, sir.”

“Intact? What d—oh, I see. Ah. Very good. I mean very well… Lieutenant?” he called out, raising his voice to bring in the short officer to change the subject.

The door opened and the man entered, still wearing a look of vaguely disguised indignance.

“Sir,” he said, handing over the report. Rivera read it, frowned at the lieutenant and read it again before he exploded.

“Why the hell wasn’t I informed of this immediately?” he yelled.

“I tried, sir, but y—”

“Excuses,” Rivera snapped, thrusting the paper onto me as the nearest person as he stomped around to his desk and retrieved his firearm from a locked drawer.

I read the report, filtering out all the unnecessary crap and searching for the relevant facts that had sent my boss over the edge.

[CONFIRMED UNAUTHORIZED EXIT: EXTERNAL BREACH – LEVEL TWENTY]

14

Hot Trail

“When was this?” Rivera asked.

“Six, nearly seven hours ago, Commander,” Kumar answered.

“Any idea who they are? Can we get an ID?”

“I have software running cross-referencing searches against customs for the last year working backwards,” Kumar said, impressing me with how well he knew his business. I could stop a fight or convince an angry drunk to just go home and not beat the brakes off someone he’d fallen out with, but this man knew his trade of digital surveillance just as well as I knew mine.

“However, I’ve anticipated that whoever did this might have been new to Zion. Thus, I’ve organized a separate search based on more narrow parameters.”

“Show me,” Rivera ordered.

People scattered from us as we all but ran down the corridor back to the operation room. We were walking quick, but Kumar, with his disadvantage in leg length, jogged to keep up.

“Make a hole!” Forge boomed out in his sergeant’s voice, making uniformed men and women flatten themselves against the wall so they didn’t get trampled. Rivera burst into the room, occupied only by a skeleton staff as the majority of analysts and interrogators had been released from duty until the morning. The pace wasn’t doing my stomach any good, and after a night of drinking and a day of being turned upside down by dismembered dead bodies and a full-on food riot, I was suffering.

I crowded around the terminal where Kumar hit keys until some grainy footage flickered onto the screen. In my ear, so close I could smell her breath and worried that the hairs on my arms stood on end, Valentina huffed her annoyance.

“Lieutenant, maybe transfer the feed to the big screen?”

Kumar said nothing but followed her suggestion. The projector flickered on and someone killed the lights in the room to allow us to see the display better.

I watched as the image showed a distant access hatch open and a coil of rope being thrown out. A figure came into view and attached a bag to the rope, then swung themselves out to slide down out of shot. The entire thing was from a wide angle because the cameras on the lower edges of Zion City were poor in comparison to the high definition lenses protecting the topside.

“Could be unrelated,” I said, earning the unwelcome attention of everyone. “Hey, I’m not saying I think it is, but let’s be certain. How many unauthorized exits do we get?”

“Two, maybe three a year?” Forge said.

“Five,” Kumar corrected him. “Last year, at least.”

“So to assume that a rare occurrence is unrelated to the incident is both highly unlikely as well as illogical,” Rivera said.

“Got something!” a uniformed analyst shouted from across the room.

Kumar ordered her to put it on the screen and explain.

“This is the same thing from another angle. It’s still far away, but the light isn’t obscuring the lens. See behind them, I can make out two shapes… you see them?”

I stepped closer, not knowing if I was blocking anyone else’s view and much not caring. I stared at the blurred shape of the person climbing out onto the rope.

“That’s a woman,” I said.

“How can you tell?” Rivera said. “The footage isn’t clear enough t—”

“See the shape of her hips? The way she holds herself? Everything about her says… well, her.”

Rivera turned to Valentina as if silently seeking an independent expert’s second opinion on my assessment.

“Play it again,” she said out loud for the analyst. The footage rewound and started again. Frowning, Valentina stared up close, her eyes flickering from side to side as she studied the video again.

“I’m not a hundred percent but—” she gave me the most fleeting of dirty looks, “—I think he’s right.”

“Give me the exact location of that breach,” Rivera ordered.

“Sector three, level twenty. Right down in the bilges, Commander,” Kumar said, his tone clearly conveying his derision for the pit of their city. “Sir, the drop from there to the canyon floor has to be two hundred feet at least.”

Rivera ignored the irrelevant information, probably because he had no intention of kicking a rope out into thin air and shimmying down after them. At least I hoped he didn’t, because that would mean he’d expect me to go with him.

“On me,” he said, setting off for the door at a jog. I looked at Valentina and shrugged before turning to run after him. Forge damn near bowled me out of the way so he could get through the door first, and I was forced to give way or get slammed into the doorframe. From the sound of her boots, I knew that Valentina was right behind me, and probably annoyed that I was holding her up. But unless I wanted to retch on Rivera’s clothes, I had to conserve my energy as much as I could.

We blasted out through central command and onto the main drag, people scattering as we barreled toward the elevators. Hitting the expressway down gave me time to catch my breath and suppress the burn in my stomach as the elevator ticked by on a slow countdown to twenty.

Rivera drew his weapon and Forge followed suit, both men checking the chamber to make sure they had a bullet ready. I checked my own, realizing I’d made a mistake in carrying a firearm as a duty weapon, which in my defense had only happened to me a few times in my career, and I had to pull on the slide to chamber a round.

“Cocked and locked next time, Quinn,” Forge growled at me, confusing me because the pistols they issued us didn’t have anything like a lock.

“The section will be out the elevator and left,” Rivera said as the counter ticked past sixteen. “Forge on point,” he said, stacking us up ready like we were doing a hot room clearance. “Then Valentina, me, and Quinn.”

I tried not to suffer any macho bravado bullshit at being given the safest job, mostly because I felt like shit and couldn’t say with anywhere near a hundred percent certainty that I wouldn’t accidentally shit in my—Rivera’s—shorts if anyone started shooting.

Seventeen. Eighteen.

“Go fast out, get into cover, and keep your eyes open,” Rivera spoke, sounding like he was keeping us steady, although I suspected he was doing it to keep himself calm and focused.

Nineteen.

Forge rolled his shoulders and loosened up his neck. Standing behind Rivera like a wall all day must’ve made him tense.

Twenty.

The door slid open, much more slowly than I wanted it to, and Forge spilled out first, going low to his left with Valentina weapon up, going out high to cover him. Rivera went next, crossing the corridor to the far side and dropping into cover to leave me standing in the open before instinct kicked in and I ducked in behind a support beam.

The air was thick down here and it stank of stale, oily water and machinery. I glanced up at the ceiling, my brain only just connecting the dots and helpfully informing me that I was now under the biggest of our three water treatment plants in Zion. Above me must’ve been about a hundred thousand gallons of water running through a massive distillery where the water was treated for the mild radiation it was contaminated with from the flowing water far below us on the canyon bed.

“Quinn, the fuck, man?” Valentina hissed.

“Shit, sorry,” I answered, running to catch up with her. I’d missed the signal to move.

“Ahead,” Rivera said. “Quinn, Valentina, cover us.”

I leaned on another big support strut and aimed my weapon ahead of me, careful not to point it at the two men creeping towards a crack of light in the wall. My ears registered a noise, like a pressure seal on something was failing, and my mind connected the dots between the crack of light and the sound. The panel which had been cut away to allow them to leave hadn’t been welded back into place properly.

“Clear. Spread out and search,” Rivera ordered.

I peered into the shadows until I mentally caught up and snapped on the tiny flashlight under the barrel of my gun to sweep it around. I was working backwards toward the elevator before my beam passed over a pile of old blankets.

I moved on and froze as my mind processed what my eyes had seen. The blankets had moved, I was sure of it. I stepped back until the flashlight’s beam fell on the bundle of rags again. It twitched.

“Ranger Corps,” I announced loudly like I’d just walked into a bar where a fight was breaking out. “Show me your hands. Do it now!”

Boots stamped fast in my direction as the others responded to my textbook identification and challenge. More beams fell on the pile and the area behind me was being systematically swept by someone else, which told me our backs were covered.

The pile shuddered and whimpered but no hands came out. I took a half step forward and poked a boot into the pile until it hit something hard, and repeated my challenge with a little light escalation thrown in by way of a more menacing tone to my voice.

“Rangers. Hands, now!”

A small hand, so grubby I didn’t realize it belonged to a white person at first, slowly edged out from under the top edge. I tightened my grip on my weapon as I waited for the other hand to come into view and hoped it wasn’t holding a rusty shank like so many of the vagrants on the lower levels liked to carry. I didn’t think my stomach could handle me shooting someone today.

The second hand came out, just as filthy as the first, and the reality dawned on me. I lowered my weapon, holstering it still with the flashlight turned on, and reached out to pull away the blankets.

“Quinn, don’t—” Rivera’s warning stopped in his throat as the lights illuminated the filthy face of a wild-haired kid.

15

The Right Way

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Valentina said, displaying a kindness I was surprised she possessed. “Come on, it’s alright. My name’s Gabriela and this is… Quinn. What’s your name?” She held out her hand to the terrified kid and beckoned him to come to her.

“My name’s Stacey.”

Okay, not a him. Couldn’t be sure at first.

“Young lady,” Rivera said formally. “I am Commander Claude Rivera of the Zion City Ranger Corps. I need you to tell me what happened in this forward section of level twenty approximately seven to eight hours ago.”

Valentina turned to give him a brief look that I only caught in profile, and it loosely translated to, “Dude, have you ever even met a kid before?”

“It’s okay, come on out to me…” Valentina said as the kid shrank back again after Forge leaned down to glower his wrinkled mug at her. “Sarge,” she muttered out one corner of her mouth, “mind stepping back a minute? We don’t want to scare her.” Forge huffed and stomped a short retreat.

“Stacey, honey, do you live down here?”

“Yes.”

“All on your own?”

“Yes.”

“Do lots of people come down here?”

She shook her head and frowned, like she knew what was coming next.

“You saw people earlier though, right?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about them,” she said. Not can you tell me about them, or will you tell me about them, but a careful instruction that couldn’t be answered with a yes or a no. It was good technique, and I could see it working.

At least I could see it working on someone who wasn’t a kid living rough on twenty and probably stealing from other poor people just to survive. The kid set her lips tight and said nothing, her big, white eyes shining out of her grubby face like beacons accusing us of trying to get something for nothing.

“I ain’t no damn snitch,” she said, her little bird voice at total odds with the words she used.

“Hey, I’m… Quinn,” I said, not wanting to confuse the girl with my first name. “You like ramen?”

* * *

“We should have this child escorted to a medical facility before being thoroughly debriefed and returned to the appropriate authorities in her sector,” Rivera muttered in my ear. I looked at her, clutching her belongings to her chest as a cup of ramen landed in front of her on the counter. She looked at Valentina before touching them, waiting for her to urge the grubby little girl to eat because she still didn’t exactly trust us.

“Sir,” I said, trying not to sound tired of his lack of understanding of anything below level five. “The ‘appropriate authorities’ you’re talking about are orphan homes she’s probably run away from already. And I’d put money on at least one of them still claiming the government allowance for her, so don’t think we’d be sending her back to a safe place.”

I was sure if I had some fundraising ball to attend up on level one, I’d be asking him for advice, so it pissed me off that he didn’t take the hint down here.

The kid tore into the noodles like they owed her money. All the while, Valentina was asking her questions I couldn’t hear, but even though I’d only known her a day, I trusted her to get it right.

“What would you do with an orphan up top, sir?” I asked, again pressing the boundaries of the relationship between us after he’d opened the door and failed to shut it afterwards.

“I… I have to say I don’t know,” he admitted.

“That’s probably because you don’t have an orphan problem up there. Or a homeless problem for that matter.”

“We do occasionally suffer the blight of vagrancy on the streets,” Rivera countered, like seeing a couple of homeless dudes when he was out shopping made him one of us normal people.

“And what’s the topside policy on that? Move them along?”

“You know as well as I do that the law states anyone suspected of vagrancy has the opportunity to vacate the area or face arrest.”

“Uh huh, and where do you think they move along to?”

His face dropped as if the obvious fact only just dawned on him.

“That’s right, they don’t go along, they go along and down. To where nobody has the time or the inclination to keep moving them along. So long as the homeless down here don’t cause trouble, they get left alone.”

“But… but how do they survive? How do they eat?”

“Oh, being homeless doesn’t make all of them unemployed. They’re not all rock hoppers; in fact most of them have water treatment jobs or work recycling and maintenance. They have the choice to eat or have a place to live.”

Rivera was saved from having any more education thrust upon him by Valentina returning to us. She still had half an eye on the kid who was most likely looking for her chance to bolt now that she’d been fed.

“Sir, I hate to ask this, but can we cut some kind of deal here?”

“I’m listening,” Rivera answered, sipping on the cup of broth he’d bought and grimacing a little as he swallowed it and pretended it didn’t offend his refined palate.

“I’ve got some actionable intel so far, but I need to be able to offer reassurances that she won’t be left to starve down here if she gives us information on people. I need your word that she’ll get medical attention and get a family placement above, say, level five?”

“I can see to the first demand easily,” he said, “but the second will take time. Do I have her assurance that what she’s giving us is the truth and not some yarn she’s spinning just to get free food?”

“It’s genuine, Commander,” Valentina said confidently. “It’s too random to be made up and she’s told me things I can verify from the footage that none of us has told her; it’s for real.”

“Very well. We’ll take her to Doctor Lopez, and I’ll entrust the second part of the agreement to her. Does that satisfy, Ranger?”

“Yes, sir.”

I followed Valentina back to the girl, who was slurping up the ramen like she was in a competition, spraying the artificial chicken taste of the broth all over her face and making semi-clean spots where the juice landed.

“So,” Valentina said, again putting on that “I’m good with kids” voice that wasn’t faked. “You saw three women cut open the wall and one went out with a bag before the other two sealed it up again and ran back for the elevators,” she recapped. Stacey nodded, slurping up a long string of noodle that whipped around like it was the tail of a living thing that didn’t much like being eaten.

“And the women said that the one who left had to report their success to…”

“Chicken. And Helen?” Stacey said as she picked up the cup and gulped down the broth. I raised my eyebrows at the noodle guy and pointed at the girl for another cup.

“No secret recipe,” I warned, “just keep it coming, okay?”

“You got it, boss man. Me feed dat girl up big an’ fat, y’now?”

“Sorry,” I said as I turned back to Stacey. “So, err, chicken?”

“Something like that. Chicken. Checkenne? The other two said they still had one more thing to do or something. Said they were going back to the market.”

Another cup of noodles arrived in front of her and she began to use a fork clumsily to remove them and dangle them above her open mouth. Her hunger must’ve abated a little, as she was playing with her food like a normal kid. I guessed her fourth cup of noodles on the bounce was catching up with her because her eyes looked… well, they looked a little like mine after lunch before I threw up.

“The market? Where’s that, honey?”

“The nearest ones are seventeen on four or eighteen on five. Don’t know where the one on three is. I don’t go that way.”

“Why not?” I asked out of genuine curiosity.

“Some other kids claimed that patch, and I ain’t catching a damn shank for stepping on some bitch’s turf, y’know?”

“Alright, kid, enough of the cursing,” I chided her.

Valentina looked at me with amusement and I couldn’t resist.

“Sorry, Gabriela.” I rolled the R like a roulette wheel and turned my smirk back to Stacey. “You were saying?”

“So, these two said they were going to the market and had until noon tomorrow to go. What’s noon?”

“It’s midday, honey,” Valentina said.

“Why don’t they call it that then?”

“Because they aren’t from ’round here, that’s why.”

“Outsiders murdering a senator and one of their own?” I whispered, leaning close to Valentina’s ear. Shit, her hair smelled amazing even over the stink of the noodle bar.

“What was one of their own doing hiding out here and meeting with a senator, anyway?”

“I think we need to brainstorm this,” I told her. “Now, Stacey, bring your noodles. You’re getting a trip topside to see a real nice doctor lady we know.”

* * *

“We’re basing the assumption that their use of the word ‘noon’ makes them from one of the other surviving cities?” Rivera asked as he paced the floor of Lopez’s office that she’d allowed us to use.

“It’s one factor,” Valentina answered. She knew enough about the man by now to know he wasn’t dumb but was asking the obvious question to make sure we all understood our collective logic.

“Add to that the Helena Guard coin thing,” I said.

“The seal of the Royal Helena Guard,” Rivera corrected me for no real reason other than the fact that he couldn’t help himself.

“And the person they mentioned? Check-in?” Forge asked.

“Could it…” Valentina asked, frowning as she stopped talking to consider her words. “Cheyenne? And Helena?”

Silence descended as we thought about the implications of that.

“If we knew a motive for the murders, it might help,” I said.

Valentina fidgeted like she wanted to say something.

“Go on,” Rivera said to her. “There’s no such thing as a stupid idea.”

“Just stupid people,” I muttered, regretting it instantly and speaking fast in the hope that everyone would just ignore my brainfart. “Valentina came up with the theory that the hooker was the primary target, being from outside of Zion. I’m pretty sure she’s right.”

Rivera’s eyebrows went up as he switched his gaze to her. Her quick glance at me said thanks in a way that I guessed I’d pay for at some point in the future. She cleared her throat.

“I think they came here for her. I think she was meeting with the senator for reasons other than everyone assumes. If you think about it, an affair’s a great cover, but whatever they really met for has to be important otherwise why risk your career and reputation over a scandal?”

“So what was she talking to the senator about?” I asked, not getting an answer because we were interrupted by a knock on the door and one of Lopez’s assistants poked his head around the frame.

“Commander Rivera? Call on the comm for you from a Lieutenant Kumar? He says it’s urgent.”

Rivera stood to head for the door, but the assistant pointed to the terminal on the doctor’s desk.

“I’ll have it put through to here.”

Rivera sat at the desk and lifted the handset.

“Yes… yes… when? Uh-huh. Understood. Deploy a team immediately; we’ll meet them there.” He replaced the handset and stood, straightening his jacket before heading quickly for the door.

“Kumar’s retracted the entry logs for the last three months. He’s found our victim entering seven weeks ago with a trade caravan, but less than a week ago there have been three other females arriving from the north as part of a trader’s caravan.”

“Our suspects?” Valentina asked.

“One would assume so. If they came here for nefarious reasons, then it would make perfect sense not to arrive together brandishing weapons, don’t you think?”

With a straight face, I hid my expression at the man using the word nefarious.

“One of those people has been sighted on five/five. Apparently, there was an altercation with a water treatment worker and he’s in critical condition. Unlikely to survive.”

“How?”

“Severe abdominal lacerations,” Rivera answered pointedly.

“So we’re going to the scene?” Forge asked.

“No, the other one is at customs trying to leave.”

16

Showdown

The customs area on level one was the only place topside that had more in common with the lower levels of Zion. It wasn’t painted crisp white with clean glass like everywhere else on the top floor of our canyon city. It was all exposed girders and grime, mostly because anyone with the money and connections to stay in the nice places had no need or desire to go out into the wastes.

Traders stayed for a few days, conducted their business, then returned to wherever they came from or were going to next after sampling the upper level’s entertainment, but very few people came to stay. It hadn’t always been like that, but for most of my service, the flow of immigration had all but dried up.

We went in quietly and slowly so as not to attract attention from the few people milling about. I’d guessed from the few times I’d been up here that they were waiting for the trade caravans to arrive. The empty carts were a dead giveaway, but as I walked through the open area, I saw a few people looking to head out.

Getting in was hard, and everyone got interviewed by the Rangers on duty, but getting out was just a matter of when enough people had accrued to make it worth opening the big airlock doors. The outward traffic was usually held until something scheduled was leaving and today seemed like no exception.

Then I saw her.

Hood up, slim shoulders hunched to fit in with the other weary people heading out to experience radiation and lawlessness, she stood near a group of four others like she was trying to blend in. Trying too hard, because I saw her easily enough.

She looked up and met my eyes; hers set wide apart and circled with dark makeup. In that moment she knew she’d been found, and my world slowed down.

I threw back my right shoulder and hip to swing my jacket free as my left hand held the holster firm and my right closed around the grip of my gun. As I was drawing it, the words came from my mouth out of instinct; as ever in any situation, my mind tailored the words to suit.

“Zion Rangers!” I bawled, startling all those travelers who’d been submerged in their own worlds. My gun came free of the holster smoothly and I settled into a solid two-handed firing pose with my weapon aimed directly at her. I was twenty feet away, which was the distance I’d done all my firearms training at. “Show me your hands and get on the ground!”

She didn’t react, didn’t panic like everyone else, who yelled or screamed and tried to throw themselves away from the confrontation. She blinked, glancing to either side where my peripheral vision showed the others moving in to flank her. She looked back at me and smiled, her hands still hidden beneath a leather coat.

“Zion Rangers!” I repeated, louder this time. “Hands, now, and get on the ground.”

“Do it!” Forge roared from her left.

“You are surrounded, I assure you,” Rivera said with clearly no clue how to verbally subdue a suspect through fear and surprise. “You are under arrest for murder,” he added, as if she didn’t know.

She turned her gaze back to me; so serene she was terrifying.

“Maheo will judge me,” she said as she stood and slowly showed her hands. “Not you. And you’ll never catch my sisters.”

She held a curved blade in each fist and stared hard at me.

“Don’t do it,” I warned her, “don’t you fuckin’ make me do it!”

She sunk into an attack pose like an animal and bunched her muscles ready to rush me.

I fired, twitching my aim at the last second to hit her lower in search of some twisted logic that said I had to shoot her to save her life, or at least extend it long enough to find out more information.

My bullet took her in the gut just above her right hip and spun her almost three-sixty to crumple her to the ground. She shuddered, building up a scream of pain that tore from her mouth like an eruption. Blood spurted onto the dirty floor as she shuddered and went still. Valentina arrived at her first, standing on her left hand to secure the knife she still held as I stepped closer to keep her covered.

She lifted her right hand weakly to try to cut Valentina and free herself, but the blow was sluggish and easily blocked. She was wrenched up by Rivera and Valentina and slammed back down to the ground where the blades were wrestled from her grip and her hands secured with zip ties.

“Good work, Quinn,” Rivera said, turning to look up at Forge. “We need to get her to the medical facility,” he said desperately. “She has to survive to stand trial.”

The doors to customs burst open and an entire squad of Rangers piled in with weapons drawn. Rivera repeated his instructions for the prisoner, who still breathed and moaned pitifully.

“You can holster your weapon, Ranger,” Rivera said in my ear, snapping me out of the daze I was in. “And well done.”

* * *

“I’m sorry, sir,” Kumar said in a tone that made it obvious he was apologizing when there was nothing he could’ve done about it. He was apologizing for the second unauthorized exit from Zion that day, occurring at almost exactly the same time as we were in customs arresting the last of our suspects.

I watched the footage, again distant and grainy, of a small panel falling away from the underside of the city and spinning away in the wind. A pair of legs appeared from the hole and dangled for a few seconds before the figure dropped, and at least two people watching the screen gasped.

A blossoming sheet of material expanded and slowed the drop almost immediately, lowering the shape out of sight.

It was a parachute, according to someone watching, and I listened to the explanation of what one was, although I totally failed to see the attraction of jumping out of some machine that flew.

“I don’t get it,” someone asked. “Can the thing land back on the ground? Our airships can land, so why couldn’t their…” He looked up to the person with all the history knowledge who just shrugged.

“Airplanes. And yeah, they could land…”

“So… so why’d anyone want to get out? You wouldn’t jump off a moving elevator if it could stop on your level, right?”

I fell away from the conversation as Rivera tapped me on the shoulder in passing. I followed him to the corner of the room with Valentina falling in with us.

“To recap,” he said formally, “we have six murders attributed to these people. We have two who have escaped and one undergoing surgery who is still unlikely to be able to provide any kind of meaningful intelligence under interrogation. It’s clear there is influence from outside Zion, given that one of the deceased is believed to be a national of Helena, and I believe our suspects have traveled from Cheyenne to commit these murders.”

“Cheyenne?” I asked. “How do you know?” It was a leap to add another city into the fray for what had gone down in the last day here, even for Rivera.

“Did you hear what she said? She told you that Maheo would judge her.”

I stared back like I didn’t know what he was talking about, mostly because I didn’t.

“It’s the same as you trying to fight your way out of a situation in Cheyenne and saying that God would judge you. Trust me.”

I had no information to offer any opposing opinion, so I said nothing. I was actually pretty glad the day was over, and we had no more killers running around Zion. I was looking forward to sleep more than I ever had been, until Rivera’s next words pulled the plug on my happy thoughts.

“Write up your action reports,” he instructed us both, “and after that meet me at the medical facility. Sergeant Forge should be there watching over our friend.”

“Where will you be, sir?” Valentina asked.

Rivera hesitated.

“I’ll be seeking authority to go after the fugitives.”

17

Out, Out

Cheyenne bounty hunters. Helena royal guard. Zion Rangers. Fugitives. Escaping justice. Wasteland.

These words tumbled around my head as I sat outside the deputy director’s office. Rivera hadn’t been off to a great start with her when he’d sent someone to interrupt her important dinner, and for a junior commander to summon the deputy director of an evening, according to her yelling, was both unprecedented and downright presumptuous.

Furthermore, she shouted, just who in hell did the junior commander think he was, giving her orders?

“Ma’am,” Rivera said smoothly, “I apologize for the methods used, but this matter is of the utmost importance. I believe th—”

“Oh, please do sell me another wild theory,” she snapped at him sarcastically.

“Ma’am, I believe that there is a plot with Zion City at the center. It involved the murder of a senator and a Helena official by three bounty hunters from Cheyenne—”

“And you have evidence of all of this, do you?”

“We have a prisoner who w—”

“You have a half-dead woman unlikely to survive the fatal injuries inflicted by Rangers assigned to your operation. Tell me if anything, anything else you have, is more than circumstantial assumptions.”

“We have the coin from Helena, an—”

“That’s a no then?” A crash sounded inside the office and I guessed she’d thrown something which I hoped wasn’t aimed at Rivera. “Duly-fucking-noted.”

“Ma’am, with respect, if we were able to track down the fugitives and bring them back here to face trial and justice, then—”

“Who do you propose sending out into the wastes, Rivera? You know we have no authority out there, which is why we don’t go out there. Your responsibilities, Junior Commander, lie strictly within the confines of Zion.”

“I… I will go, myself.”

Valentina turned to stare at me, reflecting the same wide-eyed “what the fuck” look I was wearing. I had a sinking feeling that if Rivera left, he’d order us to go with him to chase his wild goose.

Silence reigned inside the office, which just made me sink further into my ominous mental hole for what was about to happen.

“I’d need approval from the president’s office,” was all the deputy director said.

* * *

My shitty day couldn’t get any worse. But just for kicks, I’ll recap the main events.

I got dragged out of bed way too soon for my hangover to even begin to fade, flashed my nuts at the deputy director, saw a seriously nasty crime scene involving a senator with his head cut off, beat on a senior officer and got away with it, threw up and almost shit myself, shot someone, and now I was standing to attention outside the president’s office.

The. President’s. Office.

Luckily, I was obviously too low-ranking and insignificant to warrant actually going inside… which, now that I was there, I did feel a little upset about. But I found myself growing ever more concerned about Rivera facing the most important and influential people in Zion all by himself.

A few times I tried to catch Valentina’s eye to exchange a look, but she kept her gaze intentionally away from mine. No doubt worrying like I did that she’d be asked to put on her outdoor jacket and go on a walk following a couple of assassins in an irradiated wasteland.

Rivera took almost a full fifteen minutes before he came out looking as pale as I naturally did, never having seen any daylight and not having much time to visit the UV banks.

His face told me everything.

“Let me guess, sir,” I said quietly as he approached. “Not here?”

18

Be Careful What You Wish For

Rivera

“Take a seat,” the president said stiffly as he walked in. I relaxed, glancing down at the couch that seemed too low to the ground to be able to sit in without falling backwards, but it dawned on me that he was talking to the deputy director and not me. In fact, he didn’t even look at me. I knew not to expect any kind of nepotism from him, but I felt that the man I knew as “uncle” could’ve done was to acknowledge my existence.

He was dressed in smart casual clothing, tan slacks and a loose polo shirt, which told me that we were interrupting his private time.

“Make it quick, Angela,” he said, glancing at his watch pointedly, even though I suspected he knew very well what time it was. “My evenings are sacrosanct. I’d have thought that would be known well enough.” He deigned to glance in my direction and his expression was not one of kindness.

I knew everyone liked to whisper about my family connections, and although it was true that my family owned a controlling stake in a number of enterprises which afforded me the best opportunities available in Zion City, where the rumors were incorrect was that my aunt by marriage, being this man’s sister, made him somehow close to me.

He resented my presence in his office, even more so as it was outside normal hours, and I presumed he suspected I had implied a family connection to engineer his summons.

“Mister President,” the deputy director said, “I apologize for the hour, sir, but the lead officer investigating the matter we discussed this morning has uncovered… well, he’s uncovered certain time-sensitive facts that warrant your immediate approval—or denial—to determine which way the investigation goes.”

The president sat back in his chair, fiddling with a pen he’d picked up from the desk and turned to me. Again, it was not with fondness that he regarded me.

“You’ve spent the day poking your nose into the affairs of people who should be considered beyond reproach and above all this lower-level unpleasantness,” he began. “You’ve accessed video surveillance of free citizens of Zion, had people go through their communications logs and financial records, interrogated them in their homes when—and this is obvious even to me—you should’ve been combing the lower levels for the culprits. Now, as a result of your… your witch hunt, another soul has been lost and those responsible have escaped.”

He stopped speaking and left me unsure if I should respond, especially as he’d mistaken a number of relevant facts, but I decided to play it safe and wait until asked a direct question.

“No arguments there, obviously,” he said. “You’ve since detained forty-one people and dragged their stink into detention areas all over Zion, wasted hundreds of man-hours chasing down every insignificant line of enquiry until finally you discovered that criminals have managed to enter the city illegally, murder a prominent member of the senate, and escape.”

“Sir,” I said, feeling the need to correct him on that part in case he hadn’t been updated. I needn’t have bothered. He cut me off with an angry, dismissive wave.

“Yes, I know one of your Rangers shot one of them and terrified a dozen people in customs, and I also know that they’re unlikely to survive and provide us with any valuable information regarding who sent them here to do it. Which leads me to one conclusion,” he said, the corner of his mouth curled up in a cruel smirk. “You want to go outside the city to chase down the two escapees.”

“Yes, sir.”

He stared at me, swinging his chair from side to side as he pretended to think. I could tell he’d already made up his mind about what to choose, as much as I knew he was intentionally delaying giving that decision until he felt that I’d suffered sufficiently.

“Permission granted. Angela? Assign someone to take over the junior commander’s assignment effective first thing in the morning. I’ll need his senior staff to remain in place and bring his replacement up to full speed, naturally.”

“Naturally,” the deputy director echoed sycophantically.

“Sir, ma’am, if I may? Lieutenant Kumar has a good oversight of the investigation and could assist whoever replaces me, but I request that I retain the services of Sergeant Forge, who has been instrumental in th—”

“Denied,” the deputy director said without even looking up from the notebook she was scribbling in. “The sergeant will report to Lieutenant Kumar, ready to hand over the investigation notes. You may take two Rangers to assist; any more than that and you’ll cause an undue impact on the duty roster.”

Not being one to unnecessarily employ bad language, I felt my urge to shout “bullshit” rise to a worrying height in my throat. I swallowed.

“Just two?”

“Two,” the deputy director confirmed smugly.

“And as for logistical support?” I asked, hoping to get something in the way of guidance and assistance.

“I’m certain an officer of your experience can find his way to the quartermaster,” the deputy director said, finally treating me to a smile which made it obvious I was a pain in her ass. “Dismissed.”

“Deputy Director, if I may?” I asked as smoothly as I could, hoping to emulate my father’s easy authority over the more senior members of the city establishment.

Her eyebrows went up, either to invite me to say whatever I needed to say or else because she couldn’t believe I’d spoken to her after she’d dismissed me.

I decided to double down and just ask my question anyway.

“I understand your very astute reasoning for not taking more than two Rangers, however I formally request permission to take an airship.”

Her eyes went wide and she turned to glance at the president to see if he could believe my bare-faced audacity.

“Travelling by air will increase the speed and success rate of the pursuit, not to mention the added security an advantageous height would afford u—”

“Denied!” she snapped, looking like she was about to erupt. “Your investigation has impacted on the civilian population more than enough already, and now you want to… to… to steal an airship for your wild goose chase?”

I gave up, knowing that opening my mouth again might result in me walking after my quarry, and left the office thankful that I at least had a chance to hunt a real fugitive.

* * *

“Let me guess, sir,” Quinn muttered to me when I emerged back into the hallway. “Not here?”

I looked around, seeing nobody within earshot who could hear my embarrassment should these two deny my request. Truth was, I couldn’t bring myself to order them to leave Zion. I was fairly certain I hadn’t the authority to do that. No, I wanted their assistance to be voluntary. If not, I was fully prepared to go it alone.

“Here will do this time,” I said, forcing myself to smile at them. Both returned my look with one of dread. I drew myself up and prepared to be humiliated, but I saw no other choice that I could live with.

“Quinn, Valentina, your work today has been exemplary. Regardless of what happens now, both of you will be cited for exceptional work. I want you to know that nothing will change that opinion I have of you both,” I said, meaning it. They had both surprised me with their ingenuity and abilities, and I was glad that I had taken the advice of the irascible Sergeant Forge that morning to include Rangers more accustomed to life in the lower levels. I admit to being skeptical at the time, but his recommendation turned out to be worthwhile.

“I’m heading out in pursuit of the two fugitives who have escaped justice,” I said, the words coming out a little more grandiose than I intended. “I can’t, no I won’t, order either of you to journey into the wasteland with me, but if either or both of you would agree to accompany me on this task, I want you to know that my personal thanks would join my professional appreciation of yo—”

“Sir?” Valentina interrupted me, sounding bored and tired. She made no attempt to hide it either and my chest went cold in anticipation of rejection.

“You think we’re going to let you disappear out into the wastes without anyone to watch your back?”

The cold sensation disappeared, and I fought down the urge to let out a whoop of joy which would’ve painted me as most unprofessional.

“Me and Quinn have your back, Commander,” she said.

“Outstanding,” was all I could say. I didn’t know what I would’ve done if they’d both declined. Probably gone on my own, as they were really the only two Rangers I knew who weren’t officers or sergeants. I checked my watch.

“I need to get some things from home to prepare,” I told them. “Meet at the quartermaster’s stores in thirty minutes?”

“Wait,” Quinn said, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. “We’re going tonight? Now?”

“No time like the present,” I told him, suddenly remembering our conversation earlier. “But if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll ask the good doctor if she can prepare something to help us stay awake after the exertions of the day.”

They agreed and we left, being escorted in silence out of the president’s residence and into the open expanse on level one. I looked up as I always liked to in darkness, seeing the sloped sections of thick glass protecting the atmosphere inside level one from the harsh outside but still affording me a glimpse of the stars.

It was the stars I liked more than the sun. The sun always seemed unforgiving, like a big, inescapable eye, but my mother sometimes liked to sit in the small gardens of level one with me and watch the sunset. We’d stay there for hours some nights, just watching and waiting for a star to streak across the night sky so I could make a wish on it.

Make a wish, Claude, she’d say. Never tell anyone what it is, else it won’t come true.

I felt my eyes glisten with an unexpected tear, either through recollection of the fond memory or for genuine apprehension of what I’d asked to do. Of the fate I’d resigned not only myself to, but two others whose only fault was to be the first and last names on a list of qualified Rangers.

Be careful what you wish for, my mother would say.

19

Stores

Quinn

“Can’t help you,” the quartermaster said, his face expressive as a steel wall and just as ugly. He wore a Ranger uniform which looked like the last time it had been washed was way before this asshole had given up on life.

“No signed request, no gear,” he said flatly with a finger raised above his counter. “Read the sign.” I looked up, and sure enough there was a faded sign there. Reading, “No signed request, no gear.”

Quartermaster one, Ranger zero.

“What seems to be the problem?” Rivera asked as he walked in and caught the end of the standoff.

“Got two folks think they’re gonna get whatever gear they want just ’coz they’s askin’ fer it,” the quartermaster said after eyeing up the cut of the officer’s uniform and taking in his rank, deciding that he wasn’t high up enough to warrant an added “sir.” This was his domain here.

“That’s unacceptable,” Rivera said flatly, making the jerk grin like he’d just landed reinforcements. “Have you informed them that they require the appropriate authority of an officer?” he asked, shooting me a covert wink.

“Told ’em they need a signed request,” he crowed. “’S’policy,” he added, pointing again to his sign. “This here gear’s for storin’. S’why it’s called stores. Place ain’t called issues, is it now?”

“Quite,” Rivera chuckled. “Out of interest,” he said, retrieving a small pad of paper and a pen which he clicked on as he eyed me up suspiciously, “what items were they trying to get?”

“What was it now?” the quartermaster said menacingly as if he would enjoy getting us in more trouble. “They wanted three sets of protective gear, weapons, rations, water… I mean, I could go on…”

“Specifically,” Rivera asked, still writing.

“Huh?”

“Be specific. What were they requesting?”

“Sp… spec… s’pifically they’s askin’ for three hazardous protection suits. Three rifles and spare ammo, a week’s rations, and water for three… well, that’s as far as they got before I telled ’em no and you come in.”

“I see,” Rivera said, leaving everyone hanging as he finished writing. He handed over the paper to the quartermaster and returned the pen to his pocket. He laid both hands on the desk and leaned over it halfway.

“You can add to the list two spare sets of coveralls for each of us, three Geiger counters and spare batteries, four sets of shackles, additional water and rations, a reliable vehicle with two spare wheels and a fully charged battery—I want to see the recent maintenance report for the solar panels too in case they’re old or faulty. You will get it all inside of twenty minutes, or I’ll find an excuse to add a fourth person to our mission and you can accompany us. How does that sound?”

The quartermaster gaped at him like all the air had been sucked out of the room and left it a vacuum.

“Excellent work,” Rivera said with a smile. “Carry on.”

* * *

I barely made it out of the room before air exploded out from my pursed lips. Valentina smiled, sort of, and Rivera looked just as giddy as I felt.

There was something different about him, like he’d been let off a leash and was ready to get dirty like the rest of us who worked for a living. It was as if he’d dropped part of his officer act and shown his true age. He’d changed into a set of black coveralls like the ones he’d just ordered up for all of us, only I could tell that his were custom made. The set I had back in my room were a size too small and cut my balls in half every time I raised my arms.

He was so hyped, that after pressing the call button for the nearest elevator and seeing how far away it was, he tutted—the Claude Rivera equivalent of “fuck this shit”—and headed for the stairwell to jog up the single flight to level two, where he set off at a fast pace toward the medical facility we’d seemed to gravitate to all day long.

The place was deserted, not surprisingly as it was after hours by then, but we found Lopez sitting behind the main reception desk with her feet up, a mug of something in her hand. She took a sip of it as we walked in and pulled a face which told me the cup didn’t contain tea.

“You’re killing me today, Claude,” she said, the boundaries of professionalism lowered due to the hour. I caught a glimpse of the bottle and saw half of it gone.

“What if I promised you that this is the last you’ll see of us for a few days?” he shot back, still upbeat.

“A few days? That’s wishful thinking,” she said, making me wonder how long it would take to chase the two women down and drag them back to face justice. Lopez groaned as she lowered her feet to the ground and stood, her back cracking unnervingly as she straightened up.

“Okay then,” she said. “Who’s your assigned medic?”

I looked at Rivera and he looked right back at me.

Valentina stepped in between us. “I’ve done the medic’s course,” she said with a resigned sigh.

“Good,” Lopez said. “Glad it’s not one of these chuckleheads.” I didn’t have time to do anything other than pull a face at what she meant by that before she stooped to heft a heavy pack.

“Basics are all in here,” she said. “I’ve put it together myself so you might want to familiarize yourself with where everything is and move it around to suit.”

Valentina accepted the bag and set it down on the desk to unzip it. She ran her hands over the contents all lined up behind neat little mesh pouches and check to see where things were.

“Fluids?” she asked.

“Saline and plasma in the other side,” Lopez told her. “Two of each so, you know, don’t go getting shot too often.”

“I’ll try not to,” I said, meaning it more than she realized.

“And the other items we discussed?” Rivera asked in a hushed voice.

“Anti-radiation medication,” Lopez said with a gentle slap at a zipped pouch on the bag. “Take one a day unless you know for sure you’ve been exposed.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“Then you take a double dose but expect side effects.”

Rivera cleared his throat. “And the other, other items?”

“Oh, you mean the weapons-grade stims you asked me to make up for you?” Lopez asked in a voice far louder than it needed to be. Rivera looked embarrassed, but I wasn’t too proud. After the day he’d put us through, the least he could do was score us something good to keep our eyes open. Lopez reached into the pocket of her white coat and took out a fistful of tiny canisters.

I saw them and smiled. She’d given us the type where you just had to spray the contents under your tongue instead of having to smoke the stuff or inject it like the hardcore rock salt addicts I wasted my life dealing with.

“Use them sparingly,” she warned as she handed them to Valentina to put in the med kit. “I mean it. Sleep does more for the body than any medicine I can prescribe, so only take these when you must. Otherwise, stop and rest.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Rivera answered solemnly. “You have my word.”

“Well, alright then,” she replied. “Good luck, I guess. Try not to get killed or irradiated, okay?”

20

The Wastes

Believe it or not, I’d never driven. Not a real vehicle, anyway. We’d all driven a sim in basic training, as part of our role included external patrols in vehicles, but they’d been stopped somewhere around five years before I joined, even if the training manual hadn’t been updated. The sim was a mockup of a buggy in front of a screen that bumped up and down and accelerated or slowed the feed, depending on how much juice you gave it and where you turned the wheel.

It was lame, but because I’d done the training, I assumed I had it down. So I asked to drive first.

We didn’t leave via customs but through one of two vehicle exits, sealed for Ranger use only. Fifteen years or so of being shut made the doors scream loud enough to wake half the city with their tortured, metal protests.

We sat in the buggy which, despite the quartermaster being a jerk, was clean, fully charged, and neatly stacked with the gear Rivera had requested and then some. I think Rivera felt a little stupid when me and Valentina started unpacking and re-packing it all, like he was used to trusting other people to do things right the first time and hadn’t spent much of his life in the real world where shit went wrong and people were lazy or incompetent.

“You’re familiar with the rifles?” Rivera asked. Something in his voice made his natural air of authority waver a little. It was almost like he was hoping we weren’t so he could get a shakedown for our benefit. Just as I was trying to find a nice way to suggest we test-fire a few rounds to be sure, Valentina decided to emasculate us.

“If you two are gonna start talking about guns and touching each other, then you can count me out,” she said with a smirk before seeing Rivera’s expression and adding a hasty, “sir.”

“I’d suggest we familiarize ourselves with them when we’re away from Zion,” Rivera said quietly, all but admitting he needed a lesson on the weapon.

He probably didn’t need to qualify on the rifles every two years like we did, but he seemed comfortable enough with the sidearm, so I guessed he’d be okay.

We got in, Rivera taking the back seat and sitting centrally with a plastic-covered map folded next to him like he was a tank commander in the old holo vids. He told me to take us into the airlock. I pressed my foot lightly onto the gas pedal, intending to ease us forward gently, but the buggy just whined and strained. I took my foot off the pedal and tried again, making sure the selector was in drive first. The same thing happened again and the electric motors powering each wheel whined louder as I gave it more pressure, but the damn buggy stayed put like a cat with a leash on refusing to budge.

“Strike two, jackass,” Valentina said, lifting a gloved finger up in the air, making my eyes follow it before she turned it and pointed down at the electric brake.

Shit.

“Sorry,” I said, unable to pretend my two false starts were anything but a product of my own stupidity. I pressed the button to release the brake and yelped as we shot forward too fast to stop in time before the outer door of the airlock stopped us with a jolt.

“Sorry,” I said again, way more pathetically than the last time.

“Are you sure you can drive a buggy, Quinn?” Rivera asked as politely as he could, having just suffered whiplash.

“I got it, Commander,” I assured him. “Just pressing out the kinks is all.”

The doors behind us shrieked in protest again as they began to close and seal us in, ready for the outer door to open and send us out into a million square miles of who-the-hell-knew-what. We waited in silence—at least, we didn’t talk because the doors were still grinding so bad that we wouldn’t have heard anything we said to each other, anyway. The door finally closed, and an ancient yellow warning light began to spin lazily on the outer doors in some ominous display of the unknown.

“Wait,” Valentina said, “do we need radiation gear on here?”

I looked at the box sitting on the dash in the center, where one of our Geiger counters was wedged in place with the detection wand strapped to the far end of the hood. The world erupted in noise as the outer doors shrieked in protest and the atmosphere inside the airlock rushed past our ears into the blackness beyond the crack appearing ahead of us.

“Erm,” I said, staring at the quivering radiation detector needle, my hands poised to scramble for protective gear.

“The area above Zion is largely radiation-free,” Rivera yelled each word over the noise. “Only the water in the canyon below is contaminated. We need to be wary of strong easterly or northerly winds or heavy precipitation which can cause increased radiation levels in the surrounding area.”

The noise of the doors screeching subsided. The rushing air dissipated to nothing.

Resetting his voice to normal levels, Rivera said, “So long as we stick to the safe zones heading northeast, we should be fine on that front. Other than that, I only know the theory.”

“You been outside before, sir?” I asked as I clicked the selector back into drive and fumbled for the switch to activate the bright LED lightbar fixed under the front section of the roll cage.

“Me? Never. I… I studied the fall of civilization and the ensuing irradiation problems. In fact, I presented my thesis on the reasons for the construction and expansion of Zion City as…” He trailed off, seeing both of our faces looking back at him blankly.

“Anyway, we’re fine here, but if that needle spikes, we reverse hard and put protective suits on, understood?”

We chorused a “yessir” from the front seats as I eased us out into the yawning darkness. The first thing to hit me was just how cold the air was. It took my breath away at first and when I sucked in a gulp of outside air, it made my teeth hurt. I made it maybe five hundred feet before I slowed and stopped the buggy.

“Sorry, sir,” I said as I climbed out, with Valentina hissing curses beside me as she hit the electronic parking brake I’d forgotten to press. I dug into my kit bag and came out with a set of goggles I’d found packed in the buggy and a long scarf to wrap around my mouth and face to keep the sand out.

I got back behind the wheel and settled in, pulling the straps over my shoulders before I turned to Valentina.

“Hey, medic, any chance of a stim so I don’t fall asleep behind the wheel?”

She must’ve been expecting the request because she pulled three from a leg pocket and handed us one each. I pulled down the scarf and lifted my tongue to pop off the cap and hit the spray.

Now, I’d never hit the rock salts like so many people I know, but whenever I heard anyone saying how they’d never be like the rockhoppers rotting away in the lower levels, I always laughed to myself at how close everyone was to exactly that fate.

Why take drugs? Well, if the stims were anything to go by, it was because they felt so fucking good it was hard not to.

I felt it kicking in, focusing my vision on the floodlit dust of the road ahead, and I pressed the gas pedal in harder to push us northeast and make up the ground we’d lost on our fugitives.

21

Nocturnal

We drove for about three hours, and all the while I fought off the urge to laugh like I’d lost my mind and floor the power pedal. I’d used stims plenty to stay awake on duty, but I don’t think I’d ever been as exhausted as I was then before taking one. Management frowned upon their overuse, but they’d been deemed legal way before my time, which meant they were regulated and cost a whole lot more than they did when they were more of an under-the-table purchase.

This one, however… this one was, what did Lopez call it? Weapons grade? Yeah, this one was weapons grade. I was wired, but the compound effect of the stim wearing off after a sixteen-hour shift that followed about two hours’ sleep and next to no sustenance throughout the day was the worst crash ever.

Rivera recognized it before I did.

“We need to switch drivers. I’ll take the wheel if you can navigate?” he shouted to Valentina over the noise of the wind and the scarf covering his face.

She held up a hand, thumb extended, gloved fingers folded into a fist to acknowledge his words.

I slowed, just taking my foot off the pedal and letting the four electric motors wind down to a fairly quick stop, forgetting that the upward travel of the pedal was the brake. We were all pushed forward against the straps with the inertia until the forces reversed and we thumped back against the molded foam and rubber of the figure-hugging seats. I clicked the selector into park and remembered to press the e-brake, with a wink through my goggles to Valentina, who ignored me like I was insignificant and annoying.

I unstrapped and climbed out, my back cricking as I stretched it out, lifting my goggles onto my head and pulling my scarf down. Rivera did the same and I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle at his appearance lit by the headlights’ white glow.

“Something amusing, Ranger?” he asked, tiredness obviously making him sound like an ass.

“It’s, er, it’s just your face, sir.” I winced as soon as I said it. “I mean the dust…” I pointed at my own face and made a circling motion, demonstrating that his entire face was affected. Rivera scoffed a laugh.

“You should see yourself,” he said, walking off out of sight into the darkness. I did the same in a different direction, selecting a boulder about knee height with a dry shrub sprouting beside it, looking like it’d seen better days. I watered it, feeling like I was helping in some small way, before turning back toward the lights of the buggy and freezing.

A growl, low and threatening, came from somewhere off to my right. Another answered from the left and added the sensation of my balls retracting into my body like they could somehow hide if the rest of me got killed.

I ran.

Okay, to be more precise, I kind of half stumbled, half ran back to the bubble of light surrounding the buggy, making a noise that was somewhere between a yell and struggling to take a painful shit, all the while tugging on the pistol holstered on my right hip and failing to remember to hit the thumb break that would free the weapon.

“What? What is it?” Rivera demanded.

“Fnnnneeurgh!” I grunted, pointing wildly behind me as I threw myself up on the back of the buggy and finally succeeded in drawing my sidearm and pointing it out into the darkness blindly. Rivera gawped at me for a second before scrambling up beside me, where I fought the urge to cling to him and scream like a child.

“What’s out there?” Rivera demanded angrily. I opened my mouth to answer before I realized I didn’t actually know and shut it again as panic surged in my exhausted brain once more at the sight of two yellow reflections heading our way. I pointed, and Rivera aimed his weapon that way.

“Shit!” I yelped, aiming my weapon at another set of eyes reflecting the buggy’s lights that appeared in the gloom.

“What the hell are they?”

“I don’t. Fucking. Know. Sir,” I growled. “I’ve never been outside Zion before!” I let out another gasp of fear as the buggy rocked, turning to see Valentina lifting a rifle from where it was strapped to the cargo section. She yanked back the charging handle and pulled the gun into her shoulder before uttering two words that made my blood freeze in my veins.

“Don’t move.”

We didn’t, but as more eyes ringed our position, the chorus of growls started up again. Whatever was out there was gearing themselves up to attack, like a bunch of drunk guys at midnight outside a level nine bar.

“What the hell are they, Valentina?” Rivera hissed, his gun wavering, both hands holding it way out ahead of him as the three of us huddled in the buggy.

“I don’t know,” she said, “but one of them—an alpha—rules the others, I’m sure of it.”

“How does that help?” I asked, feeling oddly calm now that she was there.

“If we kill that one, the others won’t attack.”

As far as plans went, well, it wasn’t the worst one I’d ever heard.

A snarl erupted to our left, to the front of the buggy, and one set of eyes came closer with an eerie swaying motion until it reached the edge of the light and kept coming. For the second time that day I almost threw up as a leathery, hairless dog stalked into the light.

“There’s your alpha,” Rivera said, slowly rotating his body to point the weapon at it.

It snarled again, muscles bunching up under the translucent skin as it splayed its ugly paws out to dig into the dried dirt, ready to launch. Everything about its movement said it was going to pounce, and if Valentina was right, that would mean the others would be following suit soon after.

My vision whited-out and my hearing disappeared as the world flashed bright orange and the concussive noise of a rifle being fired beside my left ear consumed every one of my senses. Valentina must’ve unloaded half a magazine into the thing by the time I managed to open my eyes, because when I blinked and tried to focus, I saw its shredded body leaking dark green slime.

“Drive,” Valentina said, her voice tense with very real fear. Rivera almost pushed me off the back of the buggy as he threw himself into the seat behind the wheel.

“Hold on!” he yelled. I barely had time to grab the roll cage before the buggy shot forward, spewing dust plumes as the back tires bit into the ground for purchase.

“They’re following,” Valentina warned. “Drive faster!”

I looked behind us, blinking again as I now had dust in my eyes to compete with the damage the rifle’s muzzle flash had caused to see which one could cause permanent blindness first. Holding on awkwardly, I dragged the goggles down over my eyes and watched the swarm of reflected yellow eyes following us.

“I’m going as fast as I can without crashing,” Rivera answered, sounding pissed at her for suggesting he get us the hell out of there faster.

“Quinn, hold on to me,” Valentina ordered. My first thought was that it was a strange time for her to want an embrace but if she thought we were going to die, then I guess time was irrelevant.

I put that particular brainfart down to the shock of what had just happened and braced myself against the roll cage to grab tightly around her waist so she could use the rifle properly. She still bounced around and had to time her bursts, but with me anchoring her, at least she could shoot and not fall out of the buggy.

It took five bursts, an awkward magazine change and another three bursts before they dropped away and we climbed back into our seats. Nobody said anything for a while, we just wrapped our scarves around our faces and readjusted our goggles in shocked silence.

“We stay on this track,” Rivera said finally, “we should meet the end of the canyon by dawn.”

“And we’re sure they went north?” I asked, playing devil’s advocate and addressing the fact that we’d all come to the same conclusion.

“There’s nothing in the south any longer,” Rivera assured me, “and unless these people had transport waiting, we should be ahead of them.”

22

Ambush

If I wasn’t more exhausted than I’d ever been before in my life, I might’ve experienced things a little differently. If that exhaustion hadn’t been compounded by the arrival of a pack of green leather mutant dogs, there would still have been a slim chance to appreciate what I saw.

The first I knew of it was when Valentina gasped with something like shock. I spun, my unfamiliar rifle coming squeezed into my shoulder, expecting more hideous monstrosities to come out of the gloom, when I figured out what had caused her reaction.

The sun broke over the eastern horizon, bathing the gray landscape in a hot orange haze I’d never seen before in nature. Then I remembered that nature, or the twisted version of it out here in the wastes, could go fuck itself, and I turned back to face the direction of the canyon mouth.

I lay face down with my right knee slightly up so I could still breathe and focused on the sight, which Valentina had reminded me was called the ARDS, or advanced ranging… something-something. I didn’t know the terms, but I understood enough to put the red dot on the thing I wanted to hit and wait for it to adjust for elevation if it was far away.

I was aiming at the last dogleg of the canyon bed before it leveled out and rose up to our elevation. Rivera repeated himself enough times to make it pretty obvious he was nervous, saying how he was sure, given the distance from the canyon mouth to Zion and the distance we’d covered in the night at whatever average speed, we were ahead of them.

“And that’s not assuming that the first one didn’t wait for the second,” he said for maybe the third time. “That would put us hours ahead of them.”

“So, Commander, does that mean I have time to close my eyes for just an hour? Half an hour? … No?”

“We’ll work in shifts,” Rivera said after a while. “Two awake and one resting. Valentina? Are you—”

“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Quinn needs to rest before he starts hallucinating.”

She was right on that point. After the day and night I’d had, combined with the stim, I was crashing big time. I slid my rifle to my side and pulled my scarf up over my head and kept my goggles on. Closing my eyes was a technicality, because I was out like a light.

* * *

You know when you wake up and you don’t really know where you are? Like, you know something isn’t right, but your brain can’t make it form into words you can understand yet?

Well, I woke like that. I scrambled to drag the scarf off my face as I tried to push up from the ground despite my cramped muscles screaming at me.

I couldn’t move. I tried again but something pushed me back down and hissed a noise.

“Stay the fuck down, jerkoff,” Valentina whispered angrily to me.

I was instantly awake then, muttering, “Okay, okay,” at her so she’d let me go. She took her knee off my shoulders and settled down next to me with her rifle resting gently over a rock.

“Something’s coming,” she said. All I could think to ask was how long I’d been asleep, but a stolen glance up at my watch gave me the answer: not long, and the pounding in my head added that it wasn’t nearly long enough.

“What is it?” I asked in a whisper.

“I do not know, but given what’s already happened, we can assume probably nothing good.”

Then I felt it. The ground began to vibrate as a low rumble filled my head, making me think that whatever was coming was going to be big.

“We have to move,” Rivera said urgently. It was one of those times in my life that I didn’t need telling twice, and I flew to my feet to snatch up my pack and weapon. Rivera led the way up the low gradient slope scattered with loose rocks back to where we’d left the buggy out of sight of the canyon, reaching it first and tossing his bag in before sweeping his aimed rifle all around with what looked to me more like panic than situational awareness.

“Whoa, fuck!” Valentina cursed at him as his muzzle swept over her. Rivera muttered an apology as we both got to him and followed his bag with our own.

“What the hell?” I asked. “What is that?”

Rivera didn’t answer me but ran to the edge of the canyon wall and dropped down to lie flat. I followed his lead and set myself down a half dozen paces away to aim my rifle at the turn in the canyon where I could see dust disturbing the air.

Nobody spoke. We just watched and waited.

The noise grew as the rumbling in the ground became a low thunder. Tiny rocks danced on the ground as it shook, my body vibrating uncomfortably.

The dust cloud birthed a rank of savage, twisted horns as the front runners emerged into the canyon’s mouth.

“Stampede,” Valentina said simply, her voice full of fear and awe.

“What?” I asked, not getting an answer as the thundering of hundreds of hooves sucked all the sound out of the world. There must’ve been a couple hundred of the… the beasts down there, all jostling and competing to get to the front like there was a fire behind them. Through the rifle’s optic, I could make them out to be about the height of grown man in body, but with a long neck and head that I guessed would tower over me. Above that, like something from a goddamned nightmare, sprouted a random mess of spiked horns that easily added half their height again.

The muscles in their legs and chests tightened and flexed as they dug hooves into the ground for speed, running for open ground like their lives depended on it.

And that’s when logic kicked me in the balls.

“What are they running from?” I asked loudly, hoping the others could hear me. “What the hell are they running from?” I yelled louder.

“Nothing good,” Rivera yelled back as the stampede passed by below our position and the ground shook like an earthquake.

More of them piled through the turn in the canyon, flowing through and past one another in their need to escape the confines of the canyon walls. Some of them moved more slowly, their twisted horns interlocked and unable to break free, as their neighbors surged past them. The leaders broke free of the scar on the earth’s surface, some turning off the path to hinge their bodies with great effort and climb the lower slopes toward freedom.

I had a moment of panic—okay, more panic than I was already suffering—that one of the beasts would head straight for us, but it looked like the slope was too steep just below us.

“Whatever comes next,” Rivera told us, “don’t fire unless I say so.”

The thundering died away, leaving the ground still once more as silence began to return to our dusty patch of wasteland.

A noise pierced the air, distant and high-pitched, and I kept my rifle pointing at the meeting of the two walls of the canyon where the dust still swirled over the disturbed ground.

A bike, electric motor singing a whining note that undulated as the rider adjusted the throttle to navigate around the canyon boulders.

“Is that them… ?” Valentina asked.

“Reckon anyone else is screwing around out here today?” I asked.

“Quiet,” Rivera snapped. “Can you identify them at all?”

I watched closely. I’d be able to say, legally, I was about ten percent certain this was one of the figures I’d seen leaving Zion via unofficial means on grainy camera footage. And ten percent was being kind, because over half of that was circumstantial assumption.

“Well?” Rivera demanded.

“No, sir,” I answered honestly.

“Negative,” Valentina echoed.

“Dammit,” Rivera cursed. “We need to detain them for a positive identification.”

“How?” I asked, genuinely confused about how he planned to go about that. He answered by squeezing off a rapid bunch of two-round bursts from his rifle, kicking up dust kick ahead of the bike’s progress below. The percussive crack of the rounds leaving his weapon were echoed in ricochets from the canyon floor.

The rider faltered, the handlebars snagging left to right as they lost control. The head whipped around wildly, showing me nothing as they wore goggles and a scarf wrapped around their face like we did. That movement sealed their fate.

The front wheel of the bike hit a rock and pitched the rider forward over the bars. The bike dropped, standing up on its front wheel like it was performing a trick before it slammed down to the dirt. I switched my aim back to the left to find the rider but couldn’t see them. Scanning farther, I still couldn’t see where they were, so I took my eye away from the optic to see… nothing.

“Got her,” Valentina said.

“Where? I don’t see her. Them.”

“They’re not moving,” Rivera answered. “I need one of you to stay here and keep cover.”

“I’ll cover,” Valentina said. Something in her tone made me think it was because she didn’t trust us to cover her if she went down there.

“Let’s go,” Rivera said, looking over the edge of the canyon wall and deciding, thankfully, to head back to the lower slopes first.

“You see anything you don’t like, Valentina, you make sure they don’t get up,” I told her on my way past.

23

Success… Kind of

Quinn

It took a long time to reach the bike’s crash site. At least it felt like it did. I had no idea how long in actual time it took because I was too busy concentrating and trying not to breathe so hard I made myself deaf to anything else.

It wasn’t like the wastes hadn’t already delivered in buckets when it came to weird shit that could kill me.

The concentration it took, physically and mentally, to move tactically across ground literally filled with loose rocks coming in a plethora of sizes and shapes was killing me. My breath caught in my throat as I saw what Rivera had stopped to take aim at: one of the massive horned beasts down on its side and not moving as it lay between two large boulders.

He waved me off to his right to provide cover and not have him in my field of fire. I moved, switching between keeping my eye to the iron sights on the side of my gun and looking down to make sure I didn’t fall on my ass.

“Sir, what the hell is that thing?”

“I believe, Quinn, it’s a kind of deer.”

“Like a cow?” I asked, basing the only comparable animal I’d seen against the body on the ground.

“In a way, yes… only I think these are, how did you put it? Different.”

“Oh, so they’re like a mutated cow?”

“Yes, but a deer, not a cow.”

“Oh. Okay. What are the horns for?”

“They’re antlers,” he told me, like throwing a new word at me would solve the issue of my confusion. “They’re for display, I think.”

The creature’s head spasmed as it stuck out its tongue and bellowed before collapsing again. By the time my asshole had even begun to unclench, I could make out low, shallow breathing from the animal.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“I think… I think it’s been bitten by something.”

Not the fucking words I wanted to hear.

“Look, you see the swelling there?” he pointed at the thing’s long, bony back leg. It was swelling and turning black. The deer moaned again, releasing a mouthful of white froth from its mouth. It lay its head back down and gasped for air.

“Don’t disturb any rocks,” Rivera said as he slowly turned around to inspect the area around his boots. “I’m starting to think there might be snakes in the canyon.”

Great. That’s just fucking great!

“Yes, sir,” I answered dutifully.

“And listen out for any kind of rattling noise. Apparently, some snakes have rattles on their tails that warn off other predators.”

Given how small and vulnerable I felt out here, I didn’t exactly put myself in the category of “predator” but more of “snack.”

“I think we should put the beast out of its misery,” Rivera told me, bringing the gun back up into his shoulder and taking aim at the deer’s head. He took a step closer and the small box strapped to his belt began an insistent clicking noise.

Fuck! I thought. One of those snakes is here!

With a yelp, I scrambled up on top of a large rock, looking desperately around for whatever monstrosity was coming for me next.

“Quinn, get down! That thing is irradiated!”

I got down. And ran for twenty paces to make sure. Rivera joined me and caught his breath.

“That solves the question as to whether the wildlife is edible,” he said as he checked the Geiger box on his waist. Pressing a button, he made the second needle jump up to the last recorded high, whereas the main needle stayed on zero.

“Not a very high reading,” he said, sounding calmer about it than I felt. “Slightly higher than the canyon water at home prior to treatment.”

It bellowed again, pitifully and in obvious pain, and this time I raised my own gun.

“I’ll do it, sir,” I said, speaking words I didn’t know I meant until they came out of my mouth. “I hate seeing an animal in pain, radioactive or not.”

I aimed, flicked the catch to single round, and put a 6.5 mil round between its eyes.

“Well done,” Rivera said, though whether he was commenting on my humanity or my marksmanship, I didn’t know. “Come on.”

The whine of the electric motors on the crashed bike hit my ears after another fifty cautious paces. Rivera waved me out to the right again to give cover as we approached the crumpled body of the rider, who hadn’t moved. With one last glance up to the ridgeline where Valentina was, Rivera slung his rifle and bent to place a hand against the body.

“Nothing,” he said after a while. “No pulse.”

I slung my own rifle and picked my way carefully over to him, bending down to unwind the scarf from the face before both of us turned away in revulsion.

“Oh, my goodness,” Rivera said, somehow retaining his manners in the situation.

“Holy fucking fuckballs!” I yelled, launching to my feet and staggering backwards before my brain shouted the word “SNAKE” at me and I snatched for my gun.

When I’d pulled the scarf away, the damage it hid became apparent. The skin around the neck was twisted tight and wrinkled unnaturally, and with the removal of the rest of the scarf came the ugly fact that the body was facedown but the head was looking up.

“Guess she hit a rock when she crashed?”

“Yes,” Rivera answered. “I imagine she did.” I got his point, seeing the dust-covered dark clothing of the woman I was now pretty certain I’d seen on the grainy surveillance footage. Rivera began looking through her pockets as I went to the bike and shut off the power. I picked it up, which was an easier task than I thought it would be, and rested it against a rock before starting to dig into the pack strapped to the back of it to pull out a pile of cloth crumpled into the top. Tossing it out on the ground, I got Rivera’s attention and pointed at it.

“Parachute,” he said. “The second one to escape the city.”

The realization hit me then. They didn’t wait for each other, so the first one was probably a day ahead of us by now.

A noise echoed down the canyon from the direction of home, making the hairs on my neck stand up.

“Help me get the body on the bike,” Rivera said. “I’d like to get out of the canyon if it’s all the same to you.”

It was absolutely fine by me, and between us, picking up the body and laying it over the bike was simple enough. What was hard was navigating it out between the rocks with two of us holding it, all the while being cautious not to kick over a rock and find out the truth about snakes.

“Sir, let me try to ride it,” I said, not waiting for an answer but throwing my right leg over the saddle and sitting down, pressed up against the corpse. He didn’t stop me, and I soon got the hang of twisting the throttle with my right hand to speed up and slow down as I used my feet to steady us and wove the front tire through the path my mind imagined. Closer to the mouth of the canyon, the boulders got smaller and eventually mostly shrank away. Put some straight-line speed on, I left Rivera behind.

I didn’t have the concentration to spare to see where he was; instead, I swung wide to my right so I faced the slope back to the buggy head on and gunned it. Thoughts about what would happen if it didn’t work hit me just as soon as my front tire was climbing. No way to back out now—I leaned over the body and the bars and gave it more throttle to power us up and over the edge.

“Can I congratulate you both,” Rivera said after he’d made the climb and got his breath back with the help of clean water from a bottle, “on a successful manhunt?”

“Woman,” Valentina corrected him as I expected her to. She was going over the body in finer detail as I emptied out the pack the assassin had carried for any clue as to the identity of the trio who came to spill blood in Zion.

“It’s not exactly successful, though, right?” I said. “I mean, we got one of them, but the other is long gone.”

“Correction,” Rivera said, “we have two out of three. I’d wager the one you shot in customs won’t have survived by the time we return.”

“Two out of three ain’t bad, but I’d prefer to get the third one.”

“She could be in Salt Lakes by now,” Valentina said, holding up two knives with tapered points for us to see.

“And someone there would’ve seen her. How many people come up from the south? The trade caravans visiting Zion, and that’s it. If she’s been there, someone will know.”

“And how do you propose we get them to tell us?” Rivera said. “Show them the body and ask if anyone else like it has been loitering?”

An idea formed in my head which was as stupid as it was crazy.

“I… I could go on ahead and start asking questions,” I said quietly.

24

Thinking It Through

Quinn

I didn’t look up, but I knew both of them had stopped what they were doing because the only noise was the whistling wind.

“How will that work, Ranger?” Rivera asked in a formal tone.

I stood straight and answered him just as formally.

“I’ll take the bike, sir. Head to Salt Lakes and make contact with local law enforcement, see if I can get some friendly cooperation going.”

“She might be there, Quinn,” Valentina said. “Did that occur to you? The nearest settlement to Zion would make a logical meeting place, don’t you think?”

“Then I’ll deal with it.”

Valentina looked over my shoulder at Rivera for support and evidently found none. Her gaze turned back on me.

“You’ll deal with it? You’ll take on a killer with, what was it? ‘In-depth anatomical knowledge’ and a serious hard-on for sharp knives? And when we follow up on your disappearance, are we gonna find you tied to a bed with your head cut off and stuffed on you di—”

“At least I’d go out doing something I loved,” I muttered, trying to make a joke and misreading my audience badly.

“I’m serious, jerkoff,” she snapped. “Didn’t you learn never to volunteer for anything? Especially shit like this.”

I guessed we’d had the same lessons after basic training.

“This is different,” I said.

“No shit!”

“I’m serious,” I told her, meaning it. “Think about it. What’s the rest of my life going to look like? In another five years, I might make sergeant. In another ten—if I live that long—I might score a job at command so I’m not breathing filthy air and fighting drunks on the lowers. That’s assuming I don’t get cancer and end up in a ward waiting to go. This way I…”

“You what?”

“This way my life might fucking mean something,” I snarled, rounding on her and only just resisting the urge to kick a rock.

“So it’s just about you, is it?” she mocked.

“Rangers,” Rivera interrupted gently, “if th—”

“No!” Valentina cut him off without looking away from me, one finger pointed at the officer like he was a kid caught stealing food from a vendor. “You got us into this shit in the first place. You wait your damn turn to speak, sir.”

Rivera said nothing, and without breaking eye contact with Valentina, I couldn’t turn to see the look on his face. I’d put a week’s silvers on it being priceless.

“It’s not about me going off on some adventure,” I said. “It’s about me doing something worthwhile for a change instead of spending six days out of ten sticking my finger in the holes of a sinking ship. It’s not about me… well, it’s kind of about me, but it’s about everyone. It’s about Zion. It’s about… it’s about doing something my mom would’ve told her friends about.”

And there it was.

I didn’t know how I felt until those words came tumbling straight out of my brain, but it was out now, and there was no way to put them back inside.

“So it’s a crusade,” she said, her voice softer this time as though she understood but still wasn’t happy. “You want to run off and get yourself killed so you can find out who you are? Make mommy proud?”

I opened my mouth to shoot her down but stopped myself. I know why she said it like that. She was pushing my buttons and she was right; that’s why I reacted.

“And what about you?” I asked her. “Don’t you want to get back to where you came from and get some answers?”

“Fuck you. You know nothing about me.”

I held my arms out to my sides and pulled a cocky face as if to say that her words went both ways. It was bullshit, though. She had me nailed. I turned to Rivera.

“Sir, I formally request permission to pursue the remaining fugitive.”

“Granted,” he said in a flash, making me feel a little pinch inside that he didn’t have a shred of care about me going off into a dangerous environment. “But be assured that I will be following you as soon as is practicable, as will Ranger Valentina unless she is assigned elsewhere.”

That was a polite way to say he’d come and back me up with Valentina unless she decided I could go fuck myself.

“Remember,” he warned as he stepped closer, real concern in his eyes for once, “our office holds no authority out here. You’re effectively on your own, you know that, right? No backup, no protection from the law?”

“I do, sir,” I said, recognizing the harsh reality of what I’d just volunteered for.

“One week, Ranger,” he said, offering his hand to me as if he was making a promise. “I’ll see you in Salt Lakes.” I shook his hand and turned to look at Valentina, who’d finished rolling the body up in her parachute. I looked at her, watching her until she could no longer ignore my staring, and she rounded on me.

“You’re a jerk,” she snapped at me, looking more hurt than angry. She hesitated before snatching up the medical pack and spreading it out over the hood of the buggy.

“You’ll need these,” she said, taking items out and preparing a smaller version of the field kit for me to take, making sure to put most of the anti-radiation meds in. She added the rest of the stims before zipping it all up into a small bag and pulling out all her spare water and rations before she took both hers and Rivera’s spare ammunition for the rifles.

“Don’t overload him,” Rivera warned, lifting up his own pack and measuring it against the cargo straps on the back of the bike.

“Better to be safe than sorry,” she countered.

“You had better take this, too,” Rivera said, tossing me something that glinted as it spun through the air. I fumbled the catch, bending down to pick up the gold not-coin from the dust.

It took us nearly twenty minutes to make sure I had everything I’d need until the most important element sprang to my mind.

“Shit,” I cursed.

Valentina gasped, “What?”

“I… I’ve only got about ten silvers on me,” I admitted. It was about a third of the money I had in total, and I’d only picked it up on impulse when I left my apartment what felt like a million years ago.

Rivera said nothing, just handed a heavy pouch to me and looked away. I opened it, seeing about a year’s salary for my pay grade. At least he had the decency to look embarrassed.

“Sir, I…”

I didn’t know what to say. Was I supposed to feel sorry for him for being born rich?

“Believe me when I tell you, Quinn, that the money I’ve given you is an expendable resource, and one that I’m happy to use to support your… your bravery.”

Okay, now I was embarrassed.

“You’re sure, sir?” I asked. I mean, it was a shit ton of cash, and I was half expecting him to ask for receipts so he could claim reimbursement.

“I’m positive,” he said, pointing at the body. “I found it in her bag, anyway.”

I gawped at him. Did he really just steal cash off a corpse and give it to me?

“You better get going,” Valentina said, breaking the tension and agreeing on everyone’s behalf to just pretend that hadn’t happened. “See you in a week. Just don’t get killed, okay?”

25

Not Rocks

Quinn

What. The fuck. Was I thinking?

Watching them drive away made me reconsider some life choices I’d made recently. Scratch that, it made me reconsider the life choice I’d just made. I wasted close to half an hour just sitting on the bike and thinking up ways I could follow on behind them and come home without looking like a total loser.

Pack of wild mutant dogs? Nope, we’d already done that, and Valentina would have a fucking field day telling me how many of them she’d killed before she asked for my tally.

Snakes? Herd of monster deer?

In the end I’d sat there so long that I was actually putting myself in danger. I must smell good and fresh to the wasteland monsters, like food left out in public below level fifteen. I started to get the uneasy sense of being watched. Growing up below ten and being on my own as a teenager took me to some shady places but also taught me to watch my own back, because I’d never—not then and not really since—ever met anyone I’d trust to have it for me. You develop an extra set of eyes down there where a kid can go missing or end up in a recycler for the contents of his pockets, and that sense never really left me. I also didn’t have much use for it unless some brave, or more likely very drunk, water treatment worker tried to blindside me when I walked into a bar to split something up.

I felt it then, the hairs on my neck standing up and yelling at my brain, and I decided to make a move.

North.

The bike was, weirdly, really easy to drive—or ride, whatever—and simpler for me than the buggy had been. It was almost like another instinct I didn’t know I had until I threw my leg over the saddle, and now with some flat road underneath me and a few hours’ ride ahead to get to Salt Lakes, I actually enjoyed myself.

I was riding along, feeling the whine of the two electric motors buzzing under my ass. I leaned the bike left and right instead of turning the bars, which threatened to destabilize me if I tried it at anything over walking pace. The scarf kept my lungs free of dust and my goggles stopped the sand from blasting my eyeballs when I picked up speed.

Just when I got into the flow and started to feel good about the choice I’d made, a goddamned rock thirty paces ahead of me decided to get up and run.

Now, for someone who’d spent his entire life inside Zion and only rarely got anywhere near the surface, the last twenty-four hours of my life had been weird enough. To find myself going it alone with less than no clue just what the fuck I was doing, then to have a rock suddenly sprout legs and scare the shit out of me, well, let’s just say it wasn’t the most enjoyable thing I’d experienced.

I ditched the bike. Luckily, I was only going at running speed when I did, thanks to a selection of rocks littering the dirt road—rocks at which my brain now jumped up and said, “Hey, you know, maybe they’re not rocks after all.”

The bike went left and I went right, sailing over the handlebars and through the air with zero control over either the direction or my landing site, and all I could think about other than rocks with legs was the look on the girl’s face when her head was on backwards and how very, horribly dead she was.

Grainy sand, I now know, doesn’t so much cushion a landing as much as it stops it dead. I hit the dirt hard and rolled once onto my back with a thud resonating through my body as I let out a noise like a stuck airlock. I gasped for air, unable to breathe in, and just croaked with the wind knocked out of me. I made the noise again as I tried to get up, managing to get to my knees before I could force a breath into my lungs, only to find the same problem expelling it.

I don’t know how long I knelt there, chest heaving and croaking like an animal, but my surroundings came back to be in time to focus on a beige rock about the size of my pack ten feet away on the opposite side of the track.

And it was fucking looking at me.

I stared right back, my struggles with breathing suddenly forgotten because I was holding my breath, and more details about the not-rock became apparent. The upper edges of it were almost exactly the same color and texture as the surrounding dirt, but a horizontal line ran around it. Now I could make out the body, head, four stubby legs, and a long tail tapering out to a point.

A long tongue shot out of the mouth past sharp, conical teeth and disappeared again before the head twitched, like the thing was getting a better look at me.

I noped that situation so fucking hard I think I left an imprint of it in the dirt.

Dragging the bike back up to cascade fine sand back to the ground, I found it still activated and idle, just waiting for me to lean over the bars and twist my right hand to get me out of there.

I risked a glance behind to see even more rocks running after me as their bodies seemed to hinge in the middle, with their opposing front and back ends wiggling as they scattered.

I slowed, realizing that they weren’t coming after me but were running away, like I’d scared them. I thought that was rich, given how evil the little shits looked, and doubled down on focusing ahead so I didn’t crap my pants and fall off my bike again.

As I went farther, I relaxed a little more, spending a few seconds looking ahead, then glancing down at the Geiger box strapped to the bars to check the needle was staying way down in the green part and not jumping up to tell me I’d won the deal of the day and now had three balls to look forward to or something. I didn’t think radiation poisoning worked like that, but out here I’d already seen more than enough weird shit to last me a lifetime, so I didn’t rule anything out.

The needle stayed down, but I knew from the small amount of time I’d spent taking basic citizenship classes that to turn left or right, to head west or east, would put me in a hot zone I wouldn’t survive.

I didn’t know why just our little slice of the country had been left habitable, and to be honest I never really gave much of a shit about it because it just didn’t affect me, but right now I’d wished I’d taken a night school class in American history as I tried to recall everything I knew about my destination.

Salt Lakes, as far as I knew, had maybe a third of the population of Zion. There was always this sense of being insular back home, and very few people from the city had ever been outside. Maybe it was a mentality passed down from our ancestors who sealed themselves inside and treated everything outside as contaminated and dangerous, but we Zioners had a genetic case of wanting to stay put that kicked in at birth and never really went away.

Maybe thirty thousand people, all living around a big lake just south of where the main city had been back in the days before. They relied on the lake for their water and food. It was—logically, I’m guessing—fed from somewhere to the north where there were no dangerous rad levels. Other than that, and assuming that what I knew was right, I knew precisely shit about where I was headed.

It took me another hour before I calmed down after the not-rock incident, and when I did, I started to notice a change. That change I could only describe as beige to green, and it happened at first like a dark cloud coming on the horizon.

I slowed, stopping the bike on a section totally devoid of rocks in case the little bastards decided not to be rocks, and took the chance to rearrange my boys from where they’d stuck to my thigh. At that point, I gulped down almost a full canteen of water. I kept one eye on the Geiger box as I mentally toyed with shooting another stim, but then I decided that the little nap I’d taken facedown in snake territory had revived me more than I’d suspected. Most likely, I was still so wired to be out on my own that tiredness was hiding way back there somewhere. It would have its revenge soon enough.

My neck hair tingled again and I froze, slowly screwing the cap back on the canteen and lowering it into the nearest pack.

Then I heard it. A raspy sound like gas escaping. It hissed, making me look around for where the pipes were that could be causing it, when Rivera’s warning in the canyon hammered on my brain like it had a warrant.

Snake!

I got back on the bike and tore away, as if everything in the world I was afraid of was bearing down on me. By the time I even slowed down, I realized that all the dusty beige crap I’d been in for a day was gone and there was something on the ground I hadn’t seen before.

It was green, a million tiny spikes of it covering hills and swaying in the breeze. By the time I’d gotten used to seeing it, a sign loomed up ahead welcoming me to Salt Lakes.

I concentrated on the road which was more of a pair of wide tracks set into the green, until the sheet tin walls of the town grew in the distance and I prepared myself for contact with outsiders.

The people from the wastes.

The ragged, vagabond kind I assumed they all were, based on the few traders I’d come into contact with and the lucky immigrants who’d found their way down to the lower levels.

I didn’t know what kind of mutations I’d see first, three eyes or four arms, but I told myself over and over again as I rode towards the town: “Don’t stare, just… don’t… stare.”

26

Salt Lakes

Quinn

Holy fuck, these people were normal.

Like, Zion normal. I didn’t see one mutant anywhere—not any obvious ones, anyway—as I rode straight through the open gates to the town at a little over walking pace.

I still tried not to stare, but with literally everyone else I could see staring at me first, it felt almost rude not to stare back just a little.

There were short people and tall ones, pale-skinned and darker hues of brown. Blondes and brunettes, kids and adults… and every last fucking one of them gawping at me like my dick was growing out of my ear. It was like when someone in expensive clothes wandered into a bar below ten like they had a right to be there. Seriously uncomfortable.

I couldn’t slow down without risking the bike tipping over, so I decided to stop and just walk it the rest of the way to what looked like a surface version of the strip I ate ramen at. I made straight for one sign that caught my attention, probably because it was made up of a few stringy lights that flickered and declared itself to be a tavern. I knew what a tavern was, I’m not an idiot, and I knew I’d need somewhere to store my gear and sleep. Food and water were covered for a while with what I was carrying, but a part of me wanted to see what their freeze-dried noodles were like out here.

Then I mentally slapped myself. If I was concerned about what the not-chicken was back home, then I guessed I didn’t even begin to want to know what was in their equivalent. My thoughts led me to look down at the Geiger box, expecting to see the needle dancing up on its tippy toes, but it seemed asleep. I gave it a tap to make sure. It stayed asleep so I took that as a good sign.

“And just what in the hell are you s’posed to be?”

The words stopped me in my tracks, not just because they were a challenge but because the voice sounded like a meat grinder with shards of rusted metal inside. I turned to face the speaker, seeing a man—at least I hoped it was a man with how deep the voice was—wearing a leather coat like mine but longer and with a collar flipped up to hide each side of his face. A metal star, pitted and old, adorned the front of the coat and he wore a hat, wide rimmed and tipped low so I couldn’t see his face. My mind immediately conjured up some kind of wasteland ghoul with yellow eyes and sunken cheeks.

I was torn between trying and failing to keep a low profile with lies and avoidance and just coming out with full disclosure right off the bat.

“I’m a Zion Ranger in pursuit of a fugitive,” I said formally, hoping the bond of law enforcement extended beyond the on-duty Rangers making sure I got home when they found me passed out between the bar and my apartment. I was hoping it extended beyond the confines of Zion, like it was a kind of universal code.

Instead, the fucker laughed.

“Hehe,” he tittered, like I’d just showed him something pathetic in my pants. Like he was amused but embarrassed for me. “Say that again? Nice and slow now so I can hear you straight, son.”

“I,” I said carefully, making sure I kept the “fuck you” out of my voice, “am a Zion Ranger. Name’s Quinn. I’m here in pursuit of a fugitive wanted for multiple homicides.”

The hat rose to reveal a face with the same complexion as dried dirt and eyes so light gray they were almost silver. He sucked in a breath through his nose and let it out to convey some kind of disappointment.

“That’s what I thought you said,” he answered. “They give you any credentials back there in the big city?”

I unzipped my jacket, releasing a trapped layer of fine dust that fell away as I pulled back the leather to reveal my own metal star. He nodded, as if it either sufficed or he just didn’t give a shit.

“Captain Hargreaves,” he said, as if I’d understand everything that meant. I nodded because I didn’t want to ask a question and make myself look any more out of place than I felt.

“So, your fugitive got a name?” he asked.

“Probably. Damned if I know it. She left one hell of a mess ba—”

“She?” Hargreaves cut me off.

“… Yeah…”

“Would’ve come through on a bike like yours sometime yesterday?”

“Stands a good chance,” I said slowly, not wanting to show how excited I was.

“Come with me,” he said, turning on his heel and whipping the long leather coat around as he went. I followed, giving the bike’s throttle the smallest of twists to make it walk on behind him as I steered it along. He went towards the tavern and headed left along the strip towards a concrete building with a larger version of his star hanging from a metal rod sticking out, as if it were a place where you could buy a cop.

“You can leave your bike there,” he said, pointing to a stand where a bike looking similar but very different stood cocked over to lean on its stand. I did, parking it to one side and taking off my three bags. I snatched out the key to let the electric motors whine down to nothing. Carrying my awkward burden, I stepped up towards the door before uttering a single word out loud and turning back.

“Shit,” I said, drawing the word out as I remembered I’d left the rifle strapped to the handlebars on top of the Geiger box. I unfastened the loop holding it in place and slung it over my shoulder.

“I’d bring your fancy clicker box, too,” Hargreaves said from the doorway. “Things have a habit of finding themselves new owners if you don’t keep a close eye on them.”

I grumbled to myself as I tried to juggle an armful of gear to follow the man inside.

“Alright, first off, I don’t allow long guns in town as a rule,” he said as he took off his coat and hat, gently resting the latter on a hook with reverence, like he could damage it if it wasn’t afforded the respect it so obviously deserved. “Folks have them, I know, only they keep them outta sight to stay on my good side. You being the law—of a kind, you understand—I’d ordinarily let you keep hold of it, only with you being all on your own, I think it’s best you let me keep hold of it here.”

And there it was. Not a suggestion, not a request, but a simple statement of what was for the best. Something in his tone told me there’d be numerous possible outcomes if things didn’t go that way and that I wouldn’t like any of them. So instead of butting heads with this guy straight off, I decided to let him think he’d won the first round and smiled, handing over the weapon after showing him the safety catch was on “S” for “no bang-bang.”

Besides, I still had my sidearm tucked away in the holster under my jacket.

“I’ll permit you to keep the piece on your right hip,” he said as he took the weapon and turned to the rack of rifles behind his desk and added it to them before locking the bar back in place. I winced inside my head, hoping I wouldn’t come out of this encounter looking like a total amateur, and made out like I knew he’d know it was there.

“Standard service issue,” I said, drawing it for him to see and intentionally keeping my trigger finger out and away from the weapon. I reversed it for him to examine, seeing him smile politely and turn the gun this way and that before handing it back with a polite nod.

“Bless your heart,” he said pitifully as he leaned to his left and drew the single biggest handgun I’d ever seen from his own holster.

“I personally don’t care for those fancy semiautomatic pieces,” he said as he held out what looked like an aerial defense cannon over to me. It was heavy, like really heavy compared to my polymer gun, as if it were made from steel support girders. It was a revolver, but it differed from mine so much that if they were people, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were different species. It had a long barrel and a fat, chunky grip that looked more as if it had once been a rifle and someone had cut it down to make it fit in a holster. I turned it left and right, looking for how to open the cylinder out of curiosity, and when it snapped open, I spun it around, one click at a time, to count eight bullets nestled inside and free from any trace of dust.

“Eight rounds?” I asked. “What do you do if you need mo—”

A heavy, metallic thump sounded on the desk as Hargreaves produced another one with a slightly shorter barrel from inside his coat. He smiled at me.

“And that’s just my main guns,” he said, slapping both hands on his desk as he stood and holstered his two cannons. “Gives me stopping power over your pop gun any day.”

For some unfathomable reason I was offended on behalf of my own gun and felt the need to defend it. “Eighteen rounds and a quick magazine change,” I said as I holstered it. “And a fast muzzle velocity too.” I wasn’t exactly sure where this was all coming from, thinking back to Valentina’s lecture on our weaponry as we drove during the night. I’ll be honest, I was more interested in the fact that she was nuts about guns than I was the subject matter.

“Yours may be fast, but I’ll take a knockout punch over a bunch of jabs any day.”

The matter of my gun not being as good as his settled, he headed for the door again and hollered over his shoulder, “Mel? MEL! Watch the door again.” Mel never answered or made an appearance before I was swept up behind Hargreaves, who’d restored his coat and hat before stepping outside.

With three bags over my right shoulder and the Geiger box tucked under my left arm, I followed, trying to catch up to hear what he said.

“What do you know about Salt Lakes?” he asked me, turning to see me shrug. “Most everything got leveled back in the day. What you see here was a small town in the south district, and we got maybe twelve or fifteen thousand folks in and around here, with the same again on the outskirts. This lake we’re by ain’t actually the salt lake—that’s farther north where the city was, but it’s on the edge of a red zone. This here is what we have, and it’s my job to keep it from getting drunk and fighting.”

Like Zion City, just smaller and with daylight. And a shit ton of dust.

“I’ll get you set up in Benjamin’s,” he went on. “I’ll see to it he doesn’t pull your pants down an—”

“Wait, what?”

Hargreaves stopped to look at me, smirking at my misunderstanding.

“I’ll see to it that Benji doesn’t overcharge you for your bed and board,” he said, resuming his journey back to the place advertising itself as a tavern.

“Hold up,” I said, my brain kicking me for letting the whole reason I was out here slip by. “My fugitive, what do you know?”

“Nothing which won’t wait ‘til you’ve washed up and got some sleep.” He tapped a finger under his own eye as he looked at me. “I can tell a whizzer a damn mile away, only I guess you’re using to stay on that fancy bike and not fall asleep, am I right?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, finding my eyelids suddenly heavy now that someone had reminded me there was a thing called sleep I used to know.

27

Bureaucracy

Rivera

We didn’t talk much on the way back. I sensed that Valentina had some conflicting personal feelings on the matter of Quinn electing to continue the pursuit by himself, and no doubt she felt he was potentially ill-equipped to undertake the task, but I assured myself that he would blossom when freed from the constraints of Zion and the rules of the Ranger corps.

I offered that opinion to Valentina at one point as I drove, but she somewhat abruptly ended the conversation by mentioning that he certainly had sufficient cash to make his task easier.

That bothered me still, only not in the way I expected it to. It bothered me that it might become an issue I would have to justify to senior officers, but I was confident that my logical approach given the extenuating circumstances would remove any element of dishonesty from my actions. I made a decision under pressure and I would stand by that. If it was deemed that I shouldn’t have used evidence to finance an investigation outside of Zion’s jurisdiction, then I would simply offer to replace the same estimated amount from my own funds. That would be declined, most likely, but it would serve to remind them that I hardly had need of a pocketful of coins.

“We’re here,” Valentina said, taking one hand off the wheel to point ahead where the shimmering horizon bore a dark, lateral mass which I knew was Zion’s upper levels. We’d returned via the same route and I half expected to find the corpses of the beasts she’d dispatched last night. But other than our own recent tire tracks in the rocky dust, there was no sign of anything which had transpired. That in itself made me suppress a shudder. What else was out here running around in the dark?

Had they eaten their own dead? Had something bigger scavenged the corpses, or was an unseen army of insects responsible?

Those questions created more questions than I wanted to have answers for, and I found myself glad to be approaching the airlock gates to get back inside where the worst I’d ever seen was one of the rats on the lower levels that looked big enough and, even though I’m loathe to admit it, clever enough to find out where I lived if I’d shown it any kind of offence.

Valentina slowed the buggy smoothly to come to a stop directly in front of the gate and waited, expecting the doors to open just as I did.

Nothing happened.

Five minutes went by, then ten, before an unexpected anger rose in me and I unstrapped to climb out and apply the toe of my boot to the door a few times.

There were no doorbells or access panels, as one would expect there not to be, but with an officer and his team out in the wastes, surely the customs roster would include a Ranger watching for our return.

At just before the twenty-minute mark, when I was beginning to consider retracing our steps and returning via the road traders used, which would, at best, have us returning to the other side of Zion by the same time tomorrow evening, the door issued a screech and began to retract.

I said nothing, stepping inside the airlock ahead of the buggy and waiting impatiently for the inner doors to roll back where I planned to issue the senior Ranger of the section’s shift some choice career advice, only to come face-to-face with the glowering deputy director.

“Ma’am,” I said, with what I hoped sounded like respectful urgency. “We’ve caught one of them.” I gestured at the wrapped bundle strapped in behind Valentina.

The deputy director’s expression hadn’t changed.

“For a second there I was under the impression you were going to give me good news,” she snarked. “Or the bad news that you went out for a little camping trip and got a Ranger killed. Speaking of…?”

“Ranger Quinn has continued the pursuit of the outstanding fugitive,” I told her. “I have made assurances that I shall be following him with additional resources as soon as I am able, and plan to rendezvous with him in Salt Lakes as soo—”

“Not going to happen,” she said flatly. “The president wants your report in one hour.” She turned to leave and I just stood there, fighting the urge to lash out with my boot and kick the shiny material covering her ample ass.

Shiny, I thought in shocked realization. I get it now. She’s worn her pants down to a sheen by sitting down. I shook myself out of exhaustion-induced whimsical thoughts and cleared my throat with purpose. That purpose turned out to be a real one as I felt the gritty sensation inside my mouth where the sand had still gotten through somehow.

She turned around.

“Something to add, Junior Commander?” the deputy director asked, then considered her watch. “Actually, I think you should report there in thirty minutes, just to be on the safe side.” She glared at me, daring me to open my mouth again.

I hated her. This was an unexpected realization and one rather unbecoming of my station. She was the only senior officer who didn’t treat me with undue respect courtesy of my family connections and money. However, she didn’t just treat me like any other young officer, which was how I’d prefer things; she seemed to have a personal dislike for me and was high up enough to be protected from my family’s reputation and reach.

“Deputy Director,” I said firmly, feeling emboldened by surviving a night out in the wastelands and not wanting to give her the satisfaction of awarding her another honorific. But before I could get out another word, she shot back in a single stride, moving much faster than either her age or her large build might suggest. She stopped close, close enough for me to feel uncomfortable about my personal hygiene after recent events, and her words were spoken in a tone so low, only I heard them.

“You need to do as you are ordered, Rivera, or else you might find your glowing career dead in the water. Do we understand one another?”

I drew myself up as much as I could while retaining what pride I still possessed.

“I shall require a short time to dress in a clean uniform suitable for the occasion,” I told her.

She smiled triumphantly, letting me know I was at her mercy and that I’d made the sensible choice not to question her again.

After she stomped away with her entourage in tow, I quietly told Valentina, “Make sure our package makes it to the good doctor. And I’d be obliged if you were there to hear her report before it might have the chance to get lost.”

She didn’t respond, not directly to me anyway as others were still within hearing. She stood in the buggy and stretched, turning her hips with exaggerated movements that made me feel mildly uncomfortable in such close proximity.

“Urgh,” she complained, “this damn buggy’s made me two inches shorter, I swear it.” The others found their collective gaze drawn inevitably to her waist as she continued to stretch, probably making all of them forget their orders for a while.

I left, surrendering my weapons and equipment to the vehicle and unable to find any more excuses to stay there. In order to protect what little evidence we had, I found myself in the unfortunate and oddly new situation of having to rely on another person.

With a sigh, I hurried up, needing to wash off the dust of the outside world before I faced whatever music I was going to be ordered to play.

Valentina

“Rivera,” I panted as I lay collapsed over the body I’d just deposited on the gurney in front of a bemused Doctor Lopez, who was trying not to laugh, “is… an… asshole.”

I’d lugged a body of a woman a little shorter than me but about half as damn wide again all the way there on my own inside one of the big equipment bags from the buggy.

Something about the way that Rivera looked scared by the deputy director and how he’d reckoned that the body was a really important thing made me take him seriously, even if I was fucked three ways to Wednesday and might fall asleep on top of her right there.

We were in the same room as before, the same chilly room where the five stiffs from yesterday—was it really only yesterday?—had lain.

“Is that assessment based on you personally delivering the current cargo, or on any other observations of the man?” Lopez asked casually as she shooed me off the body. I remembered they were friends then and tried to backtrack, even though my tongue seemed to have fallen out with my brain and the two weren’t on the same page.

“I… sorry. You’re friends… Sorry.”

I stood up and staggered back a little. That last effort had finished me off, and I knew that if I didn’t lie down soon, it was going to happen ballistically.

Lopez seemed to recognize that and steered me away until my ass lightly bumped into something. I went with her push and sat back down before she made me lie on my back on some gurney.

I flopped my head to my left to watch, seeing Lopez unwrapping her gift.

“She didn’t make it?” I asked groggily.

“What?”

I tried to point, probably looking like I was having a lazy seizure. “The girl. Quinn… Quinn shot her.”

“Her? Oh no dear, she died before you left. Not much anyone could’ve done about that.”

“Oh. She… say anything?”

“She couldn’t have said anything if her life had depended on it,” Lopez said without a hint of sarcasm. “You just wait there for me. Rest, if you can. I’ll be with you in a while.”

I said nothing, unable to make my mouth move, and tried to hold up a thumb before I went into shutdown mode.

28

The Way of Things

Rivera

Waiting to see the president was not an enjoyable experience. It reminded me too much of the small school I had attended from the age of four right up until my post-graduate days. Emerging with top marks from my compulsory schooling a full two years early was no major achievement, as I’d had the luxury of a small class and three evenings a week with a private tutor personally selected by my father.

My higher education choices were abhorrent to him, naturally, as the expectation had been that I would study commerce and follow directly in his footsteps into the innumerable interests of the family businesses.

I distinctly recalled the walk home when I’d signed up for historical studies alongside socioeconomic political studies of the twenty-first century, proudly announcing my choices to my mother, who had informed my father, who had then summoned me to his office where I waited outside for almost twenty minutes while he berated my mother for “coddling” me. She had made me weak, he said. She had made me have ideas beneath my station, he said. He should’ve listened to his father and not married a wealthy woman with nothing between her ears.

Wanting to understand what had happened in the world before Zion City sealed itself off from it didn’t make me weak or lowly, I thought. I believed it made me educated, and conscientious about the world we now lived in. What better way to understand the present and predict the future than knowing how we’d gotten to where we were?

My mother ran from the room in tears, pausing only to shoot me a sorrowful glance, before my father demanded my presence.

It was then I learned more than I ever could about the reasons the lower levels of Zion were so poor. Why they suffered a paucity of clean air and medication. Why so many mutations occurred in children. Why the cancer rate was so high and nearly always resulted in death. I learned more in that conversation than I did in my studies.

It was because of men like my father.

Men and women of the upper levels who wanted their own living space to be clean and devoid of the stink that kept the city running with clean water, manufacturing, and recycling. Men and women who cared more about their bottom-line profit margins than the lives of fellow humans. Men and women who exploited the weak, merely to make their own strength more indomitable.

As I listened to him talk, my face a mask of apologetic subservience, I knew I had to find a way to get to the lowers and make a difference somehow.

“Well, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“Father, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I chose these studies to make it easier to follow a career path I wasn’t sure you’d approve of.”

He’d glowered at me then, unsure whether to be angrier with me for deceiving him or not.

“I wish to pursue a political career,” I lied. “And to do that I need to make a name for myself in the Ranger Corps, which means I have to understand how they think and why they are how they are.”

He was left shocked for a moment before stuttering an answer.

“There… there are other ways to get into politics. I could speak to half a dozen senators and get them to—”

“Father,” I interrupted, risking an explosion of anger from him, “please. I need to do this my way.”

* * *

Standing outside the president’s office I had that same sinking feeling again, and I wasn’t sure if another lie would cut it.

29

Benjamin’s

Quinn

We didn’t get much in the way of movies any more, not like there used to be before the crash—or so the old timers claimed, even if they were a hundred and fifty years too young to remember—but the few surviving copies I had seen included an old comedy about cowboys.

In this one—and I hadn’t thought about it for years, so it was weird how clearly it came back to me then—the guy walked into the saloon and everyone just went quiet. I mean, the guy playing the piano stopped and stared, everyone else drinking and playing cards turned to eyeball this guy whose only crime was to have the audacity to walk into the building.

Don’t people often need to walk into that building, you know, to buy shit? Isn’t that how they stay in business? I wondered. Don’t know why it bothered me so much.

Anyway, I felt just like that guy. Both unwelcome and the new attraction in town. Likely the guy in the old movie just wanted to say something like, “sorry, wrong bar” and walk his ass right back out the door. I know I did.

Another line from the movie hit me next, as my eyes scanned the gloomy interior to meet the returning gazes of everyone. It was a concerned citizen, a woman, and she said, “Isn’t anybody gonna help that poor man?” I felt for the guy because nobody did. Just as nobody helped me because the sheriff—which was an old-fashioned kind of cop—had walked in and not even warranted a second glance from most people, but you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d just showed up with two handfuls of my own shit and asked everybody to clap along with me to the music.

Slowly, as if a new battery had been attached, the piano guy started up again, and the chatter began to resume. There were maybe thirty people in there spread out over two levels, and all of them had just taken a hard look at me so I knew, I just knew someone had seen the fugitive and would be able to point me in the direction she’d gone so I could… could…

What the sweet Jesus is that smell? my brain enquired, shutting out every other sense I possessed and focusing my entire world on finding the source of the smell and consuming all of it.

“Benji!” Hargreaves yelled as he slapped his right hand down on the bar. Unrequested, a glass of something almost clear slid towards him from the other end of the bar. He caught before it slid right by and smashed on the floor. Then he lifted it like a salute, tossed his head back to pour it right into his gullet, slapped it down on the bar, and repeated himself twice more with an accompanying stamp of his right boot.

“Christ, Benji, that stuff tastes like battery acid took a shit and pissed on it before you put it through your still.”

“I know, it’s good, right?”

“Quinn from Zion, Benji from Benjamin’s,” he said. “Benji, Quinn. See now, you’re friends, right?”

He leaned over the bar at Benji, a short man with thinning hair swept over his skull and a mustache so large it seemed to have replaced his ability to grow hair on his head. “And you wouldn’t never dream of ripping off a friend now, would ya, Benji?”

Benji smiled, wide and fake. “Captain, come on! It’s me you’re talking to, man!”

“Uh-huh, which is precisely why I am talking to you. Quinn here’s a Ranger from Zion. He’s here under the protection of Salt Lake law, so I don’t want him to find out on leaving that he’s paid three times the amount for the room that you’re going to hire him, right here, right now.”

He tapped his finger on the bar, smiling and nodding as another measure magically appeared in the glass. He turned to me, smiled, and tossed back the second glass of… whatever it was, only to repeat the same foot-stamping routine and curse Benji through his coughs for how strong the drink was.

“Protection’s one thing, Captain,” Benji said to Hargreaves, “but is protection paying for this hypothetical room you’re talking about?”

Hargreaves turned to me. I got the point of his glare: Pony up the cash or get lost. I wasn’t dumb enough to get a whole bag of coins out of my pack and start digging through it in front of everyone who might want to rob me, so I slipped a hand onto the left pocket of my pants and jingled the few coins I’d brought with me to prove I had something.

“Silvers,” I explained to the owner. “What’s the rate?”

He scoffed. “Silvers ain’t no good here,” he laughed. “You need to get them exchanged for—”

Hargreaves slapped his hand on the bar again, making Benji jump. “I just remembered,” he exclaimed, “I ain’t done a safety inspection here for… well, I don’t think I’ve ever done a safety inspection here, now I think about it. No time like the present, don’t you think?”

“Silver a night.” Benji glared at me. “Food and drink’s extra.”

“A silver a night,” I countered, “but for that, you throw in breakfast and three drinks.”

“Breakfast and two drinks.”

“Done.”

We shook hands, which felt weird, and Hargreaves made to leave. I reached out and caught his arm. He froze, staring at the hand like it had better remove itself and apologize, so I took it away and asked him in a hushed voice about the woman.

“You say she was here yesterday?”

“Yeah. Midafternoon, maybe.”

“And she’s still in town?”

He hesitated before answering. “No. You get cleaned up and come see me when you’re ready. You know where I’ll be.”

I looked at Benji who was staring right back at me expectantly.

“I guess I’ll take one of the drinks now,” I said, sliding the single silver I’d taken from my pocket across the bar to him.

* * *

I’d stayed in a few strange places in my life, but never anywhere like this. The floor creaked so much it sounded like I’d activated a broken music player. The room was pretty much straight above the bar, which meant that I’d be hearing that piano music long into the night, and voices rose and fell with whatever was happening outside my little square of privacy.

I’d been shown the bathroom at the end of the hall, used only by the paying guests I was told, as the customers at the bar had to use other facilities.

The room was large enough for a bed, somewhere between a single and a double, with blankets that looked old but clean. There was a dresser and a chair, the former looking tired and the latter looking like it was trying not to laugh in case I was dumb enough to sit on it and collapse its twiggy wooden legs.

I dropped my bags, brushed the worst of the dust off them, and striped out of my clothes. I had no idea until I’d let them be free just how much riding a bike squashed my nuts. I had to peel the left one off my thigh like it’d been glued there, and I just stood letting the air get to them when there was a knock on the door, and it burst open.

“Oh dear lord!” a woman gasped and the door slammed shut. The thin wood hardly muffled her shout as she bawled down the stairs, “Benji, you jerk, why’d you go and let a pervert in here?”

I scrambled for clothes in time for the stomping boots to reach a conclusion outside my door which burst inwards to show Benji holding a sawed-off shotgun in one hand in a manner far too casual for my liking. I held up both hands to calm him, like I would when trying to convince a drunk to just go home.

“Listen to me,” I said in a firm tone, “I was just changing, and the lady here burst in.”

“I knocked!” the woman shrieked over Benji’s shoulder, making him close his eyes with a wince.

“Woman, what in the hell have I told you about hollerin’ in my ear?”

“I knocked,” she insisted, quieter but with defiance.

“Says you,” Benji answered. “You be sure to knock next time, and Mister Zion here’ll be sure to keep his private parts private. That suit all involved?”

“Fine by me,” I said, looking at the woman, who glared at me from around the doorframe before tossing a square of cloth on the deck where I’d shook off the sand and dust.

“Fresh towel,” she said with as little courtesy as was humanly possible.

“Thanks,” I called after her. Benji, still holding the shotgun which he’d never raised in the slightest, gave me an apologetic shrug and left, shutting the door as he went.

I lay back on the bed and breathed out a long sigh of exhaustion and confusion.

What the fuck have I gotten myself into? I thought, and not for the first time.

30

Postmortem

Valentina

“It’s what we call the examination of a dead body,” Lopez explained. “I thought they’d have taught you that?”

“We get MRDs,” I told her. “Medical Report: Death. There’s MRIs for injuries too. You don’t do them?”

“Oh, honey, how many homicide and injury cases do you think I see a year? This here is level two, you realize?”

I fought my eyes from rolling back in my head at my own stupid naivety. I meant her no disrespect. I liked her, she was a good person, and I didn’t want my natural charm to give her any impression otherwise.

I sat up from the gurney and twisted my upper body to the left before repeating the movement on the other side until I was rewarded with a muted click. I rolled my head around on my shoulders, thinking it was the nap that had left me stiff, but it didn’t loosen up. Must’ve been the buggy ride. The wasteland. The body. Sleeping.

“Shhhit, how long was I out?”

“Couple hours,” Lopez said. “Long enough for me to do the preliminary examination.”

I swung my legs off the gurney and steadied myself as I suffered that universal post-nap “what fucking year is this?” feeling. I stepped up beside her and had my senses assaulted by the smell of cold body.

“This poor dear,” Lopez said, pointing to the naked body of the female with the loose skin around her neck, “would’ve suffered a very large amount of pain and fear in a very short time. Bad way to go, I imagine.”

“Cause of death?” I asked in my best Rivera voice. Dumb joke, I know, but in my defense, I was exhausted.

“Er, broken neck?”

No shit. Remember not to attempt humor again.

“Other than that, she was in exceptional health with fantastic muscle density and was clearly well-nourished. She has old scars that make me suspect her career in violence wasn’t a new undertaking. What’s interesting are the markings. Here, help me turn her over.”

I did, feeling my own warm skin sticking to the cold, waxy dimples of the dead assassin’s back.

“What do you make of that?” Lopez asked.

I looked, seeing a circle of dark lines with a face in the middle. I leaned closer—closer than anyone thinking straight would get to a dead body—and saw it for what it was. An outline of the moon with an image of a Native American’s head inside, complete with a long feather in his hair.

“Okay?” I said. “So she’s got ink. Hell, I’ve got ink.”

“Not this particular tattoo, you don’t. At least I presume not, otherwise… this would be awkward…”

“Awkward how?” I asked, suddenly not following the cryptic conversation.

“Ranger, you know how people get the same tattoos to show they’re part of the same… club? Affiliated somehow? This is one of those times. I’d bet my house on it.”

“So they have the same tattoo. Couldn’t that just be a coincidence?”

“Like I said, I don’t think it is,” Lopez said knowingly.

“I don’t get it, sorry.”

“Remember that gold coin on the first female victim?”

It wasn’t on her, but I didn’t see the point in splitting hairs and nodded.

“That was a mark of something, like a proof of membership,” Lopez explained patiently.

“Like people have for the casinos,” I ventured.

“Right. So, imagine if you had your membership token tattooed on your back.”

I imagined that would be pretty awkward to prove you were a member of something if you got a challenge. Like, “Hey, hold this while I whip my shirt off and show you.” I said something less dumb-sounding and Lopez smiled like she was happy I was keeping up.

“Exactly, so I got to thinking that maybe she had another, right? Stands to reason there’d be a quick way to identify yourself to those who know.”

I nodded, my brain jumping ahead and leading my eyes to the other body.

“Yeah, I’m getting there,” Lopez said, “just stay with me for now. So both these girls have tattoos, and I was thinking it wouldn’t be hard to cross-reference them and find the secret badge, right?”

“Right.”

“Wrong. They only have the main one on their back in common. Of the other tattoos, not even two of them are in the same place.”

I looked over the tattoos. A dreamcatcher, wolf, feathers, an arrow… No two were identical. Perhaps the one the assassins had in common was some kind of symbolic thing.

An eagle, an old guy in a big fancy hat covered in feathers, an ax…

“This one seems… different,” I said, pointing at the image that went from the right forearm that down to her wrist.

“I thought that too, but I checked the other one and couldn’t see anything similar.”

That was when I had a brainwave likely brought on by exhaustion.

“Look inside her mouth,” I said.

“What?”

“Inside her mouth. People hide things in weird places.”

“I’ve already looked. Side note: I suspect wherever these women are from, their dentistry is better than most of ours.”

I went to the other body and pulled back the sheet, exposing the livid hole where Quinn had shot her. Her skin was paler, I thought, but then I remembered how much blood she was losing when I last saw her. I opened her mouth, finding it difficult as her muscles were starting to turn rigid. My hand slipped against her cold skin and forced her lips down.

“Shi—” I stopped, gently peeling down her lower lip to expose the gum where it met the bottom of her front teeth. “What does that look like to you?” I asked, leaning back to let Lopez see.

“Well… well, I can’t imagine how I missed that… Thank you, Valentina.”

“Guess we’ve cleared that part up,” I said as I did the same to broken neck girl’s lip. There was the same inked image of a crudely drawn ax, deep inside her lip.

“Why an ax, though?”

“It’s a tomahawk,” Lopez said, looking up as the door opened behind me. “And I suspect Claude would rather provide you with a history lesson himself.”

I turned to see Rivera storming in, pausing to aim a kick at a chair and sending it skittering across the room as he yelled a single word through gritted teeth.

“Fuuuck!”

31

Shut Down

Rivera

Far be it from me to lose my composure in front of others, least of all a subordinate, but I had no idea how I’d managed to keep it together on the short journey from central command to the medical facility.

I kicked a chair, hard, wishing it was the deputy director’s head. Such violence both shocked and appalled me, and I regretted it instantly. Pain lanced from my foot back up through my leg and forced me to walk the remainder of the distance with a limp.

“What happened?” Lopez asked in that voice she’d used on me since I was a child.

I sighed, rested my face in my hands, and told them.

* * *

Despite the summons of thirty minutes to make myself presentable to see the President, I found myself waiting outside his office for close to forty minutes after the allotted time. I stood because, like some cruel dictator, he didn’t provide chairs in his waiting area. My exhaustion weighed as heavily on me as the consequences of the meeting most likely would.

“Come,” was the extent of the shouted summons from inside the office. I opened the doors and stepped inside to find the deputy director there, along with a man I did not expect to find involved in matters of law enforcement.

“Take a seat,” my father said, his voice a mixture of amusement and annoyance.

“No, I think the junior commander can stand,” the president overrode him. My father shrugged as if it was of no importance to him. The president, a man as small and wiry as his deputy was ox-like, eyed me with something bordering on cold fury. I said nothing, waiting to see which way the wind blew.

“Sir, I shall summarize for the benefit of everyone here,” the deputy director said in a tone that meant I was the only person not to know what had happened and what was going to happen.

“Senator Byers was witnessed entering an establishment on the lower levels two nights ago. He took with him an entourage of three men—one a serving Ranger working off duty without permission—and engaged in acts not becoming of a senior member of Zion City society.”

She glanced at me, almost daring me to contradict the version of events she was inventing.

“The senator was killed brutally, sir, and the investigation was given over to a special unit under the leadership of Junior Commander Rivera, as you know.”

Her wide nostrils flared as she breathed in, as if her next words would be deeply unpleasant.

“The junior commander ignored numerous suggestions on how to proceed, before refusing to obey directives given by me personally. He has harassed a grieving widow by searching her home and interrogating her, has seized all of her banked assets as part of the investigation, and placed her under digital surveillance. I have received complaints, sir, numerous complaints, regarding the intrusive nature of the junior commander’s methods and his lack of sensitivity in pursuing the true killers, focusing solely on plastering a public scandal all over the city.”

I shifted my feet, more through muscle cramps than any other reason. My mistake.

“Stand still!” my father barked, shame and disappointment leaking out of him like sweat.

“Furthermore, and again as you know, Mister President, through the diligence and hard work of a lieutenant under his command who was acting on his own initiative, the junior commander stumbled upon the culprits attempting to flee Zion. Two suspects escaped and the third was shot and killed in an altercation in customs, preventing us from interrogating them and finding out the motive behind the murder.”

“Murders. Plural,” I corrected her in a belligerent tone.

“You interrupt the deputy director in front of me?” the president growled. “You… you upstart. I don’t give a good goddamn who you’re related to by some distant twist of my personal misfortune, but if you think that’s going to save your ass, you can think again.”

“After that,” the deputy director went on, no doubt gearing up to seal my fate, “he gave partial information to you and me regarding the nature of his investigation and then led a reckless mission into the wastelands in pursuit of the escaped suspects, who, had he done his job and not tried to cause said scandal, would’ve been detained alive through conventional investigative methods. That has resulted in him bringing back another corpse of an outsider and losing a Ranger.”

I swallowed, saying nothing at the ludicrous charges leveled at me. I knew as soon as I walked in that I’d been chosen as the sacrificial lamb, as the scapegoat who could so conveniently wrap up proceedings for them, but I had no intention of taking it lying down. I guessed they’d thought of that, which was why my father had been summoned.

“Mister President,” he said smoothly, “I think we can chalk almost all of this up to the energies of youth. Say, a desire to seek glory and losing sight of the path to success?”

Like you haven’t cut corners on your path to riches, I thought. Or throats, I’d wager.

“That seems likely to me,” the president said before turning to the deputy director. “What do you say? Has the junior commander here served his time in the corps? Is he ready to move into civilian life?”

“Sir, I’d say a resignation of office is the best way to proceed. If the junior commander insists on remaining in service, the usual sanction for this kind of thing would be a two-rank demotion. However, seeing as he entered the service directly as a lieutenant, that would mean a demotion to a lower rank than he entered with.”

Leave quietly or get made a sergeant in the lowers until I quit? Well played.

“I’d rather we put all of this unpleasant business behind us, don’t we all agree?” my turncoat father said to protect his own investments and business relationships. No doubt he was already thinking ahead to the future and a time when he could quietly remind the president or the deputy director of this meeting so a decision would sway in his favor.

“I think that’s best, don’t you, Mister Rivera?” the deputy director said to me, smiling the smile of a predator who had easy prey cornered.

I reached up and removed the insignia from my collar, placing it on the desk in front of where I stood.

“It’s Sergeant Rivera,” I told her. “Am I dismissed?”

* * *

“So… so you just got busted down to sergeant?” Valentina asked me, her hand half covering her smile at how I’d basically told the most powerful people in Zion to go screw themselves.

“Yes, effective immediately. I’ve been posted to a section in eight, no doubt tasked to clear the lowers of all crime and granted a team of lazy, injured, and work-shy Rangers.”

“Best of the best,” Valentina joked, then stopped smiling when she saw my face.

“I’m sorry, sir, I mean… Sarge… too soon? Anyway, it sucks is all I’m saying.”

“It does indeed suck, Valentina, but my primary concern remains the fate of one of our own.”

I saw from the sinking look of her expression that she’d forgotten about Quinn, alone out in Salt Lakes and expecting us to be hot on his heels.

“What are we gonna do, Si—Sarge?”

I couldn’t answer her as the door burst open to reveal Forge ahead of four Rangers all walking with purpose. I stood, raising my voice to challenge them.

“What’s the meaning of this? This is a private medical facility, and you have no right to enter witho—”

“Shut your hole, Rivera,” Forge barked as he leveled a finger at my face and held it hovering there only an inch away. “I’ve been chewin’ your bullshit for long enough.” He snapped his fingers and the Rangers with him moved in to wheel the bodies out. I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t do anything. I no longer held rank over the man I’d thought of as loyal but recognized the gleam of superiority in his eye. Technically, he now outranked me as a senior sergeant due to a far longer service history than I possessed.

“Hey,” Valentina snapped, “watch it, you fat fuck!” I turned to see her spilling off the gurney she was perched on as an overweight Ranger barged past her.

“Eat a dick, Valentina,” he whined at her in a mocking baby voice. I placed him immediately when he said that as the lazy slob guarding the scene of the senator’s murder.

“Ranger!” I yelled.

“Stand down, Rivera,” Forge sneered. “Don’t start shit you ain’t got the balls to finish. Daddy’s silver can’t help you when you fetch a beatin’ for not knowing when to keep your pretty lips together.” He looked at Lopez and shrugged. “I guess it might. She can stitch you up after I’ve smacked you around a little. Whaddya say, huh? You wanna go? I’m ready. Right here, right now.”

He stood in front of me and puffed up his chest, making it clear that I was much smaller than he was, like some hairy ape showing dominance.

I smiled, patted him gently on the chest, and shocked myself by saying, “Try not to let those degenerates fuck the corpses in the elevator.”

I expected the swing of a fist, waited for it, but Forge just laughed.

“You’re getting the hang of it after all,” he said as he walked off, pausing at the door to give me a one-fingered salute before he delivered the final blow.

“Fall in, Valentina,” he said.

I looked at her, seeing her looking right back at me.

“Uh, what?”

Forge chuckled. “You think just because your pet officer gets ditched that you get off the assignment? Fall the fuck in. Now.”

I saw the look on her face and mentally prepared myself to get punched again before Lopez interjected.

“I don’t think so,” she declared in a voice that brokered zero argument. “This woman is under my medical care and is not permitted to return to duty today. You may leave now.”

32

A Different Way

Quinn

I woke up, dust in my mouth and feeling like someone had taken a paint scraper to my eyeballs. I blinked at the digital readout on my watch like I was trying to figure out what fucking year it was.

Two hours, or a little over, but I wasn’t being picky. Nor could my brain do the simple math to arrive at the exact number. That was how long I’d been asleep. I sat up, rubbing my face with both hands as I tried to figure out if my body had simply refused to stay asleep or whether something outside the door to my room had broken through.

I listened, hearing nothing but the faint rumble of sound from the bar below punctuated by the tinkle of the piano, and decided that it was just me refusing to sleep when there was too much to do.

There was a sink in my room. A little odd, as it was the only part of a bathroom present. I ran the faucet to splash water on my face and felt my scratchy chin. Swilling my mouth to finish, I glanced back at my gear on the bed, next to which I’d just passed out for the last two hours, and set about trying to reorganize it. Although, being able to access only about twenty percent of my brain’s power, I struggled to do the basic stuff like open a damn zipper. Eventually I found a sealed pack of protein paste, tore off one corner to squeeze it into my mouth, then chased it down with a whole canteen of water.

Part of my brain wanted to get all my supplies out and line them up, but the part that was working told me not to leave all of my shit on display for these strangers to steal. I changed my clothes, opting for thick cargo pants under a sweater, before restoring my jacket and gun belt. I hesitated in front of the mirror, adding two spare magazines for the gun in a jacket pocket and one of the stims as I didn’t know how long I’d be out.

Just in case, I told myself, conflictingly hoping I would and wouldn’t need them.

I threw down a rad pill and swallowed it just as there was another loud knock at the door—the universal knock of law enforcement. Only one fist could be making that sound.

“Come in, Captain,” I said.

The door opened and he walked in, removing his hat as he crossed the threshold and not appearing impressed with my apparent ability to see through doors.

“You’re dressed,” he said. “Good. Follow me.” He turned, restoring his hat as he stepped back onto the balcony overlooking the bar. I did as he said, closing the door behind me and returning his expectant glare until he broke the silence between us.

“You gonna lock that door, or just hope your gear’s still there when we get back?”

I went back inside to look for a key, feeling naïve, and found it at the back of the door. I locked it with a satisfyingly heavy click of metal.

“Your lady,” he said without preamble. “Seems like we both need to talk to her.”

Walking quickly, he led the way down the stairs and out the door. The day had cooled, and the harsh brightness of sunlight was beginning to fade as the sun started to sink.

“Had a little ask-around after our friend,” he said as I took three long strides to catch him up. “Turns out she must know folks ’round here because she didn’t get a room in any of the usual spots and nobody can say for sure she left.”

I said nothing, feeling my heart thump in my chest with a jolt of fear.

“So I asked around. You know, had a few words in the right ears of people who notice the comings and goings of others…”

“And?”

“And your lady’s still in town, holed up somewhere near the town hall.”

We’d made it to his office. He stopped by our bikes, threw his long coat back over one hip to expose his big revolver, and mounted a bike. I slid my leg across mine, and both motors sparked to life with an electric hum.

“Wait,” I said. “We’re not taking our rifles?”

“Like I said. I don’t like a habit of long guns being carried in the town. We’ll be fine,” he patted the cannon hanging from his hip, “trust me.”

The journey through town was difficult, mostly because my eyes were pulled every which way apart from where I was riding, and I kept having to snatch the bars to avoid hitting people. And buildings.

“That there’s the main store,” Hargreaves said, rolling slowly as he gave me a condensed tour of the town. “Down there’s the main enclosures where the livestock graze—took years to build the wall around it before the critters learned to swim down the river running through it. That’s blocked off now too, much as can be done.”

This made me think of burgers straightaway. We had livestock in Zion, but they were few and limited. Bald hens born blind in cages to provide eggs and eat the protein mulch made from their comrades who didn’t make it. What few cows there were lived their lives in a factory line. Meat was a rare commodity back home, so most of us existed on the plant-based protein grown under the lamps. I could count on both hands the number of times I’d eaten real meat in my life.

“The livestock,” I asked, suddenly wishing I’d brought the Geiger box, like I was somehow more susceptible to radiation than everyone living here, “they not contaminated at all?”

“Sure, some of them get a little tapeworm or similar from time to time. Some years we get the blight and have to cull more than we normally would.”

“I meant radia—”

“I know what you meant,” Hargreaves said with a snap of annoyance. “We ain’t anywhere near any red zones down here so no, we ain’t got mutant cows running wild.”

“Not like the deer we saw,” I said offhandedly.

“Deer?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled at the memory to cover my shudder of fear. “Huge goddam things with horns like twisted trees.”

“Antlers.”

“They showed a little hot on rads,” I said, ignoring the second time I’d been corrected about the beasts.

“That ain’t all that’s out there,” Hargreaves said darkly. “Wild animals roamed all over, so the ones left now are more akin to demons than their original form.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “Damn near killed myself after a rock sprouted legs and ran in front of me. And that was after a pack of green-looking leathery bastards tried to eat us.”

“We’ve lost plenty of our own that same way. Out there, they are legion.”

“Legion?”

“And the Lord asked him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Legion,’ for many demons had entered him.”

Something about how he spoke made me recall a memory of a preacher my mother took me to see when I was young. Not the words, but the way he spoke.

“You’re… you’re a preacher?” I asked, the word feeling awkward on my tongue.

“No,” Hargreaves answered with a chuckle. “My father was.”

I was about to ask what happened to him when the guy pulled his bike up in front of a big two-story building with the words “Town Hall” emblazoned in paint above the door. He stopped his bike and again threw back his coat to swing his leg off.

“Leave the bikes here,” he said, pulling out his gun and spinning the cylinder to check all chambers were filled with fat bullets. I did the same, or at least my version of it, pulling back on the slide of my gun to see shiny brass in the chamber. He saw me do it and nodded before setting off for the street.

A voice behind us cut the air.

“Planning on causing a ruckus, Captain?”

Hargreaves froze, turning to look up at the building to see a tall woman atop the steps with her hands on her hips. When I say tall, she was tall. And the stairs doubled that height advantage, so she looked down on us in the literal sense.

Hargreaves tipped his hat.

“Madam Mayor,” he said respectfully while ignoring her question.

“Well, are you?” she asked, her voice more cultured and less harsh now, making me think she was putting on the accent before.

“No more than’s necessary, and no less than’s fun.”

She smiled at that, adding a sparkle of white teeth to her brown features.

“Come see me when you’re done,” she told him before adding, “if you’re still in one piece.”

I followed Hargreaves across the road and down a few twists and turns between buildings until he looked over, wearing an expression that asked if I was ready. I gave him a nod and he leaned towards me.

“Tell me, Zion, how would you do this back in the big city?” he whispered.

I shrugged. “Get a warrant.” Hargreaves smiled, leaned back, and planted his boot directly into the door. It splintered open.

“Town Guard!” he bawled as he stepped inside and drew his gun to sweep the room. I followed, drawing my own gun to move left when he went right, before the world blinded me with a flash and dropped me face-first into darkness.

33

Complicated

Valentina

Doctor Lopez managed to get me written off for the rest of the day and night before I had to return to duty. At seven in the morning on the dot, Kumar walked into the briefing room with his head buried in a report while somehow managing to avoid bumping into anyone or getting himself trodden on.

I’d surrendered the sidearm as ordered but had still managed to swipe most of the gear I’d gotten from stores for the trip to the wastelands, which felt like a dream half the time I thought about it. That gear was safely hidden in my place and could be explained away by ignorance if it got found. Truth was, I wanted it ready in case there was a chance to get back out there and bring Quinn back.

I didn’t know what I’d be tasked with, or even why I was still on the operation for that matter, but I was expecting to get dumped in some back office without much light and spend twelve hours at a time watching grainy surveillance footage, so when the new guy stood up to speak, I paid little attention.

“Good morning, everyone,” the commander said in a tone that suggested he was neither sincere nor happy that it was morning. He was a full decade older than Rivera, and he looked soft. Soft like he’d spent his career fighting statistics instead of drunks.

“No updates overnight. Your supervisors have your duties. Dismissed.” He walked off the dais, flanked by two lieutenants. That was it?

“Valentina,” a voice snapped from just above my left hip. I fought the urge to jump in fright, not quite managing it, and looked down to greet the lieutenant.

“You’re looking into the events on five/five just prior to the customs shooting incident,” Kumar told me. “Consider it a matter of pride that your attention to detail at the first crime scene was so favorably reported. Footage is on station eight in here with the analyst, and you’re to give a report to Sergeant Combs by tomorrow morning.”

With that, he walked off, looking like a kid among the adults as he crossed the room. I was surprised not to be under direct supervision but guessed the people still on the op didn’t know what had really gone down.

I was wrong.

“Ranger,” the commander called out. I turned and offered a salute with a small smile, neither of which were returned.

“I’ll keep it short,” he said, unable to stop himself from glancing in Kumar’s direction to see if the diminutive man had heard his unintentional pun. “There is to be no mention to anyone of what didn’t happen out there,” he warned. He spoke in a low, flat tone like he was stating facts. “Any and all comments relating to the former leadership of this operation will be addressed as a breach of orders under the discipline code of the corps.”

Having delivered his threat, he left me standing in the room to wonder if it had happened at all.

There’s the Yes Man they wanted from the beginning, I thought as he walked off to protect his early retirement package with an easy job on the uppers to look forward to.

I was tested within seconds, as I walked up behind the uniformed analyst sitting at station eight in front of a bank of three screens.

“Hey,” he said, extending a hand but not looking away from the displays for more than half a second. “Chuck Guillory. Analyst.”

I shook his hand, which was clammy and made me want to puke a little, but I told him my name and asked what he had.

“Not a great angle,” he said as his fingers blurred over the keyboard, “but here.”

I watched, seeing a wonky angle looking down on a busy public area, with the text on screen confirmed as being sector five, level five.

When it happened, I almost missed it, but I got Guillory to take it back and play it again. Twice more he did that until I was sure that the “altercation,” as it was first described, was nothing of the kind.

The victim, a foreman in a water plant according to the report, was walking with his head down. Someone just going from A to B. He wasn’t looking at or for anyone. He was just… walking.

Coming from the opposite direction, a dark figure with a hood pulled up over their face bumped him. There was a brief moment when the two looked at one another angrily, then they both resumed their journey, with the guy waving his hand and moving his lips like he was offering an opinion on the other person’s manners or breeding.

“What the fuck? Watch where the fuck ya goin’, ya fuck’n asshole,” Guillory read without emotion in a harsh accent I didn’t recognize. “That’s what the guy said.” He shrugged, conveying that he wasn’t sorry for enjoying himself as he read the lines of the play we were watching.

The screen switched to another angle, showing the worker staggering towards the camera and clutching at his gut like he was struggling to breathe. He dropped to his knees, both hands holding his stomach, before he pitched over hard onto his face and dropped what looked like ten pounds of wet meat onto the deck.

“What the fuck?” I said, leaning over Guillory to tap my finger on the screen. “That what I think it is?”

“The dude’s guts,” he replied as he leaned forward to wipe the part I’d touched with a small cloth. “Yeah. Pretty sick, huh?”

“Pretty slick, more like.”

“Huh?” he said again, this time making it sound more of a question than before.

“You think that was an accident? Or a fight? He was taken out.”

“Whoa, what? For real?”

“Chuck,” I said sympathetically, “I don’t doubt you’re good at your job, but have you ever worked a sector? Ever patrolled the lowers?”

The vacant look of horror on his face said that he hadn’t.

“You bump a guy’s shoulder down there and don’t apologize, you’ll get cursed out. Maybe even punched. What you don’t get is…”

“Eviscerated?”

“That,” I agreed. “Take it back to before and go to this last angle.”

He did, and it didn’t take me long to pick out the killer walking towards the “altercation,” because they—she—cut across the way to put herself in his path like I’d guessed she would.

Motive? I asked myself. This guy was just a water treatment worker, after all, so why would someone that unimportant warrant a proper investigation? It wasn’t like they were a senator. Something stunk pretty bad about all this, only it was moving too fast for my brain to put it in any kind of real order.

“The guy,” I said. “What have we got on him?”

Guillory hit more keys and pulled up a text file.

“Mayes, Thomas. Thirty-eight, foreman in the two/nineteen treatment facility. Got an old arrest record for child endangerment—later dropped, according to this—and lived alone on four/twelve ever since. I guess that was the divorce because there’s a filing of a restraining order which looks like it never got contested.”

“Wait, he lived in four/twelve and worked on two/nineteen?”

“So it says.”

“Why the hell was he on five/five then?”

Guillory looked at me for a second before his fingers started dancing their way over the keys again. “I’ll track him back as far as I can. See if I can work up a timeline for you.”

“Good work,” I said. “Where’s the body?”

“Med lab on five. Not far from the scene, as it happens.”

“I’ll be back to check in later. Can you get financials too?”

“You bet. You want the guy’s apartment left closed up or you letting it go?”

“No, wait, it hasn’t been searched?”

“Nope,” Guillory replied, handing me a clear bag bearing a key. The label gave me the details of the residence, which I calculated I could hit on the way back to central command.

“I’ll be back,” I told him, forgetting both the dull headache and feeling exhausted.

This damn case was getting more complicated every minute, and I still had to get a handle on the reason Quinn was left out there alone.

34

Customs

Rivera

My first day in a noncommissioned rank was eventful to say the least. I’d been thrust into a section covering customs duties on rotation and found the lieutenant in charge of them to be both bored and immature. He’d show off to gain the attention of the Rangers, but whenever the section’s junior commander showed up, he’d act like the very picture of professionalism before she left. As soon as she walked out the door, he went through a shallow-minded routine of making lewd comments about her appearance, including his party piece of wobbling his face from side to side and blowing a loud raspberry to imitate... well, that doesn’t matter, but I didn’t think it was becoming of any person in an officer’s rank, regardless of their age or experience.

I guessed he either didn’t know who I was—who I’d been yesterday, at least—or simply didn’t care. He treated me just like he did the other sergeant under his command: a servant.

The shiny stripes on my sleeve seemed to camouflage the cut of the jacket, and I got the impression the lieutenant, who was five years my junior, thought I was newly promoted.

To mask my upbringing, I spoke as little as possible, which actually made things easier and made me realize I heard a lot more if I didn’t talk as much.

“Trade caravan,” the speaker linked to our small control room announced. “Twenty minutes.”

“Alright, you heard it,” the other sergeant bawled at the Rangers. “Get out there and get ready. Docksey, Smith, Thomas—you’re on search duty. Rivera, you got them.”

I nodded, saying nothing and following the three who stood after being listed off to work. They didn’t know I didn’t know what I was doing, but I quickly learned it didn’t matter. All I had to do was instruct someone else to perform a task and watch like I knew they were doing it wrong.

The wait was long, and as I wasn’t in the mood for their inane chatter, I told the three Rangers under my command to keep their mouths shut. They shot each other glances to silently discuss how much they disliked me, but I didn’t give a damn.

Why in hell hadn’t I resigned? Was it my stupid pride? Was I trying to prove something to myself? To my father?

Everything in me wanted to just move on. Except, Quinn. The Ranger, my Ranger, was still out there. I needed to cling on to the smallest amount of official authority I could in order to find a way to get to him home. Otherwise, he’d be on my conscience forever and Valentina would never forgive me.

I knew I’d never forgive myself, either.

Worst-case scenario, he’d never be heard from again. Best-case is that he’d make his own way back and want to know why he was left to fend for himself.

That was, unless I could find a way to get out there and not burn every bridge I’d ever need doing so.

“Open it up,” the lieutenant called out.

The airlock doors inched open to allow the warm air smell I recognized from outside carry in a small cloud of dust.

“Welcome to Zion,” the Ranger called Docksey said, sounding somehow more bored than when he had nothing to do. “The law here states that any and all firearms must be surrendered during your time in the city.”

The traders knew the routine as well as the Rangers did and pulled out all manner of firearms, placing them into trays for safekeeping. They were issued a ticket in return for their weapons, then shuffled into a line where they were searched during a recited speech regarding the legality under Zion law, et cetera, et cetera.

Then I saw the leader of the trade caravan unwind a long, red scarf from his face and shake it out before taking off his goggles and rubbing the lines they left on his cheeks and forehead. He locked eyes with me briefly, and I recognized him.

This was the man leading the caravan that had brought in two of the killers. I looked up at the camera lens facing them, as if it would give me a visual clue that the man’s face had set off an alarm in central command. Already I imagined the response team running for customs to detain him, so I took the opportunity and stepped close.

“You brought two women with you before,” I told him quietly as I made a show of pulling him out of line and taking my time searching him.

“What of it?” he muttered back, evidently curious as to why a sergeant of the Zion Rangers wanted to speak covertly.

“I need to know why, and who they said they were.”

“And what is this information worth to you?”

I had to fight back the urge to grab him around the throat and press the barrel of my weapon into his eye socket until he dropped the mercenary attitude, to play the bad cop for real, but I couldn’t afford the attention it would attract.

“In a short time,” I murmured, “that door over there will burst open and a dozen armed Rangers will detain you. You can either tell me now and I’ll ensure you’re protected, or they’ll take you away and interrogate you. You aren’t a citizen of Zion, so you can’t expect any protection.”

He gave me a hard look as if he were deciding whether to risk or bluff, then he let out a breath that smelled of rancid meat and spoke in a rushed, low voice.

“They were part of a transaction from the market in Jackson. They were meant to pose as traders, but they were sold to somebody here.”

It seemed a sensible ruse to me, using a blind courier who knew nothing of their true identity or purpose here, and I wasn’t inclined to explain to him that he’d been used.

“I hope they paid you well,” I said, just as the door opened and the expected response team burst in.

“Give me something,” I said desperately, “a name of your contact, anything.”

“Mayes,” he said, which meant nothing to me, before I was pushed aside, and the trader was forced to his knees at gunpoint.

35

Deputized

Quinn

If I thought I’d had a headache when the deputy director walked into my apartment a few days ago—or maybe years, I wasn’t sure—then this was like some kind of awakening to what true pain really was. What I’d experienced before was, like, pain’s younger cousin or something.

I tried to sit up, experiencing so many wonderful new agonies in various parts of my body that if given the choice between death and whatever the hell this was, well, sign me up for death.

I tried to speak, but all that came out was a lazy stream of watery protein paste which found its way into the back of my nose and made me panic to cough out more of it.

As messed up as I felt, my brain registered that I’d eaten the paste just before going out with Hargreaves so I couldn’t have been out for long. If I’d thought knowing that would make anything better, I was wrong.

“Easy,” a female voice said before a hand pressed down on my chest. “Lie back and rest, now.”

I ignored the instruction, pushing upwards with renewed effort to try to break free, before the hand shoved me with more strength than I’d expected from the sweet nature of the voice.

“Okay, you don’t listen too well, do you? I said, lie down and rest.”

I got the distinct impression from the shift in her voice that she wouldn’t tolerate a second attempt by me to get up. It was like her voice was a blade and she kept it inside her boot unless she needed to flash the steel.

“What…” I mumbled, my voice sounding like a squeaker toy with no squeak.

“You and the captain went off chasing someone, didn’t you?”

I nodded, my eyes still closed to try to keep more pain from gaining access to my head. I waited for her to tell me more, hoping that I wouldn’t have to ask. Trying to speak right now felt like falling down a damn staircase.

“You need to rest now—sharp scratch—and when y—”

“Ow! Jesus, what the fuck, lady?” I cursed, feeling the agony of yelling far worse than what felt like a water pipe getting shoved into my arm. Instantly I felt woozy, and the last thing I heard before drifting off was her voice again.

“He needs to rest. He can’t even speak now… I know, and he better tell me something I need to know or else he’s…”

* * *

I woke up. My eyelids felt like they were fluttering and about to open so I clamped my eyes shut like a little kid trying to hide, and carefully opened them, one at a time. The pain was still there, but it wasn’t half as bad as it’d been the last time. I lifted my head slightly and blinked both eyes into focus, checking around me to see if I was going to fetch another heavy-handed beat-down for not staying still.

I saw rafters, wood panel walls, and a framed picture of a dude with the worst hair ever. I stared at him, wondering what had turned his hair white and why he thought a loose ponytail was a good look on a guy, until the image of him faded away behind the dust particles shining in the sunlight.

Sunlight. Daytime. That meant there was still a chance to get after the bastards who did this to me.

Tentatively I began to sit up, taking each part of the movement in turn and slowly until I was sitting on the edge of the bed I’d been placed on. I let my bare feet touch the floor.

My bare feet. I was wearing boots when we busted into that house. For that matter, I was wearing clothes last I checked too, and now I was buck naked under a sheet in a room I realized I didn’t recognize. Whatever I’d been stuck with had knocked me out cold, cold enough to get stripped and moved and God knew what else. I tried to stand and found myself sitting down on the floor—which my bare ass found much colder than my feet had the decency to warn me it was—when the door opened and the tall woman I’d seen earlier on the steps of the town hall walked in.

“God dammit,” she cursed, spinning on her heel to about-face. “You wanna cover that up?” I looked down groggily, wondering how I’d gone my whole life without getting a reputation for anything much, and here I was flashing the third person my nuts in as many days.

Crap, I thought as I tried to shuffle back up onto the bed and make myself decent, which was hard because my legs didn’t want to do what I was telling them. I managed it eventually, with enough grunting to probably make a person’s first impression of me worse than it already was.

“Sorry,” I mumbled through numb lips. “I’m decent.”

She turned and walked over, annoyance written all over her face.

“I’m Mayor Williams,” she said. “We met yesterday, albeit a brief encounter on account of the Captain of the Town Guard being in a ru—”

“Yesterday?”

“You were unconscious until late in the day. The sedative we gave you put you out for the night.”

“The captain? Hargreaves?” I asked, finally processing the words she’d used and cross referencing them with my memories.

“Is in a critical condition,” she said, her lips set in a tight line. “Appears he took the brunt of the Stinger when—”

“Stinger?”

“Mister Quinn, this would go a lot smoother if you didn’t keep repeating random words from my sentences.”

“Ranger,” I said, clearing my throat and trying again in a bigger-boy voice. “I’m a Ranger, not a Mister.”

“If you say so,” she went on. “Now, as I was in the middle of telling you, the captain took the brunt of the Stinger, which is a kind of grenade that scrambles a person’s head pretty bad, and he hasn’t regained consciousness. What I need from you is to tell me why you and the captain were busting in that door in such a rush.”

She stopped talking, leaving an abhorrent vacuum I was forced to fill.

“Woman,” I croaked, finally seeing the glass of water on the table beside the bed and gulping it down without a single conscious thought of radiation poisoning. “Fugitive. She and two accomplices killed a se… killed some people in Zion City. I shot one trying to leave, two escaped.”

“You said woman. Singular. Not women, as in plural.”

“Caught one in the canyon,” I told her, leaving her to draw her own conclusions.

“Mmm-hmm. And where are these killers from? Where are you chasing this woman to?”

I decided not to give her the partial information about the link to Helena Crossroads just yet.

“They were going north. No other way to go.” I shrugged as if to say that no further explanation was needed.

“So you ride into town, tell the captain about it, and he finds you somewhere to stay before he tracks this woman down, no doubt through some kind of bribery or other form of unregulated deal-making. You two bust in there and…” she looked into the air and mimicked an explosion with her hands, “… boom. Hargreaves fetches himself a coma and leaves you half busted up to boot. Am I missing anything?”

She wasn’t, but I realized I was.

“My clothes. My weapon…” I looked around, hoping to find a neat pile of gear and my pistol but saw nothing.

“We had to remove your clothes to check for injuries and make you comfortable. Your weapon, I presume, was taken by whoever lit you two up.”

My head sagged. Without a gun out in the wastes, I’d be lucky to even make it home in one piece, let alone track down and apprehend a killer to stand trial back in Zion.

“This,” she said, “should suffice in the meantime.”

She held out a thick, black leather belt with something heavy weighing down one side. Unthinking, I reached out to take it, and I drew the weapon to see the same brutal hand cannon Hargreaves had carried.

“I’ll need a little more than one gun,” I said, sounding ungrateful.

“I’ll see to it you get what you need,” she said firmly, “but it comes at a price.”

“What price?”

In answer, she drew out a star of yellow metal inside a circular ring and tossed it to me. I fumbled the catch completely, picking it up from my lap on the third attempt and read the inscription.

Salt Lake Town Guard.

“What?” I asked, not understanding.

“The way I see it, you want this person anyway, and I want someone to track her down and bring her to justice for disturbing the peace in my town. You need help doing it, so I am giving you the power of law.”

“My gear, the tavern…”

“Your room is paid for so long as you need it. Your bike’s been taken back to the captain’s office, which you’ll have access to, and Officer Rearden will assist you. I need to remind you, though. Inside the town you’re the law now, and that power comes with an expectation that your actions and behavior will be above reproach, at all times. But if you step outside the town limits, being a member of my town guard carries as much weight as your fancy Zion badge does here, common courtesy aside.”

I looked at the badge, rubbing my thumb over it as I thought. I closed my fist over it and gave the mayor a solemn nod.

“Very well,” she said. “The captain would normally do this part, but as I understand it, I have to formally invoke posse comitatus for the purpose of defending the township. Do you, Officer Quinn, promise faithfully to discharge the duties of that office so far as they pertain to maintaining the peace and bringing this fugitive to justice?”

I looked between her and the badge. Her expression held power, as if her words had invoked the spirits of the old world.

“No,” I said, handing back the badge. “No offence, but I have a fugitive to catch, and if we’re playing who has the bigger beef with her, then my multiple homicides beat knocking your cop unconscious. Thanks but no thanks. I need my gear and I need to do my job.”

“I’ll take the weapon back, then,” she said petulantly, not reaching for it but more opening negotiations.

“I’ll buy it off you,” I said, hoping the silvers were still hidden in my pack.

36

Forging Your Own Path

Rivera

“Leave him be, honey, it’s just a phase. He’ll come back when it’s out of his system.”

My mother’s words made me pause, mostly to gather myself so I didn’t turn and say something that would upset her. She was delicate, and if she’d seen even a tenth of the things I had in the last week, she’d likely never recover.

“No,” my father told her, “he wants to make a point, let him make it. Let’s see how he gets along without everything I’ve provided for him, like money.”

“I’ll get by on my salary like everyone else does,” I answered sullenly, still stuffing clothes into a bag along with the basic toiletries I’d need. Finding a place to stay wasn’t hard, especially if you didn’t mind which side of ten you lived on, and if I was being honest, I was punishing myself by picking something a little below what my budget allowed.

“On your sergeant’s wages,” he scoffed. My mother started to cry, which had no effect on my father other than to elicit a disgusted sneer, confirming my suspicions that he was a heartless bastard who cared only for his own reputation and profits. I’d heard whispers of him only marrying my mother to further his connections through family, and for years now I hadn’t doubted it.

“Yes. On the money I earn doing my job.”

“Your job? Your job was to serve for five years, make rank and retire to move up. But no, you have to go playing crusades and poking your nose in places where your betters had told you to leave well alone.”

“My betters?” I asked.

“Your betters. The people who know more about how the city works than you do. The people sensible enough not to go out there looking to get killed.”

“I wasn’t looking to get killed,” I answered stiffly, guilt about Quinn’s fate stabbing at me.

“The deputy director didn’t expect you to come back. I heard her tell the president as much.”

That one stung me, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I snatched up my bag, stuffed with the bare minimum I’d need, and bent to kiss my mother on her tear-streaked cheek. She just cried, saying nothing like she always did when my father started shouting. I walked for the door, but he moved to block my way.

“You walk out now an—”

“And what?” I asked, looking him hard in the eye. “Is this the part where you cut me off? Threaten to sever my access to the bank? Save your breath. I know you’ve already done that.”

He grimaced, face contorting in barely suppressed rage.

“You walk out now,” he snarled, “and you’ll break your mother’s heart.”

Manipulative bastard, I thought, looking back at the woman I suspect he’d broken years before but who still wore a winning smile with nothing behind her eyes whenever they went out in public. I turned back to him.

“You did that years ago,” I said, and left.

* * *

I was formally introduced to my digs on four/eleven by way of the door being unlocked, shoved open, and the key being dropped in my hand with a lazy warning about rent payments being on time or else. He didn’t specify what the “else” might be, just left it darkly vague to the extent that I believed him.

I placed my bag on the bed, looking at the sheets I’d paid to be cleaned each week, and knowing I’d been robbed because they looked older than me. Whether I’d given up on my level-two family home or not, I still had standards to maintain, so I took each of my uniforms out and hung them up, adding my off-duty clothes in folded stacks beside them in the closet because there were only two hangers left on the rail.

I had a tiny bathroom next to the closet, with water pressure I could only describe as pathetic. I supposed my showers were going to be the opposite of long and hot from now on. With my few possessions neatly in place, I set about looking for something I suspected most places on the lower levels had.

I scanned the room and found it straight off: a wall panel that looked slightly off gave way to a tug to reveal a small hiding space. I took out the leather pouch of silvers I’d surreptitiously packed before leaving my father’s house and went to place it there before Quinn’s words about searching haunted me.

I separated out about a quarter of the coins and put them into a plastic cup, the closest container I could find, before looking for the better hiding spot. Anyone breaking in would find the obvious haul and hopefully not the rest.

With no clue what to do with my days off, and my head spinning with so much guilt and anger that sleep was about as likely as a hot shower down here, I found myself in a bar off the main strip on level ten. Basically, the stall rolled up a shutter and bar stools were placed right there on the walkway, and the constant stream of people walking past behind me and bumping me went from annoyance to numbness by the time I’d sunk my third glass of… whatever the hell I was drinking.

Twice I felt a hand brush my back pockets, no doubt checking for the bulge of a coin purse to make another run on actually stealing it, but I kept everything valuable closer to my chest. I lifted a finger to order a fourth drink, starting to wonder if I’d be marked out as a potential robbery victim and deciding I didn’t much give a shit, when the bar stool beside me filled. I didn’t see the person, only felt them there, so I turned a little farther to my right and made it clear I wasn’t in the mood to talk.

“Make it two,” a female voice said to the bartender, who poured another shot into my glass before getting a fresh one from under the bar to pour hers. My brain told me I was about to get the push from a working girl, but something about her voice cut through and accessed a memory made foggy by the drink.

“You eaten anything yet?” Valentina asked quietly.

“No,” I said, my voice not sounding like my own. She said nothing, just knocked back her drink and reached over for mine.

“Hhheyy,” I complained, reaching for her arm and missing. She tossed that back too and told me to pay up as she slipped off the stool. I didn’t have the heart, or technically the capacity, to tell her I wasn’t exactly well-off any longer, but I did as I was told and stood, feeling like the air was less oxygen-rich down on ten.

She led the way a few stalls down and ordered two tacos, listing everything she wanted on them like she’d done it a hundred times before. She paid, making me grunt in gratitude as she handed me one. I took a bite, no doubt made braver by the unfamiliar alcohol, and found it to be much better than I’d have guessed. She jerked her head for me to follow, leading the way to another bar set way back from the main drag, where she ordered up two beers and showed us to a table in the shadows.

“It’s true then?” she asked me.

“That I refused to resign and got cut off from my family’s wealth? That I’m a nobody now? That I’m poor?” I spoke bitterly, feeling way too sorry for myself.

“No, that they arrested the trader who brought two of our killers in. I tried to get eyes on the investigation, but it’s sealed up tighter than a topsider’s… wait, cut off?”

I shrugged, accepting the beer from the woman a decade too old to still be waiting tables and taking a long gulp. It was a little sour, but it was cold and mostly refreshing.

“Damn, that’s cold,” she said, meaning what I’d said and not talking about the beer.

“Mayes,” I told her, seeing her eyes go wide before she looked around and ducked her head down toward the table.

“How did you hear about that?” she whispered urgently. “I’ll be up to my neck in deep shit if you tell anyone.”

I frowned at her, trying to understand why she was worried about getting in trouble for what I’d found out. I shook my head, leaning closer and whispering back.

“The trader, before they took him, he told me the man involved in smuggling them in is called Mayes. We need to find him, make the bastard talk.”

“You’ll have a hard time doing that,” she said. “Remember the last vic before we caught one on customs?”

I stared at her, my internal subroutine for accessing memory acting much more slowly than usual, until it dawned on me and I connected the dots.

“The one they killed before they left?”

She nodded slowly.

“Shit,” I hissed, drawing it out as an impotent anger washed over me.

“What else did he say?”

I concentrated, bringing it back with as much clarity as I could. “The market in Jackson, that’s where he was paid to let them pose as traders before he got here and sold them to this Mayes guy. I guess he assumed they were prostitutes?”

“I doubt he gave much of a crap if they were sold as meat,” Valentina told me, making me question the integrity of the burrito I’d recently finished.

“So what’s the play?” I asked, slipping out of my officer role naturally now.

“We can’t get near him,” she said, “but I’m looking into Mayes’s death until they connect the trader to him, and I likely get reassigned.”

I knew that would be soon, especially given how fast they reacted in customs.

“What about the others with him. Can we get to them?”

She shook her head and I drained the beer angrily, waving at the waitress for two more.

We sat in silence waiting for the drinks, then carried on that silence as each of us searched our own thoughts.

“We could just bust out,” I said, only half meaning it.

“What, steal a buggy and ride out? To hell with them and start a new life?” she asked, more excitement and mischief in her eyes than fear of the consequences.

“Why not? The first part, anyway. I’d rather like to come back if it’s all the same to you.”

37

Cold Trail

Quinn

Officer Mel Rearden was a sullen-looking man. I first mistook his inactivity for laziness, when in fact it was more malice and a cripplingly low intelligence rather than apathy. Seeing me walk into the captain’s office wearing my Zion Ranger badge on my jacket—holes in the leather be damned—must’ve upset him for some reason.

“Good afternoon,” I said, repeating the greeting I’d received from the very respectful Benji behind the bar of the tavern. True to the mayor’s word, my gear was undisturbed. There I’d changed, shamelessly practiced a few draws in the mirror with my new gun and sat on the bed to try to figure out just what the fuck I was doing.

I held the heavy revolver in my hands as I thought, turning it over and feeling the weight of it, how imbalanced and bulky it was, wondering if I’d live long enough to make it back home and get in trouble for losing my issued duty weapon that was so much lighter. I was sure Rivera would step in to help me out. He was probably already a full commander after bringing back one of the assassins, so one lost weapon wasn’t going to raise too many eyebrows after they caught up to me and we chased down the final killer.

I stood, sliding the long barrel of the gun into the holster on the second attempt, and wrapped my scarf and goggles around my neck, ready to face the elements. I rearranged my gear and took a bag containing the spare ammunition for the rifle and the pointless magazines for the gun I no longer possessed, meaning to secure them in the captain’s office like I had the right and authority to do so.

“Afternoon,” Rearden growled back at me, making a point that there was nothing good about his so far. He had small, suspicious eyes and was heavy set. He seemed either unwilling or unable to keep his mouth closed as he breathed. “Mayor’s left me in charge, now old Hargreaves is gone.”

“He’s dead?” I asked, seeing Rearden shift uncomfortably.

“Not dead, just, what’s the word? In-compassy-tatered.”

It took me a second to get it, and I had to fight the urge to laugh.

“I’ll be takin’ charge ’til he’s back on his feet, and until then I need you to—”

“Where are the keys?” I asked, pointing at the rack of rifles behind where he was lounging in Hargreaves’s chair.

“Are you listenin’ to me? I said, I need you to—”

“I’ll need the keys,” I interrupted him again, smiling to show I meant no disrespect by being intentionally disrespectful. I’d seen too many like him in the last few years. Rangers bumped up to act at the next rank or lieutenants fresh out of the box and torn from their au pair’s arms to serve a few formative years in the corps. People who clawed at power over others like it somehow validated them. I knew the only way to defeat them was to threaten them with someone more frightening than they were without making a direct challenge.

“I could ask the mayor if she knows where they are if you don’t,” I smiled, laying down the threat.

Rearden’s eyes never left mine as he reached into the desk drawer and pulled out a bunch of keys. He stood, unlocking it and taking out my rifle, all the while pretending not to marvel at it. I decided to push my luck.

“I’ll need spare ammunition for this too,” I said as I patted my right hip. He had no idea I lacked the authority to ask for anything other than my own property back, but I suspected that he thought I’d taken up the offer of temporary employment with the town guard.

“And another backup weapon, seeing as you’re already there,” I said, doubling down on humiliating him.

He paused, no doubt fighting the urge to bawl me out but ultimately fearing the consequences from the mayor should he try it. He dropped two boxes of bullets onto the desk, adding a stubby-barreled version of the hand cannon without a holster. I looked at the haul and smiled, turning my face back up to him and holding the smile until he broke first and added more bullets and a handful of fat metal disks with eight holes in. I didn’t know what they were but I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell this jerk. He finished with a holster for the gun that came in a tangle of straps I guessed I’d also have to figure out in my own time.

“Thanks,” I said, snatching up the loot and slinging my rifle over my shoulder. “What’s the last information on the fugitive?”

“Ain’t no last information,” Rearden smirked at me. “You’ll have to figure that out yourself. That’s privileged for town guard only.”

“Will do,” I said, “and what will you be doing?”

He bristled with indignation, not that he’d be able to describe it as that, given his vast vocabulary, and I worried I might’ve pushed too far.

“I’ll be keepin’ the peace here,” he answered.

“Here?” I said, looking around the room. “Good to know the office will be a safe place. You keep up the good work now, Officer Rearden.” I blew him a kiss, seeing him bubble with rage, and walked out before his tiny brain could come up with a response other than to maybe bite my face off if he caught up to me.

* * *

I went back to my room again, after attracting more than a few stares as I rode my bike the short distance to the tavern and parked it outside before carrying the automatic rifle past the bar. At least the music didn’t stop this time, but I still felt every eye in the place on me.

I took off my jacket and laid it on the bed beside the new gear as I untangled the straps of the holster to figure out I had to wear it over my shoulders like a… well, kind of like a bra. The holster sat neatly under my left armpit, with a strap that clipped onto my pants to keep it there. I slipped the gun in after opening up the cylinder and slotting a fat bullet into each of the eight chambers, spinning it with my thumb like I’d seen Hargreaves do because... well, because it was cool, and nobody was there to laugh at me.

Sitting down to figure out what the disks were for, I guessed they took bullets in the holes and must’ve been some kind of spare magazine of sorts. I clicked bullets into one until it was full and held it up to look at it, pressing my thumb on top, then cursed. All the little brass bastards dropped, hitting the floorboards and rolling in every direction possible.

Finally retrieving all of them, I restocked the loader with bullets and drew the big gun from my hip to open the cylinder and shake the round loose onto the bed. I fitted the loader into the cylinder and pressed the button again to let the bullets fall into place. Twice more I did it until I was happy I could perform the actions under pressure. I filled the left pocket of my jacket with the handy little contraptions, then looped the rifle over my body. Adding two spare magazines for it in my left thigh pocket, I left the rest in the pack. After grabbing water and rations, I packed the Geiger box and headed out the door. Time to hunt.

* * *

“I swear, I didn’t see nothing,” the woman said as she tried to shut the door in my face. She wasn’t the first person to try it on me and I hoped she wouldn’t be the last, but her door versus my boot was an unfair fight. I blocked the gap before she could close it, still smiling and playing it nice.

“I appreciate that, ma’am, I really do, but if I could just have a moment of your time?”

I felt the door squeeze my boot again, just in case she could successfully shut me out, before the pressure abated and she sagged in defeat.

“Like I done told everyone already,” she said tiredly, “I didn’t know the woman who lived there, and I didn’t see nothin’ of what happened to the cop, okay?”

And me, I thought. Thanks for the concern. I was still a little woozy at times after the Stinger screwed me up, but I refused to let it slow me down.

“You’d seen her though, right? The woman who lived there?”

“I guess,” she said, looking nervous as though she’d given something away.

“Well, you know it’s a woman on her own, so…”

“She was only there some of the time,” she admitted.

“Some of the time?”

“Well, she kinda came around the same time each day…” I prompted her with my eyebrows and a small smile, encouraging her to keep talking. “Checked around, went inside…” She shrugged.

“She ever buy food? Anyone ever deliver anything to her?”

She shook her head. Another frustratingly weak answer.

“Anything else you remember?”

“Just that damn car she kept leaving up the way there.”

Couldn’t’ve led with that? I fought the urge to groan and tap my head hard.

“Would you show me? Please?”

She did. Even told me how she’d complained at Hargreaves’s office about it three times. I guessed that was what had led the cop to that house.

“It was right here,” she said, pointing at a vacant spot of packed dirt. “Blocking the way, it was. I told both of ’em. I said, you can’t be leavin’ that thing here, not fair on folk who live here.”

“I underst—wait, both of them?”

“Yeah, her’n that friend of hers. Looked the same, only older. I asked if they was sisters or what and she ignored me. Walked right on by without a word, that’s bad manners, y’ask me.”

I looked around, seeing a rat-run of an alley down between the small houses leading back to the one we’d bust into yesterday. I ducked under a half-fallen post and walked toward the back of the place in question, hearing the woman muttering behind me as she bustled off back to her own house where I was sure she’d be locking the doors and ignoring any further attempt to intrude.

I went on a hunch, with almost no knowledge of vehicles but plenty of experience at catching people out hiding stuff. Sure as shit, a bike just like mine was hidden at the end of the alley under a dusty sheet with planks covering it. They’d done a good job to make it look like the junk had been there forever which is probably why the detective genius of officer Mel McDumbass Reardon had missed it. Knowing I had to get him to send someone out here and take the hidden bike meant likely eating humble pie, but there was no way of avoiding that.

Heading back out of the alley, I made my way toward the few ways in and out of the town to see when a buggy left and which way it headed.

38

Rogue

Valentina

I knew it. As soon as I walked into work, even though I was an hour early, I found my access card didn’t let me into the operation room.

I only tried it once, not wanting to set off any kind of alarm, and loitered nearby until someone went through for me to tailgate them. Just my luck, the first one to head for the doors was about four feet tall, chinless, and had his face buried in a report. I looked away, not making eye contact, but it didn’t matter.

“I’m sure you know by now, Ranger,” Lieutenant Kumar said quietly as he paused by the entry, “but your access to this investigation has been terminated. You can go back to your original duties.”

“Sir,” I tried, “I just need to know. Mayes, the guy who—”

“I’m aware of the identity of the deceased,” Kumar said. His eyes flickered to the plastic protruding from my pocket and he snatched it out. It was the key to Mayes’s place. “And I need to remind you that this investigation and matters linked to it are not, under any circumstances, to be discussed with anyone not currently detailed to this operation. That includes specifically any personnel formerly so detailed. Is that clear?”

“Crystal, sir.” I turned and walked away, not saluting him and doubting that he’d even noticed.

I had only one thing to check, even if it could and probably would land me in hot water. But they weren’t going to push me aside after I’d been on this from the beginning. Not with Quinn still out there, risking his life over a decision I’d gone along with.

* * *

Rivera was in bed, which didn’t surprise me.

He’d had a few more beers and wanted to go back for more ’shine after I’d let him tell me his crazy plan for stealing a buggy and going back out. I’d managed to convince him to go to bed instead, making him promise he wouldn’t try anything stupid, especially if I wasn’t involved. I got him back to the room he was renting, which actually wasn’t too bad for sub-ten but I guessed he was being screwed on the price, and definitely decided to ignore his clumsy attempt to get me to come inside with him.

I banged on the door, hearing nothing the first two times until I ramped it up and was rewarded with a groan from inside that sounded like he was trying to tell me to fuck off.

On the fifth attempt, this time hammering on the door like it was his last chance before I got someone down there with a cutting torch, a guy from the next room burst out holding a towel around his waist and bending awkwardly to cover up the below average tent he was rocking.

I decided not to waste time with a back and forth, so I pointed at his face and told him to go back inside and mind his business. I’d perfected the art of verbal boxing years before, and rarely had a man challenge me after I’d delivered the first blows. He went, respectfully closing the door behind him.

I turned back to Rivera’s door to see him peering through the gap with one eye closed, also holding a towel around his waist. He stank of booze, worse than he had when I left him there, but even a killer hangover couldn’t hide the clean lines of his torso. My eyes darted back up as I gave myself a mental slap around the face, pushed past him through the gap, and breezed into his room.

“Get dressed,” I told him. “I need your help.”

* * *

“You’re sure you want to go along with this?” I asked him. After a brief stop to force coffee into him and some food, the “meat” part of which he was dumb enough to question, he’d regained some color in his face and was starting to walk straight.

He shrugged. “The real question is whether you want to go along with this.”

When I gave him the look, he explained.

“I can always apologize for being young and stupid, go home, grovel for forgiveness, and live on level two with money. If you get caught, what then?”

“Then they’ll kick me out. So what? Like I want to stay now, anyway. I’ll just join up with a trader going north to look for Quinn.”

“Why?” He saw the look I shot him and recoiled a little. “I didn’t think there was anything between you two, so wh—”

“There isn’t,” I snapped, “but he’s out there because of us. Because we were stupid enough to let him think he could do it. And we were stupid enough to think that these assholes would let us go and help. He trusted us to have his back and we’re letting him down.”

That probably made him feel bad because he said nothing else until we got to the locked door on four/twelve I’d memorized from the evidence bag seal and looked up and down the corridor.

“Keep watch,” I told him, bending my knees to crouch down and start digging inside the lock with two bits of metal. If he was surprised at me using a set of lock picks, he didn’t say anything, just did as he was told and kept watch until a heavy click announced that we were in.

The search didn’t take long, and to my surprise it was actually Rivera who pulled in the real haul. I’d found the cash, imaginatively hidden under the guy’s bed, but Rivera started looking in places I’d expect a veteran Ranger to check, not some shiny sergeant busted down from being a privileged topside officer.

“Oh, Valentina, you need to see this,” he said, holding out pieces of paper to me. I took them, reading the dead guy’s awful handwriting to make out the notes he kept after meetings with people.

“This one,” he said, pointing his finger at the scrawled title. “Byers. Why would Senator Byers be meeting with a water treatment worker? The only link they have is that they were both killed by the people brought in to meet Mayer. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does to me, I think,” I said, “and right now we need to get the hell out of here.” I turned him around to face me to make sure he heard.

“Are you sure about this? About breaking out? Because I think this might go deeper.”

He looked scared, even a little sick, but nodded.

“Get your gear, meet me at Lopez’s in thirty,” I told him. “And stay off the radar.”

* * *

“Oh, hey there, Sarge,” the Ranger on duty at the customs level said. He seemed kind enough, even a little bored because he looked genuinely happy to see another person. Guarding a set of big doors all night was a lonely detail.

“Hi,” Rivera said, resting his pack down and trying not to show how heavy it was. “What’s your name?”

“Yardley.”

“Yardley, I need to level with you,” Rivera said. “I’m going through that door and I’m taking a Ranger buggy. I don’t want you to get or to land in any trouble.”

Yardley stared at him, mouth open and eyes blinking slowly.

“The less you know the better, but you need to accept that this is happening. So, step aside and let me through.”

“No, sir,” Yardley said, making Rivera frown. I nearly jumped out from my hiding spot to intervene, but held my nerve.

“I know who you are,” Yardley said, “and rumor has it they busted you down because you wanted to go back out there and bring back one of ours. I don’t know what’s what, but I know that security feed—don’t look, sir—I know it works and if I step aside, I’ll just get locked up for helping you.”

Rivera sagged.

“So if you’ll hit me, I’ll make it look good. I could do with a lie down and a few days off on sick pay, anyway.”

Rivera looked at him for a second before swinging a sucker punch that clocked him in the head and snapped him back. It wasn’t as hard as it looked, but the guy went down hard and lay still.

“Come on,” Rivera called out, unlocking the doors and slipping through the gap as they rumbled open. I followed, seeing him standing just inside looking around until he found a buggy identical to the one we’d already used. I mentioned as much to him and got an answer I wasn’t expecting, somehow.

“It is,” he told me. “I think we should take it. At least we know it works properly.”

“What about rifles. Are there any up here?”

He shook his head.

“Possibly, but without the armory keys, we’ve got no chance. Better to get to Salt Lake and buy some.”

I was about to ask, “with what?” but then remembered who I was talking to.

“Okay,” I said. “So how do we get out?”

In answer, he pointed at the airlock, more specifically to the side of the control panel where the emergency override switch was.

“Are we really doing this?” I asked him, my hand on his arm to give him pause. He looked at it, then up at me, and smiled.

“I’m not leaving someone out there, not with him thinking we’re coming after him.”

I smiled back and started the buggy, seeing a good charge left in the batteries. Rivera broke the glass on the override and forced both doors to open to the outside world at once, setting off what sounded like every alarm in the known world.

39

The Chase

Quinn

I didn’t know if the job attracted the same types everywhere. But I went to all three of the main gates to the town to ask the two officers posted if they’d seen a buggy leave since yesterday. I made the question more specific. Had anyone told them they’d seen a buggy? Had they even heard rumors about a buggy leaving? One guy gave me such a vacant look I had to ask if he knew what a buggy was.

They were either playing deaf to prove a point to the outsider, or else they were on gate duty because it afforded them the most time sitting on their asses when there was work to be done elsewhere.

“Seriously, you guys are just another form of Shiny,” I told them, leaving them more confused than when I’d first spoken.

There was no evidence to prove that they’d left town, but I knew that wasn’t to say they hadn’t. If it was me, and I was the one with not one but two towns’ law after me, I’d make out like I’d left and lie low until all the excitement died down. I’d seen that on my second or maybe third year as a Ranger. Some guy robbed a minor bank on eleven after breaking in, so as every surrounding level and sector got torn apart by Rangers looking for him, he holed himself up in a crawl space with enough supplies to last a month and just rode it out. He only got caught because a kid saw him breaking back out the way he’d broken in after about a week. I didn’t know why, but somehow I had that thought running through my head.

Of course the two women could’ve just changed their appearance and gone out via another mode of transport—God knew there were enough places in town to hide a buggy—but with nobody seeing anything, it made me think they were hiding out.

If it was a local, someone with years of history with the residents, I’d understand when the badges came knocking that people suddenly went down with amnesia, or blindness, or even found themselves with no recollection of the person I was looking for at all. But these two, so far as I knew, were outsiders.

With that in mind, I called on the mayor at the town hall, only to be told she was in the hospital visiting Hargreaves. I thanked the woman for the directions she gave me and set off to find the mayor beside the man’s bed, involved in a discussion with a man I assumed was the doctor. I only caught the end of it, but the mayor sounded like she wasn’t too happy with the prognosis.

“What do you mean, there’s no way to know?” she asked. The doctor lifted the captain’s eyelids and leaned in to flash a small torch over his eyes.

“It’s a case of having to wait to see if his brain recovers. All we can do is keep him comfortable so he can decide if he shrugs the effects off or not.”

No hope of counting on Hargreaves’s help then, I thought. I cleared my throat to get the mayor’s attention.

“Mister Zion, you need me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I was hoping you’d be able to point me in the direction of someone with a little local knowledge.”

Her eyebrow went up on one side in the way that seemed more like an accusation than a question.

“We believed the fugitives left town in a buggy, right? Only nobody has any memory of a buggy leaving town since yesterday.”

“Leading you to believe that they’re still here,” she said, making me wish she were an officer of the town guard rather than those wastes of good oxygen I’d spoken to already.

I nodded.

“There are parts of town that aren’t too inhabited, I’d recommend starting there. As for someone to help you? I’m a little snowed under as you might as you might’ve guessed.”

“Snowed?” I asked, confused by the unfamiliar term.

She gave me a look of pity. “We get snow here, almost two months at a time some years. It’s just a thing we say. I meant to say that sadly, I don’t have the time to help you right now. I’d suggest finding another officer, or you could head that way and you’ll know when you’re there,” she said, pointing.

I thanked her, choosing to go on my own rather than waste my breath trying to convince anyone else to help a “city boy” like me.

I guessed they thought that about Zion as much as people in Zion thought everyone out in the wastes was a mutant wanting to eat them. People are fucked up like that.

I went back outside and threw my leg over my bike before setting off in the direction the mayor had suggested. I saw what she meant after maybe five minutes. The people going about their business dried up completely. The houses and buildings, some I guessed had their bones dating back far beyond anyone still alive, all seemed abandoned. Some had even had their windows and wooden boards removed, no doubt to patch up a house still in use closer to the center of town. I rode through a scrapyard of houses just waiting for the recyclers to pick them apart and make something new.

The perfect place to hide, I thought.

My hunch paid off. After another five minutes, a flash of movement caught my eye. I turned to it, hard not to, but I kept on riding like I wasn’t aware I’d seen anything. I hung a right at the next junction and a right again after that, stopping my bike slowly and setting the stand.

I brought the rifle up to my shoulder, had my thumb on the safety switch, and started walking back towards whatever it was I’d seen.

I suddenly felt—what’s the word? Agoraphobic? Like the place you’re in is too big—the opposite of claustrophobia. I hadn’t experienced that ever before but right then I felt smaller and more exposed than I ever had. I crept closer, each step taking away a survival percentage point in my head. I paused, talking myself into going back and rousing the other deputies from their lazy searches of areas they knew the killers wouldn’t be to follow me and search the place in force.

But that was a dumb idea. If I were the one hiding here and I’d seen me sniffing around before leaving, I’d assume I was going for help, and I’d be long gone before I got back.

Okay, that made sense in my head…

I was expecting a gunshot to ring out. Maybe some blinding flash would fry my brain. Instead, I only heard the flat-out whine of electric motors and a crunch of wheel on stone.

“Shit!” I yelled, running back for my bike and tearing off after them back towards the town. I caught sight of the back of the buggy just as it jinked left between a row of buildings. I followed, having to slow down so I didn’t fall off in the tight turn, only to see them pull another turn to double back around the block. I didn’t know how I knew, but I was sure they were doing it to slow me down and hope I’d fall off or something. I dug in, concentrating as hard as I could to stay on the bike, and twice more just saw the rear of their buggy take a corner up ahead.

Then I lost them, but not for long as shouts of alarm and anger told me where the near-silent vehicle almost ran people over a couple streets away. I set off again, making in a straight line for the nearest gate in a bid to get ahead of them.

It paid off. They were closer when I saw them, I’d halved the distance at least, but they were going hard for the west gate. I had less than zero faith that the deputies there would stop them, so I twisted the throttle hard enough to lift the front wheel of the bike and make me lean forward on instinct to force it back down.

I was close to catching them when a kid, a damned kid, ran out in front of me to watch where the buggy went. For the second time in a couple of days I fell off the bike, ditching it to one side and sailing through the air like a rag to avoid killing the curious little bastard.

I hit and rolled, my rifle crunching me in the ribs hard enough to take my breath away, and skidded to a stop in time to see the buggy bust through the weak attempt to stop them and out into the open wasteland to disappear.

I dragged myself to my feet, ignoring the stupid questions about whether I was alright, and limped back to my bike to find it in worse shape than I was.

The motor powering the rear wheel had come off its housing, making it useless for any kind of pursuit. I unstrapped my pack and limped back towards the captain’s office to take the identical one I’d seized earlier, grab my gear and get after them.

The chase was on, and I wasn’t letting them get away.

40

Trapped

Quinn

I had them in my sights after maybe ten minutes of hard riding. I didn’t know if they were being conservative or I was being reckless, but the bike seemed to have the buggy on speed. Their dust plume kept me after them, giving me a big target to follow so I could keep my eye out on the road for more not-rocks. There weren’t any, none taking a nap in the road at least, but I still kept an eye out for them and whatever other nasty shit might be lurking in the dusty shrubs that had replaced the dirt and boulders.

After another twenty minutes maybe, I started to feel the fatigue of the chase and my riding suffered as a result. My arms couldn’t hold the stiff frame of the handlebars, my elbows giving a little more with each bump I hit. I couldn’t stand up on the footrests to take those hits, and before I could figure it out, I’d slowed down enough that their dust trail disappeared over a ridge ahead and left me alone in the open country.

By the time I reached the ridge, my heart sank, anticipating another empty view. The pessimist in me knew they must have opened up their lead. I stopped at the crest, pulled up the bike and stood to stretch my back and scan the horizon. Then I saw them. They’d made maybe another mile before the buggy had stopped in the middle of the road going north, just sitting still, like they were waiting for me.

Which they were.

I squinted my eyes to see them in the distance, my brain not working out that I had something across my handlebars that could actually zoom the distance for me, when I saw a tiny flash appear by the stationary vehicle. Before my brain had a chance to ask itself what that could’ve been, a thrumming zzzipp cracked past over my head and made me fall to one side with the bike pinning me down.

I flailed at it, not wanting to look for another flash as a warning of imminent death. The noise drew closer and closer—

Zzzipp, crack!

Zzzipp, crack!

Zzzipp, crack!

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I growled as I squirmed out from under my ride and crawled on my belly back down the crest out of sight of whatever weapon was releasing angry, supercharged wasps at me. Safely out of their view, I got my breathing under control and tried to think.

They had me pinned, so I could drag the bike back and try to go around or else try to rush them with speed. The bike was quick, but the bullets sounded a lot quicker, so the suicide run was out. Maybe I could get into a position where I could shoot at them? Perhaps flank them in the dead ground and take them out at a distance? A glance up at the setting sun made the prospect of crawling around in the dark about as appealing as circumcising myself, so I was back to being stuck on the road and unable to break the deadlock.

When it dawned on me. There were two of them. They could effectively pin me down and flank me. That’s when I really started to worry.

I dragged the bike back, retrieved my rifle and tried to think what to do. Meanwhile, the sun dipped below a distant hill and its warmth disappeared.

As soon as the landscape around me was cast into shadow, noises began to break out, warning me that I was in for a sleepless night. If I survived.

“Fire,” I said aloud, as if anyone were there but me. “I need fire.”

I tore out handfuls of prickly grass and bunched it together before pushing out farther and finding tough shrubs with stalks like miniature trees. I pulled them out of the dirt and piled them high, dragging rocks and my three packs into a circle, using the bike as one side of my shelter. I dug into my packs in turn until I found what I needed in the last one—naturally—and held the plastic-wrapped block against the heat sync of the bike’s rear electric motor until it began to smolder. Just as it burst into flame, I tossed it into the small depression I’d scraped in the dirt and filled with handfuls of grass. I held my breath until it caught and a flame showed. Nurturing the small fire like it was a fragile living organism, I added bits of shrub and grass until I had a small blaze burning and ran back out to grab as much fuel for it as I could.

I’ll survive the night, I told myself. I’m a hunter, and those murdering bitches are mine.

41

Hidden Truth

Deputy Director’s Office, Zion City

“What are they likely to find?” asked the man loitering in the shadows of the barely lit office. “Hell, what are the chances of them even coming back? You know how dangerous it is out there.”

“I do, as it happens,” the deputy director answered. “Do you?”

The shadowy man ignored the veiled challenge. “Worst-case scenario is what? They reach Helena and discover the truth? Or they go to Cheyenne and hear a conflicting story? Even if they catch the last one and believe what she says, then what? You think they can bring her back here safely for her to stand trial?”

“Unlikely, but not impossible,” the deputy director stated flatly.

“Highly unlikely. I’ll have word sent to every contact out there that they aren’t to make it back under any circumstances. They’ll meet their demise out there in the wastes like so many millions of others have over the years. There’s nothing on Earth that can’t be bought.”

The deputy director nodded, glad that she didn’t have to dirty her own hands any more than she already had. What was to come, if it were still possible, would kill thousands of people. But those people were the blight on Zion. They were the infection, the cancer growing in her belly. And the only way to deal with cancer is to cut it out.

“Are we still on schedule?” the man asked when she didn’t say anything. She shook her head.

“No. We need another envoy from Helena and the message will take another four or five days to reach them without using an airship. We need someone to conduct those negotiations when they arrive, only this time someone who won’t ask for a fucking receipt and leave a trail of breadcrumbs for…” She stopped speaking, too angry to go on forming words.

“Is there one scheduled?”

“An airship?” he asked. “No. Not this week.”

“How in the hell did Cheyenne find out about it?” she asked.

“Who’s to say they did? They might’ve just figured there was some kind of deal being struck and wanted to disrupt it,” he chuckled darkly. “You have to admit they did a fine job of doing just that.”

“They did, so how do we stop it from happening again?”

“You’re asking me, Deputy Director?” the man asked. “Surely you are the one who should be offering me assurances that it won’t happen again. Can’t you, I don’t know, seal off the city or at least quarantine every trader coming in?”

“I can order something like that. I’m in enough hot water with the president as it is with the whole… Rivera thing. And on that note, who’s going to be replacing that old fool if we pull this off? Byers was perfectly placed until he got his damn head cut off.”

“Leave that to me,” the man said. “You do your part and leave the politics to me. We’ll cleanse this filthy city of the scum and emerge better, purer than before.”

“In the meantime we need to decide how to handle the current situation. I’m shutting down the investigation into the murders. We can put it down to some rogue psychopath coming in with a trader and use that as a reason to close off the outside world for a while at least.”

“I’d recommend assigning a trusted team to protect our interests in that matter,” the man mused. “Perhaps send a contractor after them.”

“How? Use someone from inside Zion? We can’t ask for help from Helena until we’ve explained what happened, and that’ll take time to make a new contact.”

“I say we let fate take care of them,” the man answered. “How long can we really expect the three of them to survive out there, anyway?”

42

Desperate

Quinn

The sun set pretty damn fast, which made my skin prickle, not from the heat but from fear of the noises drawing closer all around me.

I had the fire going, sort of, but worried that if I built it up too high, I’d run out of fuel for it long before daybreak. The dry grasses and twigs crackled, letting out a meagre heat while the orange flames danced. I just hoped that the smoke and heat would keep whatever the hell was out there away from me. Images of leathery dogs and two-tone lizards pretending to be rocks flickered inside my mind like the flames did in my eyes. I forced them away, busying myself with my gear. I panicked at every rustle, thinking it was a snake unafraid of the fire, slithering into my pathetic fortification.

I put on another layer, stripping off my leather jacket to do so and restoring it afterward. I kept my gloves and my goggles on, along with the scarf wrapped around my face, even though my hot breath had made it damp. I settled in to watch the ridge.

I twisted my body to keep an eye on the fire, fearing that it would spontaneously uncombust and leave me totally unprotected from what was out there.

I didn’t know what I was more afraid of, the two women—killers—out ahead of me with their gun and their “in-depth anatomical knowledge,” or the untold amount of weird, mutated shit just waiting to kill me and eat my corpse.

That kind of feeling makes for a very long, very fraught, and very uncomfortable night.

43

Keeping Promises

Rivera

I finally, even if I thought I never would, experienced sympathy for the way Quinn must have felt when I first met him. I still had a hangover even after a night spent on the road—if it could even be called a road—beside Valentina, who was more focused than I ever imagined a person could be.

I used to take her sullen hostility as a defense mechanism, what with her being an attractive woman working in a male-dominated arena with its daily challenges, which were often physical and might threaten to degrade her natural femininity. That was my first impression. Now I rather suspected I had it all wrong. She was cold for other reasons, reasons I didn’t yet understand, and seeing her level of concentration contrasting with my sore head and slow reactions, I finally caught a glimpse into what she really was.

She was tough. Perhaps not by choice. Likely she’d had it thrust upon her, forcing her to adapt. Had I had the luxury of time to select my staff in the first place, I might have discovered whatever that secret was that she hid about herself and her past, but I found myself enjoying the mystery, and set myself the personal task to find out what that thing was. I wanted to know what made her tick.

“Eyes on the fucking road,” she snapped at me, making me realize I was staring at her as I thought and failed to keep my eyes on said fucking road. Concentrating on moving fast in the Wastes during the dark required the attention of more than one person, as we’d discovered from our experiences a few nights ago when we found ourselves being chased by a pack of… things, and not far from where we were now.

“Sorry,” I yelled back, my voice muffled by the scarf and the air whistling as we sped along, bumping up and down on the rough surface. My studies, which were focused heavily on pre-collapse society and economics, brought up the irrelevant facts that we were now traveling slightly northeast on what was one of many roads crisscrossing the continent, known as “inter-states,” a logical moniker given how the wide, straight, and largely flat transport links did indeed connect states one to another.

I still held a fascination with anything from “before,” and not for the first time I felt a rush of excitement to know that I had a far greater opportunity to find something previously unknown to me out here rather than back in Zion, where I’d scoured all the public sources and more than a few private collections belonging to family friends.

“How far?” Valentina asked.

I looked down, snapping on a small flashlight and keeping it close to the waxy paper map, trying to fathom our approximate location.

It wasn’t easy, what with the buggy hammering my spine into the hard seat with every other bump she hit. It was made even harder by the fact that we had exited via the eastern gate and not the western one as we had before, putting us on the main trade road running parallel to the opposite side of the canyon, which neither of us had traveled, so far as I knew.

“Well?” she shouted.

“I… I, oof—” The words were knocked out of my mouth by a particularly unpleasant dip in the road that made me half an inch shorter and smacked my face against both hands holding the map.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted, sniffing inside my scarf in the certain knowledge I’d given myself a nosebleed. “Why?”

In answer, she took her left hand off the wheel and pointed a single gloved finger at the pale LED dash lights, specifically at the battery meter which showed an alarmingly low level. She shot me a glance, and despite our goggles being coated in stinging layers of dust, when our eyes met, we managed to convey to each other how much neither of us wanted to spend a night outside in the wastes.

“What do we do?” she asked.

“Go, but more slowly. Don’t push it too hard. Still, if we have to wait it out, I’d rather we were closer to Salt Lake than this.”

She nodded, gripping the wheel with both hands as she eased off the throttle. The pressure on my back was instantly relieved.

In truth, I had no idea if I’d made the right decision, but my father had always forced me to be decisive under pressure. “And if that decision turns out to be wrong,” he always said, “at least you’ll have had time to find someone to blame it on.”

Riveras don’t make mistakes, I thought, echoing the mantra of my childhood whenever I came back with anything less than top of the class in whatever the test was.

Well, screw him, because I took responsibility for my actions, and my actions led to a brave man being out here in the shit and the radiation among the monsters, hunting a killer without help.

We were his help, and something stupid like a low battery wasn’t going to stop us.

44

Long Night

Quinn

It took me about an hour before my nerve broke and I fired my gun at a shadow. I swear the shadow moved when I did, but the weak muzzle flash didn’t light up anything in the dark and that made me feel like a dumbass.

A howl off in the distance, over the ridge, reminded me that I was facing danger on all sides, on top of the very particular threat of the two butchers, one of which was evidently a shooter too, hiding on the other side in dead ground.

A flurry of wind toppled the ball of brittle weeds that sat atop my tiny fire and released a few bright orange sparks on the breeze. My eyes followed them, like they held some kind of hypnotic power, until I shook my head to force my brain back to the present.

“Keep it together,” I said. “Focus.”

The last word set off some kind of alarm in my mind, and I dug into my pocket to find a stim. I only had three left but saving them for tomorrow seemed like a stupid idea if I was going to get checked out during the night courtesy of a glow in the dark snake or a razor-sharp blade.

“Remember,” I told myself as I pulled down my scarf to spray the stim under my tongue, “they’re in as much danger out here as I am, right?”

I didn’t get an answer. My heart sparked up and began to beat faster, sending the drugs around my body like someone rousting Rangers from a barracks for physical training before breakfast. I fought the shudder running up my spine and managed to control it, twisting my neck awkwardly because somehow that worked. I pulled my scarf up again and was tucking it tight around my neck when a noise behind me made me whip around, gun up, just in time to see the reflection of two small eyes that ducked away fast.

“Too small to be the dog things,” I said, reassuring myself. I scanned the darkness surrounding me, occasionally taking my eyes away for a second to check the fire and again fighting the urge to throw more of my tiny supply of combustibles on there to make it bigger.

“Bigger fire means you can’t see out, idiot,” I told myself, being my own voice of reason.

“Yeah, but smaller fire means you aren’t keeping things away, idiot,” I argued back, my breath coming fast as the stim was now in full effect.

I don’t know why or where it came from—I sure as hell didn’t find anything about my situation the slightest bit funny—but I laughed. I actually laughed out loud. Like a maniac.

“Ahahahahaaa! Got you there,” I told myself smugly. “Not so clever now, are you?”

“Well, if you’re so clever, why did they stop, huh? Tell me that, genius.”

I paused, pondering the point I’d posed to myself and realizing I’d asked a good question.

“Maybe their batteries are flat? Yeah, they probably ran out of juice.”

You sure about that? I asked myself, in my head this time and not out loud like a madman. I told myself it was just the immediate effect of the stim which was starting to wear off, but the doubt in my mind was still there.

What if they’d just stopped long enough to force me to hold up, then set off again? What if right now they’re miles ahead of me and safe because they’re moving?

“Only one thing for it,” I said, adding another handful of dry grass to the fire and suffering a face full of smoke that still bothered me even through the scarf and goggles. “I’ll have to check.”

I stood, scanning a full circle of my tiny fort, and satisfied myself that I couldn’t see any eyes glinting back at me. I listened hard, trying to make out any sounds I could to see if a dozen snakes were waiting in the dark only feet away, but over the crackle of the dry grass and twigs I couldn’t make out anything else.

With the words that were fast becoming my personal mantra, I stepped over the bike toward the blackness and the ridge overlooking the valley below.

“Fuck it.”

I walked slowly, checking the ground right in front of me in case I stepped on something that might bite, until I sensed the ridge ahead of me. I didn’t know how, maybe it was the change in the breeze or something, but I knew when I was there. Peering ahead into the massive expanse of darkness, I squinted my eyes and fought down the panic rising from my boots that shriveled up parts of me as it traveled toward my brain.

Nothing. No, wait, what was that?

I stuck my head out on my neck and squinted my eyes tighter, as if I could somehow make my vision zoom in by concentrating, but I saw it.

A fire.

It was weak, much as mine was, but it was there. They were there.

I turned and bolted back toward my semblance of safety and hopped over the barricade of the bike lying on its side to get back to the fire as fast as I could, because I felt like everything in the world was chasing me, even though I’d only gone twenty paces into the dark.

I stuffed more grass onto the fire and waved my hand in front of my face to try to clear the puff of thick smoke it gave off, as I brought my rifle up again to scan all around me.

I lost track of time, but not in the normal sense. Instead of realizing I’d suddenly lost half a day by being busy, time seemed to slow down so that each check of my watch after what felt like an hour actually showed only a few minutes passing. I cursed the stim for making that feeling worse but reckoned I might not now be awake, and by logical process alive, if I hadn’t taken it.

I tried to calculate the speed of the fuel burn and work out inside my head how long I had until I was out, but every time I tried, I couldn’t retain the last number in my head and I had to start all over again. Unrelenting noises from the darkness around me made me jump and twitch until the constant state of alertness was so draining that I felt my eyes begin to close. Three hours after taking a stim that was supposed to keep me going for double that amount of time, I felt more than a little worried that my heart would give up on me if I popped another one.

I slapped my face hard on both sides, one after the other, and forced myself to suck in big gulps of the chill night air. I stood up and paced around my rough circle to try to wake up. It worked for a while, but the exhaustion began to make me stumble and lose concentration.

“Fuck it,” I said again as I dug my hand back into my pocket for the second to last stim. I’d just tugged down my scarf and worked my chin free to spray it in my mouth, when a new sound exploded in the dark.

The Geiger box lit up like I’d never seen it do before, and from the place where it was strapped to the bars of the bike, it rattled with an intensity that frightened the shit out of me, almost literally, and I dropped the stim in the dirt to throw myself down and check the box hadn’t just crapped itself and start making a noise.

As expected, even though it horrified me, I saw the needle dancing way up above halfway.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I hissed, aiming my rifle wildly out into the darkness as the pitch of the clicking rose and fell. Then I felt it. The rumble under my knees built until the feeling became a sound and the sound rushed past me on all sides to drown out the wild, constant crackle of the Geiger box.

Great. Another stampeding mutant herd. With a-n-t-l-e-r-s.

My mind connected the dots to shout, “Hey, whatever’s running past you out there is seriously fucking irradiated,” which got through just enough to stop me from pulling the trigger on instinct and bringing one of them down on me. That would have done nothing but keep a source of invisible death poison nearby. At least I might be warmer if I did…

As fast as the things came from the darkness, they passed me by, leaving me with nothing but a fleeting sense of being microwaved and an overwhelming amount of exhaustion after the renewed adrenaline began to fade.

I checked the Geiger, seeing the needle resting back well in the safe area. I gave it a little knock in case it was just asleep or something, but the readout stayed blessedly low. Two thoughts rushed into my mind at once, and the first one was Doctor Lopez’s warning about a double dose of anti-rad meds, which saw me ripping open the packs to find them. I knew I’d put the bottle of pills in the top section, but with three bags that were identical, my luck obviously dictated that they’d be in the last one I checked.

My hands moved too fast and were too uncoordinated to get the cap off a water bottle, so I forced myself to slow down and concentrate. Gulping down the liquid that had already cooled to an enjoyable temperature in the dark, I swallowed down two of them before the second thought hit me.

What. The hell. Just happened?

I stood there for a minute, my mind blank as to any explanation for what just occurred, before I realized my fire had burned down to almost nothing. Dropping to my knees I threw on a large handful of the dry grass, but it was too much; I smothered the weak flames and had to drop my rifle to pull the grass away and find the warm center of the fire to let it breathe again.

As the flames licked upward again, I relaxed, sitting back in the dust heavily with a small crunch. I frowned, trying to figure out what I’d done to make my body issue a sound like that, when it dawned on me.

Groaning, I retrieved the bent and broken stim from under my ass and tried in vain to make it work. I tossed the dead tube into the fire. Another tiny flurry of sparks leapt for freedom, and I sat back against the seat of the bike to wait out the night.

45

The Cold Light of Day

Rivera

We made it to dawn, just, and the weak droning of the electric motors gave out just as the bright orange glow from the high ground far ahead broke cover to blind us.

Valentina threw off her straps and climbed out, allowing herself a precious moment to stretch before she began rigging the solar charging array stored behind her seat. She hissed in pain, only for a second, and rubbed at the back of her neck under the tumble of hair that had come loose from her ponytail.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said, bringing her fingers away from her neck and looking at them as if she expected blood.

“Want me to look?” She stared at me for a half second past comfortable before nodding her assent and turning around to lift her hair. I saw nothing apart from the smooth skin of her neck and watched it tighten as it was exposed to the cooler air. Trying to focus, I asked her to point to where the pain was, but she dropped her hair and walked back to the buggy.

“You know how this works?” she asked, holding up a folded thin metal frame in one hand and a thick cable in the other.

I did, in theory, but I’d never done it in practice. After recent events, I lacked the blind confidence in myself I’d once had, so instead of offering my opinion, I leaned into the buggy to read the faded instructions taped behind the driving seat.

“Central charging port above and in front of the rear right wheel,” I recited to her. “Plug in the solar charging cable and run the cord a minimum of twenty feet from the vehicle…” I looked up to see her unwinding the cord and walking backwards from where she’d opened a little door on the buggy’s bodywork. She fed the cord out as she walked.

“Open the frame and attach the folding cadmium telluride photovoltaic conductor—”

“Read the instructions written in English?” she interrupted.

My first reaction was to inform her that I was, in fact, speaking English even if I read words she didn’t know. My second instinct was to recognize that this would’ve made me sound like a jerk.

“The solar panel thing,” I said as I stood and unfurled the wedge of panels like the petals of a flower, that soaked up UV light and turned it into power through a scientific process I didn’t understand. I helped her attach it to the frame and followed the cord back to the buggy where the dash readout told me we had almost five hours to wait for a full charge.

“We could set off when we’ve charged the minimum,” I suggested. “Hopefully get to Salt Lakes and find Quinn, then leave it charging there.”

“It’ll speed up when the sun comes up more,” Valentina said confidently before shrugging and undermining that confidence. “I’m guessing, anyway. No, we need enough charge to get there guaranteed.”

I agreed, glad she wasn’t impetuous enough to waste time on another recharge before we got there. Asking if she was fine at the buggy on her own, I took myself a short distance away behind some rocks and watered the ground, after carefully checking out the area. The last thing I wanted to do was to be taken ill or otherwise incapacitated while exposing myself.

Returning to the buggy, I tried to bash the worst of the dust from my clothes and removed the scarf and goggles. Sand had gotten literally everywhere, and with each movement where any two parts of my body touched, a lance of discomfort shot through my skin.

“You got sand in your ass crack too?” Valentina asked, throwing me completely as either my expression or the modified walk had given the game away entirely.

“Yes,” I admitted, trying to hide my embarrassment by changing the subject. “I’m going up there,” I said, pointing to a tall outcrop of smooth rocks fifty paces away, “to get a better look at our surroundings.”

I grabbed my pack from the buggy, intending to eat and drink while I kept watch, and was surprised to see Valentina doing the same.

“What? You think I’m staying down here, exposed, by myself?”

I opened my mouth to admit that I’d expected she wanted some time alone after being stuck in the buggy with me all night, but the words tumbled out in the wrong order.

“Okay, don’t hurt yourself,” she said. “The buggy’s fine and we need a place to sit tight for a few hours. That’s as good a place as any, I guess.”

Twice we froze on the short walk to the rock bluff as something in the dirt ahead of us skittered away. On the third occasion the source of the movement didn’t run away but instead walked slowly toward us on eight long legs bristling with thick hair-like spikes. The fact that I could count the legs and see the detail meant two things: one, I was too close to whatever it was, and two, I was an idiot for being so close to whatever it was.

It carried on walking toward us without fear, which told me it either didn’t know what people were or, more likely, it just wasn’t scared of us, which made it even more frightening.

As it walked, rippling along the ground, a tail rose from beneath it to arch over its head as the legs marched it infallibly onward. That tail was tipped with a bulbous lump and a sharp spike which I was certain wasn’t used for cuddles. It twitched in my direction once. Not a pleasant experience.

“Erm,” I said, just as Valentina drew her sidearm and fired a single shot at the ground ahead of it. It froze, three of the legs still in midair as all movement ceased the second the gun’s report echoed over the empty wasteland. I couldn’t move, just stood there watching it watching me, until the tail disappeared again and it backpedaled before rippling in the opposite direction, like it liked the look of us as much as we did it.

“What the hell was th—”

“Shh,” Valentina cut me off, her head slightly cocked to turn her left ear up to the air as if trying to hear something faint. I heard it then, a heavy buzz, but I couldn’t tell if it came from something large or a dozen small things flying in formation.

I saw the shadow before I saw the thing. Looking up from the shadow to the brightening sky, I saw the curved body of what I guessed was a kind of insect, but it was bigger than my hand and also sported a curved stabbing implement on its ass which was striped with horizontal red and black bands.

Neither of us moved as the flying ass-dagger descended on our curious friend who had resumed its journey away from us. I watched it happen in slow time, just knowing that the flying insect was going to drop on the crawling insect and kill it in front of us. Something inside me wanted to intervene. Make a noise to scare them both off. Somehow avert nature’s course.

Before I could protest nature’s cruel sport, the tail of the spider thing whipped out and slammed the flying insect thing into the dirt, pounced on it, crunching it with its jaws, then leapt back. Cautiously, I watched as the spider thing casually cleaned the murder weapons while waiting for the now headless flying thing to finish writhing and stabbing itself repeatedly.

We said nothing—what was there to say?—and walked past what I was sure was about to be a feast. Reaching the rocks, I climbed up very carefully in case more surprises awaited.

“Looks like there’s a small cave here,” Valentina called out from below me.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” I shouted.

No response.

Worrying that she’d already been attacked and killed by some hideous abomination, I looked back only to see that she’d scaled the formation and climbed up beside me.

“I’m not stupid,” she chided me. “I wouldn’t go in there with a flamethrower if I had to.”

We lapsed into silence as we both ate a meal of protein paste. We made sure to drink plenty of water, as was the advice from anyone who had ever suffered a day or more of backlog when existing on the gritty substance in the sealed packets.

“Why history?” she asked without preamble. “I mean, what good is it knowing about the past?”

“The past?” I asked, unable to believe my ears. “It teaches us more than we could ever learn. It shows us where we’ve gone wrong before and gives us the reasons for how things are right now. For example, did you know that the lower levels of Zion were never intended for habitation?”

“No shit.”

“Seriously, the original population of the city was only about forty-five thousand, and when the population boomed shortly after the collapse, the leaders were forced to open up the lower levels and retrofit them. That process carried on for years until they’d built pretty much all the way down to level twenty. Also, did you know, th—”

“Fascinating,” she said, interrupting me. She looked… annoyed with me.

“I apologize, I just get excited about the past because I think it shows us the future.”

“How can it possibly do that?” she asked.

“By showing us what not to do, because we—as a species, I mean—have probably done it before and made a mess of things.”

“Humanity: destined to fail,” she announced, reaching her hands out as if imagining the words on a rolling digital readout like a news headline.

“Not entirely,” I disagreed. “I mean, we’ve survived, haven’t we?”

“We as in Zion? We, as in over half the population who struggle to survive on not enough food or treated water? With no rad meds—which they wouldn’t even need if they weren’t living that low down near the water in the canyon?”

I didn’t know how to answer her.

“How many people live in your house?” she asked. I knew she didn’t mean the small apartment I’d rented for an entire day before we broke out, so I told her.

“Four, but… but there’s a maid who lives in.”

“So five people, and how many rooms?”

I leaned my head back, letting the heat of the sun’s rays warm me as I counted up.

“Ten, including bathrooms.”

“Wow,” she spat sarcastically. “How do you elites cope with the overcrowding? Wanna know how many people lived in my place when we first moved here? Twenty. There was me and my sister, our parents, and sixteen other people in there after we’d got out of quarantine. Oh, and the bathroom was at the end of the hall. Singular.”

“What do you want? You want me to apologize for being born? I didn’t choose my life as much as you didn’t choose yours. Did I have the best of everything growing up? Yes. Does that make me a bad person?”

I glared at her, seeing if she had the attitude to answer, because I’d had enough of being treated like the asshole topsider she took me for. I swear she blew hot and cold like a broken air conditioning unit, but the exhaustion and stress from before we left Zion forced me to lay it out there for her.

“It doesn’t. I thought giving everything up would show you what I thought of being one of the elite,” I said, adding the air quotes where necessary.

“I’m sorry,” she said after a long pause. “I… I know I come across as a bitch, but I’ve been through too much shit at the hands of people like… well, people who have a lot in common with you, that’s all.”

“Tell me,” I said gently, hoping to break through her exterior.

She sniffed and lifted her goggles onto her head as she rubbed at her eyes with both hands.

“Forget about it. Doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to you, so it matters to me,” I tried. “I can’t help if I don’t know what the problem is.”

She laughed, unkindly but not with much effort.

“It’s history,” she said. “All it can do is show me what not to do in the future.” With that, she rose and took her rifle to scan the area, ending the conversation that threatened to expose what lay beneath that exterior she hid behind.

46

Dawn

Quinn

I pulled the blanket tighter around me to fight off the cold. The hiss of pressure escaping from one of the water pipes was constant, and I put up with it because it was a safe place to sleep, away from others who wouldn’t think twice about cutting open my pockets to see what I had. I was too small to fight them off, so I stayed out of sight and slept in places they couldn’t find.

I only had to do this for another eight months, I told myself. Just another eight months. Then I could take my basic education exam and get a job. Only eight months of scraping by. Eight months on my own, avoiding the orphanage which I knew would be worse than being homeless.

The hissing grew louder, rising and falling like the pressure in the pipes was changing.

Somebody ran a cold hand over my body gently, careful not to wake me. Somebody wanting to steal what I had. I knew if I opened my eyes, I’d risk a shank between my ribs at worst, or at best I’d be beaten badly by this thief in the dark. Trying to keep my breathing shallow, I concentrated on my other senses to find a way out of the situation I was in.

The hissing of the escaping water sounded again, a Doppler effect making it sound more like a rattle that a hiss. The hand moving gently over me was heavy and long, not like a hand at all, but—

My eyes opened, my chest still rising and falling in the same rhythmic pattern. There was no pipe, no dripping water, no confines of the crawl space I’d lived in for weeks on level sixteen. No damp blanket around my shoulders, no thief checking my pockets.

I was slumped down on the cold dirt of the wastes, and the hissing of the escaping water was the rattle of a snake undulating over my left arm.

The fire had burned out some time ago, and the gray sky was tinged with orange somewhere off to my left. My body tensed involuntarily, and the rattle intensified as the slithering stopped and the weight of the snake lifted off my arm. The creature reared up to look me right in the face.

Its long tongue flickered out—which might have seemed funny on any other creature that didn’t have gnarled, scaly horns curling up from either side of a snout the size of my fist. Wicked eyes fixed on me as it rose, the tail lifting too and rattling a warning, daring me to make a move. My rifle was beside me, the grip a few inches away from my right hand, but I knew I couldn’t lift it and swing the long barrel around in time to use it. The heavy revolver on my right hip was a little farther away, but it needed a quarter of the space to use. Just as I was figuring out which of my awful options to go for, a noise from the other side of the ridge made the snake glance away long enough for me to act.

I have no idea why I did what I did. There must’ve been some kind of killer instinct inside me that acted without any kind of regard for good sense. My left hand shot out to grab the scaly body, but my brain registered I wasn’t holding it close enough to the head to stop it turning and sinking its fangs into my wrist.

I swung it, spinning my entire body around once before releasing my grip at the peak of the swing. It rattled as it whipped through the air, hitting the dirt at least twenty paces away with a thud.

I jumped onto the bike, at least getting my boots a little way off the dirt to wait for the thing to slither back for revenge. I drew the revolver, feeling the awkwardness of an unfamiliar movement as I used my thumb to draw back the hammer. The rattle grew louder, and I held my breath, ready to aim, despite shaking like a faulty air fan.

Then it went quiet.

I held the heavy gun out ahead of me, my hand wavering with the weight of it.

“Come at me!” I yelled, wanting the snake to show itself so this could be over, not once considering that it might not be me who’d win the fight. I heard the rattle again, only this time it was quieter, and the sound told me instinctively that it was heading away from me.

I dared to relax after about ten minutes of just standing there, shaking, until a sensation cut through my shock and fear. I’d pissed my pants. The wet patch got colder by the second.

I jumped down from the bike and sighed with exhaustion and annoyance. I didn’t remember doing it, which was a little more concerning, and I holstered the heavy gun in a daze.

Boom!

The dirt at my feet erupted and my feet shot up to waist height. I hit the ground hard. I crawled to the cover of the bike and snatched up the rifle, aiming at the ridge.

How could I have forgotten about them?

I cursed myself for nearly getting killed by people after everything this fucking shithole had thrown at me. My crotch was cold and itched, and my right arm felt numb from the hand up to my elbow. Why was my arm numb?

That’s when a thought hit me. Had I just… I slipped a hand back to draw the revolver, finding the barrel warm and the metal smelling of gunpowder… Yes, I had. Almost shot my own fucking foot off.

I stood, digging in my packs for clean clothes. Suffering a double humiliation of both soiling myself and nearly shooting myself with the heavy gun.

I was tired. No, screw that, I was way beyond tired. I was physically and mentally exhausted. Couldn’t even recall how many days it had been since my last perfectly good hangover got ruined. I told myself that poor trigger discipline wasn’t something I could excuse just because I was tired, but I knew it was more than that.

Why was I dreaming about the bad times after Mom died?

Maybe it was the stress of the situation bringing up shit I’d buried, but the scars on my arms burned and itched like they had when they were healing.

I stripped and pulled on clean clothes, tossing the old ones into the blackened hollow where my fire had burned out beside a tiny collection of twigs. Knowing I’d have run out of fuel for it made me worry I’d underestimated my environment anyway, and that led me to darker thoughts of how totally unprepared I was for all of this.

I shrugged my leather jacket on and packed my bags, thinking through the reasons I was out here in the first damned place.

The bike was dead, totally drained of power, so I pulled out the little cone connected to the bike and folded out the solar panels along with the legs of the little tripod it sat on. I piled up my three packs and sat the charger on top, aiming the cone towards the orange ball rising in the distance. The readout on the bike showed nothing, which meant there wasn’t even enough juice left in it to tell me how long it would take to charge.

Picking up the rifle, I walked low toward the ridge, only stopping before I could see over the edge, and walking off to my left so I wouldn’t appear right by where I’d just fired a gun to let them know I was still here.

Careful to avoid the bushes and rocks where anything calling this fucking place home might be lurking, I worked my way around to a spot where I could peer over the edge and look down into the valley.

The buggy was there, with its own mobile charger spread out and pointed at the weak dawn, but I couldn’t see the women.

I couldn’t hear them, either. They must move over the ground like ghosts.

“Drop the rifle,” a female voice said, underlining her words with the distinct sound of a gun’s slide snapping back and forward.

47

Never for Free

I stayed looking out over the valley but raised my hands slowly.

“Get up,” she said, from maybe fifteen feet away over my right shoulder. She was on the wrong side of me to draw either of the revolvers and turn in time, and she was far enough away that I had no chance of rushing her. Fifteen feet was also a distance where you’d have to be an idiot or seriously unlucky to miss.

I got up, leaving the rifle where it was, and stood.

“Pretty light on your feet, huh?” I asked, sounding like a fucking idiot but only just keeping it together. I was stalling, saying anything just to keep her from shooting me.

“Pretty heavy on yours,” she answered, sounding a lot cooler than I did.

What the hell, I guessed I’d be a little bit cocky if I were the one holding the gun. My brain raced to find a solution, to look for a way out the stupid situation I’d landed myself in, but all I could do was curse inside, over and over.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

I turned to face her, seeing someone who just didn’t look the part for who I was chasing. She was short, like almost two heads shorter than me, and had the body of a teenager instead of a woman like I’d been imagining, based on the one I’d shot back in customs three days earlier.

Three? Or was it four?

“And the hand cannon,” she said, jutting her chin out at me. “Finger and thumb, nice and slow. On the ground.”

I moved to comply, but something caught my attention and either the tiredness or the sheer goddamned fucking audacity of it made my mouth move before my brain had a chance to censor the words.

“You’re holding me up with my own gun? You’re kidding me, right?”

She smiled and adjusted her stance, clearly enjoying herself and trying not to show it too much. She was holding my sidearm, and holding like she knew how to use it, and for some reason that triggered me more than I could contain.

“Was it you who threw that flash bomb thing?” I asked, taking an unconscious step toward her. She responded by taking a long step back and raising the gun to aim it from my chest to my head. I froze, seeing the look in her eye and believing that she’d kill me. As if reading my thoughts, she spoke.

“I got no intention of killing you,” she said, “not unless you make me.”

That threw me again. Shit, I needed some sleep. I could barely control my mouth, let alone my emotions. I exhaled a deep breath, then slowly drew the revolver from the holster, making sure not to grip it like I was going for the trigger. I held it out in front of me. She nodded for me to put it on the dirt. I did, stepping back as I’d anticipated the command. There was no way I’d bend down in front of someone I was holding at gunpoint, and I highly doubted she’d make an amateur mistake. Everything I saw in her screamed training.

“Why?” I asked.

She looked confused. “Why what?”

“Why aren’t you planning on killing me? I mean, I guessed you could’ve done by now, so that means you either want me to talk or…”

“You have no idea what’s going on, do you?” she said, pity evident in her voice. “There’s nothing you can say that we don’t already know.”

“So, you’re just a nice murderer, then?”

She jerked the barrel of the gun to signify she wanted me to walk back towards my bike and gear. I heard her stoop behind me, probably retrieving the rifle and the revolver I was already missing the weight of, making me wonder if I could draw the smaller version hidden in the holster under my left arm before she shot me.

What would I do if I managed to draw it? Kill her?

“Why did you murder the senator?” I asked, walking slowly toward the scene of my barely survived night out in the wastes.

“I didn’t,” she answered.

“You didn’t because someone else did or you didn’t because you didn’t go to Zion?”

“Smart guy,” she said from behind me.

“So, you were the one hiding out in Salt Lakes,” I said. A statement, not a question.

“Two for two. Wow, they really sent their sharpest mind after us, didn’t they? Shame you’re blundering around out here like a baby.”

“Go easy, okay? It’s my first time outside.”

She paused before answering, no doubt trying to reconcile what she thought she knew with what I was saying.

“And why are you alone? Why didn’t they send more of you?”

“Who says they didn’t?” I answered, trying to pull off my own brand of calm confidence and likely failing.

“Because you rode into Salt Lakes on your own.”

Well, she had me there.

She made me sit near my stuff but not close enough to be within arm’s reach. She moved around me, always just in my peripheral vision or fully in a blind spot and never coming close enough for me to make a move. I was actually learning from her, and that made me feel like I was back in training on day one.

“Arms behind your back,” she ordered. I did what she said, sensing her step close to loop one end of a piece of thin cord around my wrist and wind it fast around both before tying it off expertly. She was so quick and distracting that I didn’t have much chance to do anything even if I was planning to. Her left hand reached around inside my jacket and unclipped the hidden revolver from the holster to draw it out.

“Tut-tut,” she said. Actually said it instead of making the noise. Which was weird. And annoyed me more than I thought it could.

“Hey, did I try to use it on you?” I asked, being her friend now that I was tied up with no fucking way of getting one over on her. I had to trust that she was telling the truth about not killing me, which pissed me off.

She said nothing, just took my weapons and laid them out on the seat of the bike before working the charging cable free from the solar thing and dropping it to the dirt.

“Let me guess, your buggy is charging, and I’ll be stranded here watching you ride off?”

“You are the clever one today,” she snarked. She sat on the bike and checked my weapons, running practiced hands over the revolvers to pick the spent casing out of one chamber and ask a silent question with her eyebrows.

“Snake,” I lied.

“You get it?”

I shook my head. She scoffed lightly and wrinkled her nose until the source of the smell was located. She glanced between me and the pile of abandoned clothing. I shrugged, not bothering to explain. I was tied up, so I guessed her having to smell my dehydrated piss was as much payback as I could visit on her.

“So why kill the senator,” I tried again.

She looked up at me, her expression blank, before she returned her attention to my rifle to test it out for weight and balance.

“It’s nice,” she said with what sounded like genuine admiration. “What caliber?”

“Six-point-five-mil,” I said, reciting the words from Valentina’s quick briefing a hundred years ago during our first night out here. “XM-two-sixty-four.”

“How many rounds?”

“Forty in the mag,” I said.

“Nice. Mind if I keep it?” My face must’ve darkened because she laughed and set the gun down. “Relax, I’m kidding.”

“I’ve answered your questions, so tell me about the senator.”

“Nice try, sweetie,” she said as she stood to remove her jacket, holstering my gun in my holster on her leg as she did. Already the sun, even though it had been up for less than half an hour, was beginning to beat down some pretty warm rays. She was slim, with narrow hips, small shoulders and almost nothing to write home about in the chest department. She literally looked like someone’s little sister, right up until I saw how both her arms were covered in swirling ink patterns.

“I don’t think two gun facts qualify for an exchange of information like that.”

“So what does?” I asked.

“You can tell me why only one of you came after us.”

“Three of us,” I answered, seeing her eyelid flicker but the rest of her face stay still as a statue. Her smile was like it was painted on, and I knew she was playing me. Trying to, at least.

“And the other two?” I smiled. It was all I could do not to give her the heavy brow and hero smile to pull a “right behind you” out of my ass. I decided on a little honesty mixed with a large lie.

“They took our prisoner back to Zion two days ago.”

She shot to her feet and took two paces hard in my direction before she controlled herself. She stared at me, nostrils flaring, breath heaving, before she turned away and ran to the ridge to call out two words in a language I didn’t understand.

When she came back, she was calmer, but the nice murderer approach might be off the table soon if I was any judge of things.

“How?” she demanded.

I sighed and stretched my legs out ahead of me before I answered. I just needed a second to think, to try to turn it to my advantage somehow.

“You still plan on letting me live?”

“Depends on what you say next.”

“Well, that doesn’t fill me with confidence,” I told her. “What’s to say you won’t break your word anoth—”

The backhand blow she caught me with was a lot harder than I’d have thought, given the size of her. Her knuckles caught me on my cheekbone hard enough to make my damn eyes spin back in my head, and if I wasn’t already on the deck, then ending up there was probably an eventuality.

“Talk,” she demanded, just as noises off to her right made her spin to look that way. I glanced up, seeing an older woman dressed the same in boots, tan pants, and a jacket with a long rifle slung over her body diagonally. The two exchanged a few words in some language I didn’t even think I’d heard before. Taller woman, older but really striking with sharp cheekbones and wide, brown eyes, glared at me.

“Where is she?”

“Who? Your friend? She’s probably back in Zion being interrogated now,” I lied again, doubling down on the story I had to stick to now. “We caught her coming out of the canyon after she got slowed down by a load of deer.”

“And she lives?” the younger woman asked.

“Which one?” I asked, not smiling this time in case it came over wrong and one of them just cut my throat right there. For the second time in ten minutes, I worried they could read minds, because older woman crouched down in front of me and drew a blade like a long, thin triangle about as long as my hand and tapered to a point like a damn needle. She aimed it at my eye and achieved my full attention.

“One tried to kill a Ranger in Zion,” I said, leaving out the fact that the Ranger in question was tied up in front of her and close to pissing in his second set of pants that morning. “And she was shot. We caught the other in the canyon and took her alive.”

“Do you know how I know you’re lying, Ranger?” older woman asked with a cold tone. “Because none of us would ever allow ourselves to be captured. It is in our code. It is our faith.”

Well, that figures for the suicide run the one in customs made at me.

“She fell off her bike,” I said, again lending an air of solid truth to my lies, “and hit her head. She was out cold.”

The tip of the knife wavered in front of my face as older woman searched my expression for the truth. She stood abruptly and turned to mutter to her younger companion in their strange tongue. I tried to read their expressions, their body language, and the rough idea I got went something like this:

We have to go back for her.

You crazy? We’re burned there. We’ll never make it.

The rest was lost on me because I was already guessing too much to go any deeper, but I hoped they were saying something about letting me go. Honestly, I was more concerned about being left out here with hands tied behind my back than I was being sliced open by them.

Sliced open. That blade. “It was at least four inches long and tapered to get wider the closer it got to the hilt.”

“Why did you kill the senator?” I asked the older one. She stopped and stared at me for a few seconds before a confident smile pricked at her mouth. At least I guessed she thought it looked confident, because I saw it for what it was. She was scared.

“Do you know who we are?” she asked.

“You’re murderers for hire, is my guess. What you did down there in Zion was professional and pretty sick, cutting his head off like that? Seems to me like you enjoyed the killing, maybe?”

Way off the mark.

She smiled again, genuinely this time, letting me know my guess was wrong.

“Go home, Ranger,” she said as she turned away.

“You sure there’s no chance of a bounty on him?” younger woman asked. “He could be valuable for information.” She spoke in English, probably for my benefit.

“One big enough to be worth the hassle of taking him back? No. Leave him.”

Bounty? Are they bounty hunters? Didn’t Valentina say something about Cheyenne bounty hunters?

“Yeah,” I tried, risking my neck a little but feeling like the potential intelligence to gain was worth a little risk. “I’ll be a pain in your ass all the way to Cheyenne.”

The older woman froze for a second before carrying on walking back to the ridge and disappearing. I knew I’d hit the mark, but the success was empty because it left me no better off.

“Why aren’t you planning on killing me?” I asked, genuinely wanting to know. Older woman looked at younger one, eyes searching her face for a reason why she’d say that.

“Because we don’t kill for free,” she said with a shrug that turned into an evil smirk. “Unless we have to.”

I said nothing. I believed her one hundred percent.

“Sit tight,” she said, before settling down to rest, “you’ll be here a while.”

* * *

She wasn’t kidding. I was hungry, thirsty, I needed to piss badly, and my whole body ached by the time she kicked my feet to wake me up. The sunlight was harsh in my eyes and my skin felt brittle and sore.

She had all my weapons in a bag, one of my bags, and made me walk ahead of her until I’d half fallen, half scrambled down the ridge to the lower ground and walked part of the way toward their buggy.

“Stay here,” she said, slashing the bindings around my wrists. “If you don’t, the whole ‘not killing you’ thing is off. Understand?”

I did.

“Oh, and in case you’re thinking you can charge your bike and catch us up, you won’t. Best thing you can do is go back home to your windowless cage and forget about us.”

I watched as she walked off with my guns and climbed into the front seat of the buggy before tossing the bag out to land in the dirt as they drove away. I walked toward the bag, picking it up and finding my damn rifle and the spare magazines missing.

“Fucking bitch!” I yelled at the distant plume of dust, picking out my big revolver and wondering if I had any chance of hitting them. Knowing I didn’t, I turned to trudge back to my bike and charge it up, because on top of bringing them to justice, I wanted to get both of my guns back.

48

Warm Reception

Rivera

The sun grew hot pretty quick, forcing us off the top of the rocks because they got too warm to be comfortable. I suggested we climb down before it got too dangerous. Valentina was halfway down by the time I’d finished speaking.

“Why wasn’t it this hot the last time?” she asked, unzipping her jumpsuit and pulling her arms out of the sleeves to tie them around her waist. I tried not to look but found myself dropping back so I could see more.

“Maybe it was overcast? We weren’t exactly out in the daylight for long.”

“Hmm,” she answered, giving me precisely nothing to work with.

We walked the rest of the way in silence, not witnessing any more epic battles of nature fought on small scales between mini monsters. In fact, now that the sun was up, I saw no signs of life at all, making me both worry that the sun was going to grow hotter and intrigue me about how things were so nocturnal out here.

The buggy was charged over halfway, and with the sun getting higher in the sky, I suggested we got on the move. We folded everything away and I settled in behind the wheel, giving Valentina time to strap in and pick up the map.

“How far?” I asked.

She looked up at the distant hills then back to the contour lines of the map to match up what she saw.

“Fifty Ks,” she said. “Just follow the road.”

I set off, driving steadily and enjoying the breeze. I had my sleeves rolled up and Valentina still had her shoulders out, but we both wore goggles and scarves around our faces.

The buggy bumped between the ruts worn in the road from countless years of trade wagons grinding their way through the dust, heading for Zion. The ruts in the road affected my driving, swaying our wheels a bit. It threatened to put me to sleep—that is, until Valentina groaned that it was making her want to throw up.

“Sorry,” I said, “not much I can do about it.”

“Stop,” she said, then waved her hands as she struggled to hit the release catch on her straps. “Stop, Jesus, just stop!”

I did, a little sharper than either of us expected as I took my foot off the pedal fully which had the same effect of activating the electronic brake when we were moving. She didn’t notice, just scrambled clear of the buggy, staggered a few paces away, and dropped to her knees. I stayed where I was, watching her slim back convulse and heave until a wet cough burst from her mouth and she ejected the protein paste and water she’d taken in earlier.

Twice more she did that, expelling the contents of her stomach violently before sitting back on her boots and gasping for air. I fumbled for my own release catch then grabbed a bottle of water from the top of my pack and climbed out to take it to her.

“Thanks,” she gasped in between deep breaths, holding onto the bottle and taking a long pull to swill her mouth and spit into the wet patch of dirt in front of her. She drank more water and handed me back the bottle. I found I didn’t really want that one back, so I put it in her pack instead of mine.

“Feel any better?” I asked.

She shook her head, still gasping for air.

“Not really,” she answered, burping behind her hand and wincing before standing up and staggering a pace. I grabbed her arm to steady her, but she turned on me, eyes full of fire and hate as she shrugged her arm free of my grip.

“Sorry!” I said, removing my hand and holding it up to show I wasn’t going to try to touch her again. “Sorry, I…”

“No, it’s… it’s not your fault,” she said, then walked back toward the buggy, where she climbed in, groaning like someone twenty years her senior with a bad back. She slipped her arms inside her jumpsuit and zipped it up to her neck, despite of the fact that it must have been well over ninety degrees in the sun. If she was cold when I was sweating, then I was worried.

When I remembered what happened earlier, I got really worried.

“Show me your neck,” I said, sounding a little like the man I was last week and assuming that everyone would just do as I instructed.

“What? Fuck off. I’m fine, just drive.”

“You’re not fine,” I insisted. “You’ve just projectile vomited the same food I’ve eaten and,” I pulled off my glove as I spoke and pressed my hand to her forehead, “you’re on fire, dammit.”

“Just… just drive,” she said, swatting my hand away weakly. “Get us to Salt Lakes so I can sleep it off.”

As much as I hated not being in control of something, I knew and she knew there was probably nothing I could do for her out here. I forced the bottle of water on her, not wanting her to dehydrate with a high temperature under the intense sunlight, and got back behind the wheel with renewed purpose.

* * *

Within an hour, we joined up with the pitted track leading to the other side of the canyon where we’d laid the ambush last time, and I was forced to drive more slowly. The road was littered with rocks ranging in relative size from my fist to my head. What was more disconcerting was the fact that some of these rocks suddenly sprouted legs and tails and ran with a curious gait.

“What… what the fuck…” Valentina asked from beside me so weakly I wouldn’t have heard her if we hadn’t been driving so slow.

“No idea,” I said, reaching over awkwardly to pull down her scarf and see how pale her skin had gone.

Just hold on, I silently prayed, frightened of losing her to this harsh landscape. Her head lolled as she drifted out of consciousness again. I reached into my leg pocket with one hand on the wheel to retrieve my last stim. Tugging down my own scarf, I sprayed it into my mouth and pulled the material back up to protect me from the dust being kicked up by the chunky tires of the buggy, letting the chemicals work their magic on my system and sharpen my concentration like a laser.

I drove, hard, weaving the wheel between the biggest of the rocks and hitting others to send them flying out from the road. Some didn’t bounce away from the wheels, and part of me felt bad for crushing whatever these things were, until the newer, tougher part of my mind reminded me that they were probably carnivorous or venomous or radioactive. So I kept my foot on the pedal and pushed on.

I kept glancing at the Geiger box on the dash, mounted there like we had done the last time, but the needle stayed hovering at the mark just above nothing, as if the whole world was mildly irradiated.

The stim made me lose track of normal time a little, but before long—which might’ve been an hour or twenty minutes—the rocky, dusty landscape began to darken and turn from beige to green until we left the arid plains behind and move into what felt like a different world.

Another hour and I was unable to rouse Valentina. Should I stop and check on her with no way to help, or just keep my foot on the throttle, get her to civilization quicker?

I chose to drive, figuring that it was the only thing I could affect, and pushed hard until I saw a dark smudge on the distant horizon that grew taller and darker with each passing minute, until the walls of a town loomed high up ahead. I remembered to slow down in time so that I didn’t plow straight through the gates and knock down the three men who rose to block the entrance.

The tires bit into the dirt as the buggy crunched to a stop, and before I could say anything, I found the barrels of three guns pointing at me.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded, every ounce of privilege inherited from my parents spilling out with a rage borne of fear and exhaustion. “This woman needs medical attention. Have you got a doctor here?”

“More Zion assholes, Mel?” one said, ignoring me entirely.

“Looks that way,” another man said. He stepped up, thumbs tucked into his belt and swaggering with confidence a man could only enjoy when his friends were holding guns. “You go on and turn around,” he told me. “Had enough trouble from your kind recently.”

My kind? Is Quinn here?

“One of my Rangers was sent ahead,” I told him. “I need to speak to him, but first I need to get this woman medical assistance. Do you have a doctor here?”

“Yeah, we got a doc,” the man with the permanently open mouth said. “Only he’s busy looking after our own man after your friend got him all busted up sticking his damn nose in where it didn’t belong.”

I didn’t have time for this, and the man breathing through his mouth was giving me the distinct impression that breeding among family members out here was commonplace.

I reached into a pocket and tossed him a silver, harder than was strictly necessary. He fumbled to catch the hard coin. I followed it up with another and sent one spinning through the air to each of the two men holding guns on me.

“I need a doctor,” I said again, “and I’ll gladly have a long discussion with you about the actions of Ranger Quinn as soon as my officer’s been treated.”

49

Better Prepared

Quinn

I got back to my bike, still cursing under my breath about getting so royally screwed over. I wasn’t sure who I was more pissed off at—them or myself. I’d fallen asleep after rushing off into the goddamned wasteland with next to no clue how I was going to catch them or even what I was going to do if I did.

I plugged my bike’s charger back in, adjusting the solar cone again like a big flower to point it at the sun, which was still beating down on me hard. I policed up my gear, taking stock of the two weapons I had left and hoping I wouldn’t have to shoot anything farther away than twenty feet.

I paced, anger at myself and those women getting worse with each minute I had to wait for enough juice in the batteries to go anywhere. I wouldn’t survive another night if I was stuck here again.

“Bigger fire,” I told myself as I thought out loud. “Need a bigger fire, and a lot more fuel than I had last night… Not too big, though. I mean, I don’t want to advertise my presence out here, right?”

The younger woman’s words came back to me like a dare, reminding me that I ought to just charge my bike and get my unprepared ass back to Salt Lakes where it was safe for a little city boy like me.

Well, fuck her, I thought. Fuck both of them, fucking… bitches!

I’d show them. I’d go after them, even if I was a day or a week behind them. They had to stop eventually. They couldn’t run forever, and I couldn’t go back home without getting them.

I checked the charge on my bike, reckoning on the twenty-eight percent in the battery getting me close to fifty Ks’ ride time, then took off a third in case I was wrong or encountered bad terrain which would force me to go slow and weave like the first day. I wasn’t going back; I knew that much. I dug into my pack for the map Rivera had left me with, searching for it without success and tipping all three packs out on the dirt to realize it wasn’t just my guns they took.

I was an idiot for not checking. I’d been left with only one bottle of water and a single protein pack. If I wanted to survive, I ought to head back to Salt Lakes with my tail between my legs. Closing my eyes, I tried to bring up the last image of the map I had in my head, seeing the rough marks of the few roads as they snaked between hills and canyons. How far to the north did the road go before it split left and right?

I knew a town was there, at the junction between Cheyenne and Helena, and reckoned that was my best bet. If I could just ration my food and water to make it there, I’d be able to buy more. Then I’d find out which way they went and carry on hunting down those pieces of shit.

The wind blew up, kicking dust into my eyes and making me reach up for my goggles. But my hand found nothing but a handful of sand-filled hair.

“Fucking seriously?” I yelled, craning my neck back and bawling impotent anger into the sky. I stood there, chest heaving from the effort, and heard my yell returned in the far-off distance with a rising howl of something I knew on every level I didn’t want to meet. The noise was picked up from another point over my right shoulder. Whipping my head around to look at a horizon filled with nothing but a heat haze and the promise of death if I tried to stay in the same spot for another night.

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “Nope, nope, nope.” I packed my kit back into my bags—which were lighter one set of clothes and a lot of rifle ammo—and strapped them to the bike, deciding that I should make some distance and stop well before the sun sank, to prepare for another night stuck out here.

* * *

I made forty kilometers, which wasn’t much but was better than nothing, and much better than going back to Salt Lakes to a reception I couldn’t guarantee would be friendly.

I could’ve squeezed out another ten, but I wanted to be doubly sure I had a place to sleep, or at least stay still and doze at best, without waking up to another fucking snake using me like a couch.

I stopped early because I’d found the perfect place to defend against whatever the hell was out here. Although, seeing as how the terrain had changed again with the afternoon’s travel, I had to admit that I didn’t know for sure what was out there.

Here, instead of dust and rocks and dried grass, the land stretched out away in different shades of green. Something in my head told me there had to be a water source nearby, which I guessed came from the lake near the town I was hoping to reach before I died of dehydration. With that dark thought in mind, and before I set about reinforcing my position, I drank a careful fifth of the water in my bottle and disciplined myself to screw the cap on tightly afterward, resisting the urge to chug the rest like my body screamed at me to do.

I rested the bike upright against a grass-covered mound that ran all around a spot about the same size as my apartment. The little depression I was in would keep me protected from most of the wind, and the fire I planned to build out of sight from any watchful eyes.

I dumped my packs and set the bike’s solar charger up to grab a percent or two from the last rays of the sun which had beat down on me all damn day, then walked outside the little dip in the ground to pull up the stiff bushes to use as firewood. They were green, which I knew would smoke, but I figured that would be okay as the smoke would keep the nasties away. Hopefully. I beat the little shrubs against the ground to knock off most of their green leaves, at least, and didn’t stop until I’d dragged twenty or so of them back to my spot and lined them up. Night was coming, and the chill evening made me shiver.

I’d stripped off my leather jacket as I’d worked so I slipped back inside, instantly feeling the benefit of the windproof material. Looking farther out away from the road, I saw a new type of shrub growing, taller than the ones I’d already uprooted, and with bright puffs of white showing on them which caught my interest. I walked over to them, eyes always scanning the ground both near and far like it was a habit I’d had for years and not days. The white stuff was fluffy and weird to touch, which I did with my gloves because hey, everything else out here wanted me dead, so why not the pretty bushes too?

I wasn’t sure, but it looked flammable, so I grabbed handfuls of the stuff and went back to my spot to get the fire going before the sun did its trick of disappearing fast. I was right; the white stuff made the fire go up like a spark in a ’shine still, as soon as I struck flint to steel. The spiny bones of the bushes blackened and smoldered as the flames licked up, and they started to secrete a sticky fluid which seemed to excite the fire and had the added bonus of making it burn longer than anticipated.

With my fire crackling away nicely and the wind not cutting through to my bones, the sun sank until it went out like the switch had been flipped and left me in relative darkness. That darkness was bathed with a dull orange glow that was more relaxing, more captivating than any holovid I’d ever seen. I dared to imagine I was actually enjoying myself for a few moments. Then the noise of the night came alive and I groaned, knowing that I wouldn’t be sleeping until the sun rose again.

To make it worse, I was hungry, my throat was dry, and my eyes were half closed before I even started to feel tired.

* * *

Twice during the night I drew the heavy revolver and thumbed back the hammer, ready to use it. I couldn’t see anything moving outside my little bastion, but I knew at one point for certain that I was being circled by four or five things which all seemed too cautious or too sensible to come near enough to the fire to illuminate their forms.

I kept looking out for eyes, like the very first night when the pack of… other things came for us and Valentina shot down the leader.

Valentina, I thought, wondering what she would be doing right then before kicking myself mentally for having slept. Whatever had been circling me was gone by then, no doubt slinking away in the dark to find something less dangerous to show an interest in.

I relaxed, dropping the hammer back down, but slowly this time. I was a lot more cautious of how easy it was to set off the damn gun after the morning’s unforgiveable stupidity.

Bet she’s sleeping in a warm bed. Rivera too. I bet they haven’t even come after me.

Nothing they’d said or done had given me good enough reason to doubt them. In fact, they were in danger of becoming the first people I’d trusted since my mom…

I shivered, cursing the wind that crept over the lip and found its way down my collar. I couldn’t understand how a land could be so hot during the day and so cold at night. Every place I’d known had been the same damp temperature of uncomfortable my entire life growing up in Zion. I don’t know why, but something about being out here and surviving the hot and the cold and the animals made me feel like that again, like I was just a kid, not knowing when I’d get to eat again or when someone, or in this case something, would be coming out of the dark for me and my gear.

Those memories brought with them unexpected side effects, and for a second I swore I could smell the musty dampness of a spot I used to crash in near a leaking water pipe. I’d picked it out because a full-grown man couldn’t fit inside to get at me. That obviously didn’t stop other kids from doing so, but that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t enjoying going back to that time in my life. My chest started to heave.

Panting, I flushed hot and almost stood to strip off my jacket before I recognized it for what it was, and forced myself to take slower breaths and calm the fuck down.

Panicking about shit that happened years ago won’t help, I told myself, knowing that it wasn’t what had happened that was stressing me out. No, it was the fact these memories could reach out from the past to strangle me like this that got me.

Just keep it together and get through the night, I told myself. You can do this.

Another noise outside my defenses make me jump, all thoughts of hyperventilating forgotten as I had a whole new reason to be losing my shit. I drew the weapon again and peered into the darkness to search for the telltale giveaway of eyes reflecting firelight.

50

Hospitality

Rivera

“How long has she been like this?” an old man asked. He washed his hands in a bowl before drying them on a grimy towel that looked dirtier than his hands had been before he washed them.

“A few hours,” I said. “I haven’t been able to rouse her since before we got here.”

“And you say she was just fine this morning?” he asked, peeling open her eyelids and peering into them before issuing an annoyingly noncommittal hmmm.

“Yes, well, at first.”

“Go on…” the man they said was a doctor prompted.

“She complained of feeling travel sick, then vomited quite badly…”

“Been unsteady? Feeling hot?”

“Yes,” I said, not bothering to explain the difference between Valentina displaying those symptoms and actually complaining about them. He didn’t know she wasn’t one to complain, but I needed to stick to the relevant facts in case he was distracted.

“Taking any medication? Anything not prescribed by a trained physician?”

“Anti-radiation medication,” I said. “Oh, and we’ve used a stim to counter the effects of sleep depri—”

“Your reasons are your reasons,” he interrupted with a dismissive wave. “Now I need to remove her garments, and I guess I’ll have to take your word on whether she’d mind you being here for that part…”

“Oh,” I said, looking away even though he hadn’t started yet. “I’ll be outside.”

I made for the door, snapping my fingers and half turning back as if I could’ve forgotten the most important fact. “She had a sore neck, which was swollen when I checked it.”

The doctor nodded, not looking at me as I heard the zipper of her jumpsuit being rolled down. Taking my leave quickly in case I was put on the spot by Valentina when she regained consciousness, I was suddenly assaulted by worries.

What if she didn’t make it? What would happen if I went home missing two Rangers?

The guilt of selfishness stabbed me deeper as I realized my first thought was for myself and how I would explain what had happened when I went back to either grovel and give up to regain my previous life or else join the ranks of the lowers until I likely drank myself to death. I stood on the covered porch outside the building and closed my eyes to take in a long, deep breath and let it out slowly.

“You look like you could do with a drink,” a voice said to my left. It was a hard voice, not in a rough or ragged way but in the tone that spoke of a sheathed blade. The voice itself was feminine and agreeable.

I opened my eyes and turned to face the speaker, taking in the form of a slim woman with skin the same hue as coffee and unruly hair tied back. She wore boots under pants that looked a little big for her, cinched in tight at a narrow waist, and a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow. She looked to me like a hard worker, whatever that meant out here.

“You read my mind,” I answered honestly.

“Come on,” she said, pushing herself away from the wall she was leaning on to reveal her true height, which was easily equal to mine if not an inch more. “Benji’ll rip you off like he tried to with Quinn. I know a place where the liquor’s cheaper and better, and there aren’t so many interested ears sitting close by.”

“My buggy,” I said. “Our gear.” She followed my gaze to the vehicle and the bags in the back, along with the gear visible inside.

“Nixon,” she said, making a man nearby jump like he’d had an electric shock to the ass. Wide eyes turned to her questioningly. “That buggy and everything in it is temporarily your sole focus and personal responsibility,” she told him. Her voice left no room for disagreement, as if she were simply stating facts.

“Yes, ma’am,” the man called Nixon said. He glanced around furtively as if expecting thieves to appear from all angles now that he had a task to fulfill.

“Come on,” she said again, no doubt satisfied that my concerns had been allayed even if she hadn’t actually asked. She walked, not checking if I followed, which both intrigued me and pissed me off, as she’d assumed I’d do whatever she ordered. With little choice I did exactly that, but I reassured myself that it was because I wanted to and not because she instructed me to.

I jogged a few paces to catch up with her when I hit the street, seeing the people going about their business shoot me odd glances.

“I assume you hold a position of authority over the local security services?” I asked, trying not to actually wince at how pompous I came across to people sometimes. I put it down to being tired, being totally out of my comfort zone, and effectively making first contact with someone who’d never been to Zion.

“Something like that,” she said. “I’m the town mayor. Williams.” She held out a hand, which I shook, forgetting to respond appropriately and bumbling my own damn name.

“Commander Rivera, Claude, only it’s Sergeant now,” I said. Probably raising more questions than I’d answered. She shook my hand and said nothing,

I covered the awkward silence with something else that had been bothering me.

“So, you’ll know someone called Mel who didn’t want to let us in at the gate?”

She sighed, rubbing a hand over her forehead.

“Reardon. I had to make him temporary captain of the town guard after old Hargreaves got hurt.”

Something about the way she said that made me worry that Quinn had something to do with it, so I said nothing. We walked for a couple of minutes, making me feel strange that everything here was built on one level with no going up or down. Just as I started to wonder how they differentiated those with money and better standards of living, she ducked into a building to our left. I followed, bending down under the doorway even though I realized I could’ve cleared it with a couple of inches to spare and getting illogically annoyed with myself for doing it.

Williams sat at a table in the room, reaching behind her to a dresser for a faded glass bottle and two glasses which she picked up by putting her finger and thumb down into them and pinching together to lift them as one.

Fingers. In. The. Glass.

Ordinarily, or at least back in Zion, that would’ve bothered me, but right then my own personal standards of hygiene were so far removed from the reality I currently inhabited that I couldn’t give a shit.

She put the glasses down and poured two big measures of an amber fluid before corking the bottle and sliding a glass to me. Holding up her own in silent salute, she gave me a nod and tossed hers back like she meant it, before placing her glass down and reaching for the bottle again.

When in Rome, I said to myself.

Knocking back the glass, I tried hard not to choke out a cough as the drink burned as bad as I expected it to. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much it burned as it went down my gullet and rioted in my stomach. My eyes prickle with moisture. I blinked it away, only to see a second measure appear in my glass.

“So, Quinn’s one of yours?”

“Yes,” I said. “At least he was when we were out here last.”

She frowned and I took a breath to explain before she cut me off.

“You two were the ones Quinn was out here with, only you went back with the assassin you caught, and he stayed on the trail of the other. Am I right?”

I nodded, knowing that she must’ve spoken with Quinn to be in possession of the facts.

“So what you won’t know,” she went on, knocking back her second drink and half turning to put the bottle back, “is that he came here and convinced my captain to help him find your fugitive, only there were two of them and Hargreaves got hurt. Quinn took off after them and hasn’t been back since.”

“When was this?”

“Yesterday. You interested in how my man is?”

“Of course,” I said. “My apologies.”

“Well, he’s not dead. He’s not brain damaged, either, at least so far as we can tell. They used a Stinger—a kind of flash grenade—which messed up the electrical stuff inside his head. Pretty high-tech but pretty nasty too.”

“Is he well enough to speak to me?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what I’d ask him, since he could only give me the same story the mayor just had, except perhaps in greater detail.

“Doc says no for now. He’s keeping him under so the swelling can take care of itself. The human body is a miraculous thing,” she added.

A dozen unrelated questions fought each other to get out of my mouth first, but I knew that to ask any of them would make me look like an ignorant tourist instead of the person I needed her to think I was.

“Which way did they go? When Quinn went after them, I mean.”

“Did you meet them on the way here?”

“No,” I said, frowning and trying to fathom why she answered my question with one of her own.

“Then they went north. Other than going off the main roads, which is suicide given the terrain around here, there’s no place else to go.”

“Then I need to go north,” I said. “We need to go north, as soon as my Ranger is well enough.”

“Speaking of,” she said as she stood and made for the door. I tossed back my drink, forgetting that it was still sitting in my hand but not wanting to appear to refuse my host’s hospitality, and followed like she just assumed I would.

We walked the return journey, this time my head swimming a little as I kept pace beside her, and the furtive glances of the onlookers seemed more brazen than before. We entered the doctor’s place via a side door instead of the front one I’d come out of earlier.

“You there, Doc?” Williams called out.

“In here. She’s decent.”

I felt relieved to know that important fact and followed the mayor into the room to see Valentina lying on her back with an off-white sheet covering her body. I felt guilty that I recognized certain contours under the sheet and knew that she was naked beneath it.

“Sand tick,” the doctor said, washing his hands again in the same bowl he’d used before. “Got her on the back of the neck.”

“The head in there still?” Williams asked.

“Not so far as I can tell. Had to cut her a little to be sure. The swelling was getting in the way. Looks to me like an allergic reaction, no doubt caused by those fancy medicines the city folk take to counteract radiation sickness.”

“A sand… tick?” I asked, my mind conjuring some hideous insectoid beast with a stinger as long as my finger.

“Yep. Tiny little sucker no bigger than a fly. All they usually do is give you a nip and drink a little blood. Sometimes they can cause an infection, but a few folks react something awful to them. Looks like your friend here’s one of those people.”

“Is she going to be okay? I mean, will she live?”

The doctor and Williams laughed, although not too unkindly, and I felt myself relax.

“Without a doubt, if you’d stayed out there, she’d have been touch and go for a day or two, but I very much doubt she’d have passed from this. She’s sleeping now because I gave her a shot. I always think the human body does a fine job of mending itself, all it needs is a little sleep. Ain’t that right, Lori?”

“The human body’s a miraculous thing,” Williams said again for the second time in a few minutes.

“She’ll be back on her feet in the morning, so long as the fever she was running breaks overnight,” the doctor went on. “Which gives you time to do your own resting.”

“Thanks, Doc,” the mayor said as she twitched her head at me in a beckoning motion. “I’ll see the commander here to somewhere half decent, and I’ll catch up with you later.”

I followed, still unsure why I did but not finding any reason to refuse her. We walked in the opposite direction this time, toward a building with a rusted sign advertising something I couldn’t quite make out.

“It’s actually Sergeant,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed that I’d introduced myself as a commander. “And I was a Junior Commander,” I went on, giving her more honesty than she’d asked for. “Only I got demoted for following this investigation to places people didn’t want it to go.”

“You need to tell me the rest of that story later on.” She fixed me with a searching look before turning away to face the building we’d stopped at. “Quinn had a deal with Benji,” she said as she looked up at the sign which announced the name of the place as Benjamin’s. “Bed and board’ll cost you a silver, and he’s been told to expect you. You’re good carrying your gear? I can get a couple of the boys to help if not.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, knowing we’d brought only half of the gear we needed. Feeling strange to be following in Quinn’s footsteps, I grabbed both packs and the Geiger box I suspected might find itself a new owner overnight, and remembered to set the solar charger up before walking through the double doors to find Benji.

When I walked in, everyone in the room stopped what they were doing to stare at me. Cardplayers, drinkers, serving girls, piano players. All of them just watching me like I’d walked in naked.

You’re not in Zion anymore, Claude.

51

Making It Look Easy

Quinn

After my second night on the bounce living, well, barely surviving outside, I was starting to feel more than a little messed up. I was talking to myself again, which wasn’t concerning in itself, but the answers I was getting bothered me.

Turns out that delirious me was something of a pessimist. Go figure.

Now, I’d avoided this issue since I was in Salt Lakes, but after a couple days barely eating and drinking, I had to respond to a call of nature that was, and not to be overly dramatic here, the worst experience of my life. It started with stomach cramps and a nagging urgency which I interpreted as my body screaming at me to get my pants down right fucking now or else I’d be wandering out here wearing nothing. I, understandably, did the sensible thing and found a rock that was actually a rock and checked there weren’t any spiders or snakes or anything else lurking there before I dropped my pants and prepared for the onslaught.

Nothing happened.

The cramps were still there, but it was like the pressure was building up inside a sealed chamber and the only way that fact could be fed back to me was via the medium of horrendous pain.

Anyway, eventually it happened, but it was a traumatic experience that made me want to never eat again in case it wanted a second round. I remembered the bathroom outside Rivera’s office back in central command. I’d thought that was bad at the time, so I reminded myself I was an idiot who knew nothing.

Other than the dawn bringing with it the cramps and ensuing… everything… I felt a little better about the night than I had about the one before. I still had a fire burning, which was a good sign, only everything on and with me stank so badly of smoke that I wasn’t sure it would wash out. Hoping a day spent in the saddle—a thought a certain part of my body literally winced at—would serve to cleanse me of the smell, I set about sorting out my gear and checking on the status of the battery charging. Deciding that I was probably safe to find some high ground and check my surroundings, I set off to clamber up a specific oddly shaped mound like many surrounding me, because it was by far the highest.

When I reached the top, I was overwhelmed by seeing the bones of the old world laid out below me. What looked like uneven hills at ground level looked different now, as if the entire area were one rolling pool of little dips and peaks covered in grass and bushes. It took me a while to see it for what it was. As far as I could see, each of the little hills was once a building torn down by vines or time or war, perhaps. I was standing on top of what was left of a building from the time before, and looking out over a graveyard of other buildings as far as I could see.

I was struck by more than a little awe as I tried to imagine what this place would’ve looked like back before the collapse—the literal collapse that I was standing on—and tried to conjure the image of people walking in the streets between the buildings as they went about their business.

What I was imagining was almost certainly wrong, because I imagined the people of Zion’s lower levels with their heads down and their collars pulled up high. I knew those people had no place up here on the surface, at least not before the surface was scorched and irradiated, because anyone living up here before must have been so happy to be alive.

My vantage point, as much as it was filling my sleep-deprived brain with happy thoughts, also served to make me visible for miles, should anyone have a mind to look, and that realization burst my bubble quicker than getting the bill and finding it three times more than the money you had on you.

I dropped, slithering down the grassy mound with less fear of snakes and associated lethal shit now, because I was starting to realize they mostly came at night… mostly, and by the time I made it back to my bike, I knew I’d fucked up.

He, at least I assumed it was a he given the size of him, was walking along the road toward me waving happily.

Checking that both of my surviving guns were accessible, I stepped out of my hole and began walking towards him cautiously, my right hand hovering near the revolver’s grip, just in case.

Now, when I say I assumed it was a guy from the size, I’m probably being sexist. I mean, sure, women can grow, er, large, but this guy waddled like he’d been overinflated. He waved, again, and from maybe forty paces I could see a wide grin on his pudgy face. I held my ground, not entirely sure what to do until I knew more about the guy, but reminding myself that all the people in Salt Lakes I’d met weren’t mutant cannibals, so I shouldn’t assume this guy was.

Probably.

“Greetings,” he said loudly, arms spread out wide as he waddled up to me. I held out my left hand, palm outwards, hoping he got the message and stayed far enough away for me to shoot him if I wanted to. I mean, I doubt he saw it that way, but the end result was the same as far as I cared.

“Er, hi.”

Dumbass.

“My name is Eduardo. I am a trader, and I have come from the town of Jackson,” fat guy said, and I could say that with confidence now that he was closer, because he was definitely a he, and his cheeks were so fat it looked like his head had escaped out the top of his clothes when someone squeezed him too hard. He was still smiling, but his eyes gave away a little worry. I tried to speak again without sounding like I was a fucking idiot.

“Name’s Quinn,” I said. “Zion Ranger, hunting a fugitive. Did you see a couple females in a buggy pass you yesterday?”

“Alas, my friend Quinn, I did not. I may have heard them, but I was safely inside when I heard a vehicle pass by.”

“Inside what?” I said, meaning to keep the words in my head but seeing as they came out loud, I waited for the answer. I was curious that way.

“My caravan,” Eduardo explained, “it is my home also.”

Okay, we’ll circle back around to that.

“When was this? When you heard them pass you?”

“It was perhaps the afternoon yesterday,” Eduardo said in a helpful tone, probably not realizing he’d narrowed a time down to, well, yesterday.

“How long before sundown?” I asked, still locked in a fixed stance with my right hand hovering near the gun.

“Many hours,” he said. “I was in no rush yesterday.”

Okay for some.

“And that was on the road to… Jackson?”

“There is no other road, my friend. It goes only to the north, unless you are either very brave or very stupid.”

“Er, what?”

“What what?”

“What do you mean?”

“About what?” Eduardo asked, more confused than I was now.

I sighed and rubbed the fingertips of my right hand into my eyelids.

“What do you mean when you say it’s the only road unless you’re brave or stupid?” I asked, knowing I definitely fit one of those categories, even if my stupidity sometimes looked like bravery.

“The ground is flat for many miles ahead. A person can leave the road if he wishes, only it is a dangerous thing to do this.”

I didn’t need to ask why it was dangerous, I’d found that shit out the hard way over the last few days, but I was more interested in why the road was any safer. I shook my head as if trying to remember what the point of talking to this guy was.

“So, I could get to Jackson quicker if I was brave or stupid?”

Eduardo looked concerned, as the very thought of losing me, his lifelong friend, was insufferable.

“You cannot do this, my friend. The invisible poison, it would take your life in an instant without the protective suits.” He clenched his fist in front of his face as he spoke, as if I needed the demonstration of how dying would go. I opened my mouth to tell him to relax, then I realized I no longer had a hazard suit thanks to the bitch who stole it.

“Of course,” Eduardo said with a wide smile and his arms spread out as if he was going in for the hug. “I can sell you this if you insist on throwing away your life.”

“You’ve got hazard suits?” I asked, not entirely sure why I was surprised after the guy had already told me he was a trader. I guess my brain hadn’t caught up yet and assumed he had a load of corn or potatoes instead of useful shit.

“I have this,” he said, pointing a finger to the sky and distracting me so that I looked up, no doubt proving to him again that I was an idiot. “And I have many more things you will need out here in this place. For example, are you carrying enough water to reach your destination?”

I wasn’t. Shit, I didn’t have enough water to get where I was now, but the small part of my brain that still fired off like it should told me not to tell the man who sells things for a living that I was desperate. I’d find the price of water suddenly rose by a few thousand percent if I did that.

“How far to Jackson?” I asked.

“Are you walking, my friend?”

“What? No, I—” I realized he couldn’t see my bike from where he was. “I have a solar bike. It’s charging now.”

“Ah, you like to move fast, no? I think you will reach Jackson on such a thing by nightfall if you go now. I myself have left this place two days ago, but I prefer to take my time and enjoy the wonders left in this world.”

Wonders? Okay, now I knew for a fact he was nuts.

“I’ll take some water if you have it,” I said, trying to sound casual. “You know, just so I’ve got extra in case I decide to stay out another night.”

“I can do this, my friend,” Eduardo said, his face suddenly growing concerned and his hands wringing together.

Okay, here we go.

“Although I must tell you that the price is not cheap, you understand? There is the cost of transportation to factor into any price we negotiate. But I can do better than this—I can sell you the tablets to purify your own waters.”

I wasn’t sure if it was his accent or whether he actually expected me to purify my own water. I wasn’t entirely against the idea, but I was so damned dehydrated that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze out enough to make it worth the effort.

“How much?” I asked, trying to sound disinterested and failing. It was a good job I never had the money to go topside and gamble, because I’d lose.

“It is not just the money I trade,” Eduardo said. “I purchase and sell everything.”

“Like what?”

“My friend, I trade in everything from bullets to information. It all depends on what you have.” He gave a little shrug which gave his game away in an instant. This guy was no happy fool wandering around selling water for silvers. I should’ve known from the size of him, because nobody gets that fat without earning enough to buy a lot of good food for a long time.

“Come with me to my caravan and we will talk,” he said.

52

Supply and Demand

Quinn

I followed him, not having much else to do or anything in the way of options. Even if I’d hate myself for it, I considered robbing the guy if I had to, but only to get enough water to make it to Jackson, where I guessed I could buy more supplies without paying a premium.

“I have been on the road for many seasons,” Eduardo explained as he waddled back down the road. “I traded goods in Helena Crossroads before I earned enough coin to build my caravan and offer services to other places.”

“What kind of services?” I asked, curiosity muddying the waters of my already confused thoughts.

“I offer safe transport, for one. This is what I am doing here today—I am taking an envoy from the great city of Helena to your Zion, and I fill the rest of the space with goods to sell or trade.”

I said nothing, knowing enough about how those kinds of traders operated, but I’d never seen one quite like Eduardo before. His caravan, which I expected to be a wagon powered by a solar tractor, turned out to be so much more.

It stood as tall as two men, with six big, rugged tires powering it along and the metal of the truck looked so thick it could probably stop a bullet. At the very least I knew it would stop snakes and other nasty shit from getting inside, which would make sleeping at night possible. I was instantly jealous.

Eduardo rattled off a few words as he approached the back of it, speaking in yet another language I didn’t understand, and a boy bearing some resemblance to him ran down the steps in response. There was a resemblance, but that was only in the facial features, because the kid was thinner than the snake I could still feel gripped in my hand when I thought about it. The kid moved fast like he was on stims, twitching and fidgeting even when he stood still.

“This is my new friend, Mister Quinn,” Eduardo said. “You will treat him as an honored guest.” The boy nodded and smiled at me, half bowing to gesture that I should climb the steps. I went up, seeing the inside of the massive truck was far less spacious than I’d imagined. Each side was packed deep with metal racks stuffed full of things I couldn’t make out.

Three of the shelves were given over to small racks like the bunks we slept in during basic training.

“Each section has a price for people to occupy, either with themselves or with their goods,” Eduardo explained as he climbed up behind me. The truck sank a little on its springs. As he spoke, a bunk curtain twitched to seal off the interior from view, making me guess the person from Helena wasn’t in the mood to talk.

“I have fine glassware from Helena, refined metals from the market in Jackson, and art from the beautiful Cheyenne carvers. These are all things your people in Zion will like, yes?”

I thought back to the expensive-looking crap littering the senator’s office that seemed to have no purpose other than to be there and look good, and guessed he was probably right on the money.

“Sure,” I agreed, earning a huff from Eduardo.

“I also hold these.” He tapped a hand against three black cases. “The liquor from the north that your people like, yes?”

I knew that would command a fair price, because I couldn’t see Rivera sipping on the same ’shine I drank.

“And water?” I asked, cursing myself for seeming too eager.

“Of course,” Eduardo said, waving the boy away and smiling as I listened to the sound of water glugging out of a bottle. He turned and took two glasses, holding them close to him bulging belly and still smiling.

Bastard, I bet he won’t even say a price—he’ll just wait to see what I offer.

Wanting to cut out a long negotiation, I dug into my pocket and pulled out a silver. The boy ducked forward and held out a hand, waiting as I hesitated and dropped it into his grubby palm. The glass was thrust out to me and I took it, drinking it down in three desperate gulps. It was cool and it woke my body up better than any stim. I held out my glass for a refill and saw the expected frown on Eduardo’s face.

“You have another coin?” he asked.

“The one I gave you is good for five glasses.”

He looked me in the eye before answering.

“Two.”

“Four.”

“Settle on three then,” I said, extending my hand to shake on the deal. Eduardo smiled and handed the glasses over to be filled and shake my offered hand.

“You know how to bargain, my friend,” he said with a wide smile that I tried not to return. I thought I was pretty shrewd when it came to these things, but I knew on any day that he’d be better at it than I could ever be.

“I need three bottles,” I said, “and some food.”

Eduardo wrung his hands before the full glasses were returned. He took a long drink.

“The price we have already set does not cover such a large amount of what I have, you understand. This water I give you is from my own supply, and to take more of it will cost you an additional sum.”

I tried not to roll my eyes and played along.

“Two bottles, a meal, and a hazard suit,” I said, leaving him free to hit me with an expectedly astronomical price that I could counter with something low enough to start negotiations, but not so low that I offended him.

“I assume you have more silvers,” Eduardo said, thinking out loud and having clocked the currency I’d already paid with. He took my empty glass and handed it back to be filled for the final time. “For this, I would need sixty coins.”

I scoffed, not outrageously, but I needed to display how high I felt his price was.

“It’s all worth twenty, and even that’s too high.”

Eduardo’s hands spread out to his sides as far as they could go inside the confined space. He smiled apologetically.

“This may be true in your Zion, my friend, but out here there are no other traders to drive down my prices…” he paused, making a show of thinking about it. A true master of his craft. “I like you, Quinn, so for this I will offer you help at a price where I barely make any profit at all.”

I doubt that.

“So for you, and because Eduardo must be growing soft, I will give you these for forty-five coins.”

“Twenty-five. Any more and I won’t be able to continue my journey after I get to Jackson,” I lied.

“My friend, the hazard suit alone will cost me twenty silvers to replace. These are not poor imitations, but are the real deal. I do not sell inferior stock.”

“If you did, it might be cheaper…”

“I cannot go below this, I am sorry,” Eduardo insisted.

“Fine, no hazard suit,” I said, seeing his eyes narrow for a tiny instant as he faced losing a lucrative sale. “I’ll stick to the roads. How much for the water and the meal?”

Eduardo smiled again, not wanting to abandon the transaction without making at least some profit. “I can give you this for twenty coins, and I will feed you a real meal of hot food. I will even throw in something to make your next night warm and safe.”

“Fifteen,” I countered, knowing I could’ve driven the price down to ten but wanting to make him feel like he’d won for now, “and after that we can talk about another trade.”

Eduardo’s eyes lit up and he turned to snap rapid orders at the boy who scurried away to begin preparing the food. He handed me the last glass of water I’d already paid for and I sipped it, settling down into the offered chair and catching a suspicious eye peering at me through the crack in the curtain.

* * *

I had to admit, Eduardo wasn’t joking about the hot meal. The boy served some kind of spicy meat slop in little, vaguely round flatbreads and showed me how to roll them up and eat them lengthways. I took a bite, liking the smell but worrying about the contents a little, and closed my eyes as the pungent filling hit my taste buds.

“You see? It is good, yes?” Eduardo crowed loudly.

It was, and my appreciative nod told the truth about how I felt. I ramped it up a gear, eating as much as I could before being told that I’d already had my fair share.

The boy served a bowl of meat onto a tray with a spoon, adding three of the flatbreads, and poked the offered meal through the curtain to retract his hand fast when it was snatched away by the secretive occupant. I frowned, looking at Eduardo for an explanation.

“Our friend from Helena is shy,” he said loudly, earning an annoyed tut from behind the curtain. “They wish to be left alone, and for this I charge them more,” he bragged, laughing because I guessed it was true. Given how loud he was, I didn’t think I’d much enjoy spending days on end cooped up inside the caravan with him.

“Now,” he said, wiping his mouth and chins where the juices of the meat had dribbled from his mouth to score a line over the rolls of excess flesh. “You say you wish to talk about another trade, yes? You want to know if I am flexible on the price of a hazard suit now that my belly is full?”

“No,” I said. “I need a rifle.”

Eduardo’s face didn’t flicker, and if I looked hard, I reckoned I’d see coins glittering behind his eyes as he figured out the best way to take all my money.

“This is no small thing, my friend,” he said seriously. “For my own conscience, I must insist you tell me why you need more guns than the one you have. This is more than to just protect you from the beasts, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. “My rifle was stolen by two bounty hunters, and I intend to catch up to them and get it back.”

I could’ve sworn I heard a gasp from behind the curtain, but I kept my eyes fixed on Eduardo’s.

“Bounty hunters, you say? This is no small thing, my friend. I do business in every town, and if anyone found out I had supplied the means to kill someone who may be a customer of mine, then this would be bad for my business.”

“You do business with Cheyenne bounty hunters?” I asked, my voice leveling an accusation at him.

“I did not say this, but you must understand that it is no business of yours who I trade with. Trade does not take sides, you understand this, yes?”

“I understand, but it doesn’t change my needs. Can you help me or not? If you can’t, I’ll take my water now and be on my way.” I got up to leave, seeing his pudgy fingers dance in the air as he fluttered his hands to get me to sit down again.

“I will trade with you,” he said, “but I warn you that my prices for such things are not low, and you must understand that the blame for what you do with this is not to be laid at my feet.” He stared at me until I nodded my understanding, then walked forward to unlock a panel near the cab and pull open the doors to reveal a rack of weapons I didn’t recognize.

“What is your preference?” Eduardo asked.

“I… I don’t know,” I admitted, knowing that my lack of confidence had just made the price rise.

“Then I will suggest this,” he said, pulling down a weapon as long as my leg with a matte black body and dull gray metal, with a large magazine protruding from the underside. “It fires three bullets with each pull of the trigger,” he explained as he handed it over. I took it, liking the weight and feel of it instantly.

“This I will give you for two hundred silvers,” he said.

I handed it back without giving it a second glance, knowing that he’d probably lead with his nicest piece and would be showing me the worst next, intending to settle on something in the middle with an inflated price tag.

“Very well,” he said, putting the weapon back and removing another. This one had a battered wooden stock that had multiple lines carved into it. It was heavy, and the balance felt odd, but the weight of it actually felt reassuring. If it didn’t work, I could always use it as a club.

“This one shoots only a single bullet for each pull of the trigger, and to you it is but fifty coins.”

“Deal,” I said, surprising him. “If you throw in all of the ammunition you have for it.”

Eduardo’s hand shot out to shake mine so fast I heard his shoulder click. No doubt I was being ripped off, but I needed a weapon capable of hitting something farther away than a dozen paces. Besides, I assured myself, it was only a temporary measure until I got my own weapon back.

“You understand I need to test it out first,” I said, not asking his permission.

“Yes, I understand. We shall do this now, so that we can both be on our way?”

I told him I was fine with that and walked outside carrying the rifle. Looking back, I saw Eduardo handing off a small black box of ammunition to the boy before surreptitiously reaching behind something and bringing out what looked like a short shotgun that he held low beside his leg in case I got ideas about not paying for the goods.

I took the magazine from the kid when he caught up with me, being careful to keep the dangerous end of the rifle pointed in the exact opposite position of the caravan before I loaded it and pulled back the bolt. A flash of dull brass flickered in the sunlight as the first round slid into the chamber, and I lifted it to my shoulder to take aim at a piece of exposed rock—part of an ancient building or whatever it had been—which showed a light gray against the green and brown surrounding it.

Settling into the firing position and pulling the gun tight against my body, I took a couple of measured breaths as I looked through the circular sights before squeezing the trigger.

I was rewarded with a puff of dust from just below my target, so I tried again. On the third attempt I hit it and told myself it was because the sights aimed a little lower than expected so I lifted the barrel to adjust for it. The next two shots both hit until the gun clicked dry on the sixth trigger pull. I frowned, lowering the gun and hitting the catch to release the magazine to see it was empty. Looked like it held a lot more shots than the few I’d fired.

Amused, the kid gave me an apologetic shrug as if to say, “Hey, I know my boss is a tight-ass. Trust me, he’d rather unwrap a protein bar in his pocket than share it.”

Deciding it would do just fine for now, I handed back the gun and said I’d go get the money.

I checked the bike’s charge when I went back to dig out the coins, counting out sixty-five of them and feeling the weight of the bag become much lighter, giving me the certain knowledge that I’d paid double the reasonable rates.

Carrying it back to the caravan, I handed it over to Eduardo who made an honest apology for not trusting me and asking me not to take it personally, while I watched him count it all out one at a time.

“It was my greatest of pleasures to make trade with you, my friend,” Eduardo said, making me feel a little uncomfortable that I hadn’t prepared a speech for our parting.

“Same here,” I said awkwardly. I took my two water bottles, both topped to the brim with crystal clear liquid, and lifted the rifle expectantly. The kid stayed on the rear steps holding the bag while Eduardo went to start the engines and roll out. I knew precaution when I saw it. He wasn’t planning on giving me a loaded rifle until he was on his way. Before the kid dropped the bag and pulled the rear door shut, a blond man appeared in the gap to sneer down at me with undisguised malice.

“The fuck are you looking at?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.

His sneer deepened with amusement.

“A dead man,” he said ominously, evidently thinking he had the last word on the matter.

Bravery or just a bad mood spoke for me again before the door could shut.

“Yeah? Well, people from Helena don’t live long in Zion right now, so watch your back, asshole.”

The last thing I saw before the door closed was his clear skin turning purple, and his mouth opening to start yelling back at me. Smirking because the door closed before I heard a thing he said, I went back to wait for my bike to charge up some more and began loading rounds into the few magazines I had for my new old rifle.

53

Social Divide

Rivera

I was shown to a room with two beds, a set of wooden drawers with one that didn’t open, creaking floorboards, and no en suite bathroom facilities. What bothered me most of all was what Valentina would say when she found out I expected her to share a room with me. I guessed I’d just have to stump up another coin for a room of my own.

As travel weary as I felt, and factoring in the two drinks that made my head feel a little light, I couldn’t face the thought of lying down to go to sleep when I had more questions than answers after spending only an hour in the town.

What I needed was someone who’d traveled the region, who knew how things worked in different places and how the pieces fit together on the board. I had ideas, but at best they were educated guesses, and I didn’t know how much of that education was relevant to the world outside the massive bunker we called home.

I dropped my bag on the floor beside the bed, then walked downstairs to order another drink. I was sure my dusty, disheveled appearance, complete with my Zion Ranger jumpsuit and gun, would get a few stares as they had before.

I wasn’t disappointed. They all stopped to gawp at me like I was a mutant.

Feeling more than a little self-conscious, I pulled myself onto a tall stool and nodded to the proprietor.

“What can I get you?” the man asked.

“A beer, if you have it?”

“We’ve got it,” he answered, looking offended that I’d asked, and turned away to lift up a bottle made of dark glass and twist off a cap. He put it on the wooden bar in front of me a little too carelessly for my liking, but I smiled my thanks and began to lift the bottle to my mouth.

“Not like that, dumbass,” he said, tutting and taking it from my hand. “You need to pour it out, so the sediment doesn’t mix up. Like this.”

He tipped the bottle horizontally with the neck of it resting inside a grubby glass which he held at a forty-five-degree angle to it and poured slowly, rotating the glass to allow a light brown liquid to fill it up and froth at the edges. I waited as he poured, accepting the glass gratefully and taking a long pull of the beer, which was darker and stronger than I was accustomed to. It was good, and I worried I’d develop a taste for it instead of staying focused on the reason I was there.

I took another long gulp and turned to the man behind the bar to start a conversation, but he was already three paces away greeting a newcomer.

“What can I get you, Mel?” he asked.

I groaned, already weary of the man who hadn’t even spoken yet.

“Got something to say, city boy?” Reardon asked. For some reason, his stupidity and bad attitude triggered me. I’d had enough of him already.

Not bothering to turn around, I said, “Nothing you’d understand.”

Silence followed my words, and I mean complete silence, like everyone in the bar had stopped talking the instant I’d answered back.

“Say that again,” Reardon demanded in a low, menacing tone.

“I said,” I told him in a mocking tone that made it clear I thought he was mentally deficient. “Nothing you’d understand.” I turned on the stool, expecting him to try to throw an insult back at me and actually looking forward to what he could come up with on the spot, but as the rest of the room came into view, I realized I might possibly have screwed up.

Reardon was there, staring death at me, but he was flanked by four other men all wearing the stars on their chests denoting their membership of the town guard. One on one, I could hope for a decent outcome, but five on one? I decided to change the subject, hoping he’d forget he wanted to punch me in the face.

“Any progress in your investigation, Officer?”

“Ain’t no business of yours, city boy,” he said, evidently lacking in adjectives for me.

“Just making conversation,” I said, turning back to my beer and hoping he wasn’t dishonorable enough to hit me when I wasn’t looking.

“How’s that pretty little piece of yours?” Reardon asked, earning supportive chuckles from his cronies.

“Ranger Valentina is in a stable condition,” I told him formally, “and I’ll be sure to pass on your compliments when she regains consciousness.”

Reardon frowned and his lips moved like he was repeating my words back to himself to better understand them. I couldn’t help myself.

“When she wakes up, I’ll tell her you asked after her,” I said, making it clear I was translating for him.

“I heard what you said,” Reardon snarled. “Me and my boys reckoned she’d make a good addition to the whorehouse. Sure be better than riding around with your boring ass.”

“A fine suggestion,” I answered, finishing my beer and close, now, to having had enough of this guy’s shit. “I’ll be sure to tell her you said that, too. Who are your friends? I’m sure she’d want to know who else shared your opinion. I see Officer Nixon agrees with you. Who else?” I said, picking on the only man I recognized. His eyes went wide at being identified.

Reardon growled, actually growled at me, and took a step forward.

“You think you’re better than us? Just acoz you speak them fancy words and come from the big city that don’t let folks like us in?”

“No,” I said, leaning closer to him and speaking so only he and I could hear. “I know I’m better than you because I’m not an inbred, single-digit IQ, chicken-bothering Neanderthal. It’s got nothing to do with where we both came from, and everything to do with your attitude toward other people.” I smiled, patronizingly, and patted him on the shoulder before turning and calling out an order for another beer.

“And get my friends here a drink,” I added, hoping that would both save me from getting beat up and also win the confrontation with Reardon.

It worked. The other four, eager to be off the hook, gladly accepted the offer of a drink, and without his support pack, Reardon didn’t much feel like picking on “the city boy” anymore. He accepted a glass of something that looked like battery acid and pulled himself up onto the stool beside me. He still worked the stinkeye pretty hard, but the air of impending confrontation seemed to be on the back burner.

“You know, your buddy Quinn was an asshole, too.”

“Do you find that happens often?” I asked, trying my hand at pouring the beer just like I’d been shown. “That everyone you meet is an asshole?”

“More than not,” Reardon admitted.

“Then in that case, did it ever occur to you that perhaps the asshole isn’t everyone else, but might, in fact, be you?”

I’d pushed him too far with that one, mostly because he’d kept up with my words and understood them, I guessed, and the stool clattered to the floor such was the force he stood up with.

“Ah, Mel, look at you standing up when a lady walks in,” the voice of Mayor Williams announced loudly. “And people say you have no manners.”

Reardon, defeated, tossed back his drink and walked away, pausing only to call for his entourage to follow him.

“The drinks are piss in here anyway,” he added, earning a disappointed shake of the head from Benji standing behind the bar, one hand suspiciously out of sight under the counter.

“Thanks for the drink, Mister,” Nixon said on his hurried way out, his voice low in case Reardon heard him.

“He’ll regret that,” Benji said, nodding a greeting to the mayor as she approached, “when I remind him he doesn’t want to drink in here tomorrow.”

“He’s harmless enough,” Williams said as she stooped to pick up the stool and dust it off before sitting on it. “He’s just a little out of sorts with everything that’s happened recently.”

“You don’t get much involvement from the outside world?” I asked, feeling more than a little hypocritical and hoping that fact didn’t divert the conversation. She waved two fingers at Benji who responded by wordlessly pouring her a drink.

“We’ve had more than usual of late,” she said. “Usually it’s just the odd trader on their way to Zion, but not all of them stop here. We’re certainly not accustomed to what’s happened over the last few days.”

“Sorry about that,” I said, as if the choice of the murderers to use the town was somehow my fault. I guessed the responsibility lay with me for sending someone after them, which was the only way I could see how I’d affected the events in any way.

“It is what it is,” Williams said wistfully before changing the subject. “You know, I tried to recruit Quinn to hunt down the two fugitives on behalf of Salt Lakes. You know what he said?”

I shook my head.

“He told me that he has the bigger beef with them. That his multiple homicides beat knocking my cop unconscious. I’d make the same offer to you, but something tells me you’d be harder to convince than he was.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” I answered, making her laugh. I raised an eyebrow to ask what was so funny. She smiled at me, more searching and inquisitive than amused.

“That’s what he said.”

54

Recovery

Valentina

I opened my eyes and immediately wished I hadn’t. The room spun, my eyes hurt, and my neck felt like I’d taken a beating during a bender that had left me with such a hangover that I couldn’t recall getting said beating.

“Awww, fuck,” I groaned as I tried to sit up before a hand covered in what looked like old leather rested on my chest.

“Don’t try to get up,” a voice said, sounding just as dusty as the room looked. I blinked, reaching out my own shaking, numb hand to lift the leathery one off my chest.

“I’m fine,” I slurred, swinging my legs off the bed like a drunk trying to move on before she got arrested.

“You’re not fine,” the voice said in amusement but not unkindly. “You’ve been out for two days, and your body’ll need a minute or two.”

“Out? Two days? What the fu…” I shook my head, regretting it immediately. “Where’s the commander? Rivera? No. He’s a sergeant now…” I closed my eyes and tried to rearrange every jumbled piece of information in my head to get it into some semblance of order. Taking a deep breath and feeling like my ribs had been sat on, I tried again.

“I was traveling with a man. Where is he?”

“He’s around. I’ll send word for him just as soon as I’ve checked you out.”

“Checked me out?”

“I’m a doctor, honey,” the old man said, treating me to a gap-toothed smile that I somehow found reassuring. “Just sit still and let me take a look atcha.”

I did. Didn’t have much choice. The alternatives were resting my head back down and probably passing out again or trying to stand and likely ending up lying down from that too.

He wound up a little flashlight to charge it and danced the beam over my eyes, all the while breathing on me. I tried to figure out what the smell on his breath was until I landed on something like the ’shine we got back in Zion, which took away some of the reassurance I felt.

He put something in both ears and rubbed the other end on his shirt before putting it on my chest and resting most of his hand on a boob. I stayed still but shot him a look that was supposed to let him know that I knew what he was doing.

“Big breath now,” he said, lisping through his missing teeth.

“Say that again?” I challenged him.

“Take a deep breath,” he said slower this time, like I was dumb. I did, in and out a few times as he peered up at the ceiling and pulled a face like he was concentrating.

“Now follow my finger,” he said as he took away the cold metal from my skin and held up a single digit in front of my face, moving it from side to side for me to follow, like he was trying to hypnotize me.

“Any stiffness? Soreness?” he asked.

“Only all over,” I told him, being honest with both of us.

“That’ll pass. Drink plenty of water and avoid doing anything too strenuous for the next few days. And no more stims, y’hear me?”

“I’m not a… we only had them because we had to—”

“Your business is your business,” he said dismissively. “That’s my advice, you can take it or leave it.”

“Thanks,” I said, looking around the room, wincing because my neck was the worst for stiffness, until my eyes rested on a folded pile of clothes beside my boots.

“You mind?” I asked, pointing at the jumpsuit and boots. He limped over to them, picked them up and set them down beside me.

“I’ll be right outside,” he said. “Holler if you need me.”

* * *

I stepped out into the sunlight, screwing my eyes shut and holding onto the doorframe to steady myself. Blinking for my eyes to adjust, I saw a familiar shape forming in front of me which phased into the face of Rivera as he approached.

“You’re awake!”

“Am I? I mean, how do you know?”

“She’s feeling better,” Rivera said over his shoulder. “Acidic sarcasm is the defining characteristic of her personality.”

“Someone feel like explaining things?” I asked. “Like where the hell we are and who hit me with a buggy doing sixty?”

“Salt Lakes, and no buggy. It was a sand tick,” Rivera said, still smiling because he didn’t feel like hammered shit.

“Sand tick?” I asked, my right hand reaching up to the back of my neck where the fingertips explored a sore patch of scabbed skin.

“Let’s get you a drink and something to eat first, then I’ll explain everything.”

He offered me his arm to steady me, which I took out of nothing more than a need to stop myself staggering and landing on my face. The ground under my boots was dusty, and the air was warm and dry, so far removed from Zion’s dank air.

I walked with him, vaguely aware of other people around but feeling too weak to do anything other than get one foot in front of the other.

The toe of my boot bumped a small rock and threatened to pitch me over, but Rivera caught me before I fell.

“You alright?”

“I’m fine,” I snapped, short of breath from the effort and taking my frustration out on him. “Sucker just jumped out on me, is all.”

He helped me up some steps and through a door that blocked out almost all of the harsh sunlight in a second, which made my headache better but disorientated me a little.

“Up the stairs here,” Rivera said, helping me along. I heard the noises in the big room. But what with my tunnel vision and weakness, I only heard bits of what they said.

“Bring up food and water,” Rivera said in answer to a question I didn’t catch.

“That’ll be extra,” a voice told him, and I felt his grip tighten as he probably fought back giving the guy a piece of his mind.

“Just do it,” he said.

I was dizzy by the time I got to the door he unlocked and swung open, revealing two beds and a level of décor that made me think of something on about level fifteen back home, only with sunlight coming through actual windows.

“I apologize for the accommodations,” Rivera said pointlessly as I flopped onto the nearest bed and lay back with my hands over my face. I let out a groan which I guessed he misunderstood.

“I’ve been assured that there aren’t any better quality establishments here. After all, it’s a small town an—”

“It’s fine,” I said, a little too loud because my head throbbed in response. “It’s fine,” I said again, softer this time. I struggled to sit up, walking my way up on my elbows until I managed to sit upright and lean back against the headboard.

“What did I miss?”

“Well,” Rivera said as he took a seat on the other bed. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being in the buggy. Throwing up.”

“And then passing out,” he said. “I drove you here and their doctor diagnosed you with an allergic reaction to a sand tick.”

“Which is what?” I asked, feeling sick at the thought of some parasite munching on me.

“A small insect, I’m assured. Only a small percentage of people are susceptible to a reaction, and unfortunately you are one of them.”

“Fascinating.”

Rivera shifted his position but was interrupted by a curt knock on the door before he could speak. He got up, opening it to reveal a bored woman who gave him a filthy look before handing over a tray.

He thanked her, those topside manners oozing slime, and shut the door in a way that was so close to a slam I quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Bitch,” he muttered, turning away to smile and hold the tray out to me. It had a bowl of something that smelled pretty good and a chunk of bread that wasn’t too stale. Beside that was an old glass filled with fresh water. I chugged that straight down.

Leaning back with a gasp and closing my eyes, I let the cool water fill my stomach, which in turn told me it was empty and growled at me like a buck rat in the lowers. He heard it too and put the tray in my lap.

“You eat,” he said. “I’ll go get you some more water.”

He left and I tried to pick up the spoon but dropped it. My hands were weak, and my coordination was as stable as my balance had been walking here. I tore off some bread and dunked it, dribbling the soup down my chin and not caring, because it was salty and tasted great. It was the best thing I’d eaten in days. Hell, it was the only thing I’d eaten in days, as it turned out, and still good. I’d finished half the bread and was beginning to feel more human when he came back with a jug and poured me some water.

“What happened to Quinn?” I asked, my brain starting to function a little better now. Rivera picked up a cup from the dresser, sat on the bed again and poured us both water.

“He came through. Turns out the fugitive was here but had an accomplice.” He sipped his water as I chewed a tough crust of bread and forced a swallow down my dry throat.

“And?”

“And he apparently recruited local law enforcement to assist him in tracking them down, only they were ambushed, and their man is still in a bad way.”

“But not Quinn?”

“It seems not. He recovered by the following day and flushed them out—two women by all accounts—then chased them into the wastes heading north.”

“So we go north,” I said.

“We go north,” he agreed, “but not until you’re recovered.”

I gave him the stare, but he returned it just as hard. I didn’t have the energy to keep it up, which I guess made his point.

“Fine,” I said, lifting the bowl and running the spoon around the edge so I didn’t leave any residue of the soup before offering the tray back to him. “You get me the same again and I’ll sleep after. We can get on the road tomorrow.”

Rivera stood and swapped the full glass for the empty tray.

“Fine,” he agreed, “but we’ll see how you are in the morning.” He went to leave but hesitated at the door, his hand resting on the handle.

“If you wish, I’ll make enquiries with the proprietor as to what other rooms are available. You stay here an—”

“That’s a dumb idea,” I told him, looking at my glass in case eye contact gave him the wrong impression. “It makes no sense split us and our gear up.”

He nodded, a gesture I knew well from spending so much time with him.

55

Learning

Quinn

I felt a little better prepared when I set out again, going over the valuable lessons I’d learned in the last few days as I rode at a steady pace.

Try as I might, I just couldn’t get that asshole’s expression out of my head and tried to figure out why he was so pissed at me. What had I done to him? What did he mean that I was a dead man?

The more I thought about it, the more one question started to push its way to the front on my mind.

Why was someone traveling from Helena to Zion now? They wouldn’t know about their citizen being killed yet, because nobody had left since it happened, and I was damn sure I was the farthest person north carrying that knowledge. It bugged me, more than I realized, and kept interrupting my concentration, like my brain was trying to tell me something.

By late afternoon, the feel-good effects of the meal had worn off and my eye kept roaming to my left where the distance between the sun and the far-off horizon shrank with each passing minute. I knew from hard-earned experience that I had to stop and be ready long before nightfall, even if I hadn’t seen anything moving in the day. The one thing I’d learned over all others was that weird shit came out at night.

I scanned ahead, picking up speed to get to a patch of higher ground quickly, and tried to ride the bike straight off the hard surface and up the slope without checking the ground first.

Big mistake.

For the third time in a week I managed to fall off the damn thing, only I was lucky that I didn’t sail clear over the handlebars to break my neck like the former owner of my last bike had. That could easily have been my fate because the front wheel dug deep into a patch of sand that opened up like water but grabbed the tire like glue.

I landed hard after twisting in the air, flying off the right side of the bike again, trying to roll with the impact and just managing to find a rock to cushion my fall.

As if that wasn’t enough, I obviously decided that, hey, why not use your ribs to land on that rock? What a great idea.

Groaning, gasping for air, I rolled off the rock and lay on my back before telling myself never to do that again.

“I need a buggy,” I croaked, still looking up at the sky and hoping I hadn’t broken anything. “Why don’t I have a buggy? I can’t fall off a buggy all the goddamned time…”

I lay there trying to breathe, trying not to cry, and got a hold of myself. Getting to my feet, slowly, to check nothing was broken, I righted the bike and walked it up the slope, using only gentle twists of the wrist to power it. Last thing I needed to do was flip it on my head with an overeager throttle hand.

I stood on top of the small rise to look around me, trying to spot another pile of old world bones, but I couldn’t make out anything similar. Either this was a lone building lost to sand and time, or it was just a small hill. I set about piling the rocks up and gathering the dry grass and thorny bushes to make my fire again, when something in the distance caught my eye.

Dropping down and fumbling for the rifle strapped over my torso, I rolled and fought with it until it came free and I could point the barrel out to where I’d seen whatever I’d seen.

There was nothing. Not a damn thing.

Just when I was starting to think I’d imagined it, something flashed into my peripheral vision on my left and made me twitch the gun to find it before it disappeared again. Twice more I lost the thing before I told myself I was imagining it.

I needed sleep. I needed to eat, and I needed a night with walls around me and a door that locked.

I got up, dusting myself down before giving up because I looked and smelled like shit anyway, so a little extra dust was hardly worth the effort. Pulling the package Eduardo gave me from a pack, I looked at it, turning it around in my grip and wondering what was so special about it. He’d grinned when I asked and told me to trust him, which I thought was a dumb thing to say to a stranger who wanted to buy a gun.

Drinking some more water and chewing down a ration bar, I paced my chosen spot, kicking the rocks to the edge of the rough circle I’d created, then stopped to look out over the landscape to the south.

With the last of the sun’s warmth on my right cheek, I chewed as I stared, seeing how the patches of green flowed into the almost gray-looking dust. Beyond that, I knew it went green again for a while before turning back into the dry nothing between Salt Lakes and Zion.

My thoughts turned to Rivera and Valentina, wondering if they’d left Salt Lakes yet or even if they were coming at all. I knew I couldn’t wait for them because I was already the better part of two days behind those murdering bitches. Murdering, thieving, bitches, I added to myself, still sore at the unfair loss of my rifle which, under normal circumstances, would cost me my job if I didn’t return it to the armory.

Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t be shitting my shorts every time I saw something move. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have to make a den on top of a goddamned hill to keep the nasties away from me while I tried to grab a couple hours of sleep.

“Fuck it,” I said out loud, tossing the wrapper of my ration bar into the small pile of assorted crap I was about to set fire to, and stuck a dusty, grimy fingernail into the back of my mouth to dig out the cement-like substance the bar turned into when you chewed it.

Washing down the last of the bar with a mouthful of water, I reached down with the small firelighter I’d scored and nursed the pile of twigs and other shit into a small fire before picking up the dense log thing Eduardo had traded me and rested it gently on top.

In under a minute the thing caught and burned, bathing me with heat like the sun was still on me instead of creeping over the hills off to my right. Another minute and I had to look away from it because the brightness of the burn was painful to look at, like it was a flare. With the heat and the brightness came a smell that I had to admit wasn’t all that nice.

Okay, it was goddamned terrible. Smelled like someone had decorated a shit with lead paint and was frying it in engine lubricant. Deciding whether to stomp it out or use a stick to flick it out of my little camp, I decided I didn’t want that stuff on my boots and I didn’t have a stick I could flick it with, so I took a piss off the edge of my little ring of stones and tucked myself up in my bed roll near the fire.

* * *

Two things surprised me when I opened my eyes. One: it was actually morning, which meant I’d slept something like eight hours, and two: I’d slept eight hours and it was morning. How the hell wasn’t I dead?

Surely something would’ve moved nearby and spooked me, otherwise I was way more exhausted than I thought I was, and that didn’t bode well for my onward journey.

That’s when I noticed the smell sort of lingering in the air like a musty fart. Kicking the toe of my boot at the shrunken, charred remnant of Eduardo’s log, I had to hand it to the man. That shit worked.

I rigged the bike’s solar rig up, cursing myself for not doing it the previous night so I could sneak a couple percent in from the early morning rays. I picked up my gun and went for a little look around to get my muscles working again.

After finding a good spot to do what I needed to do and making sure I triple-checked the surrounding area for anything that might want to take a bite out of my ghostly white ass, I walked back up the slope to pack up the rest of my gear and watch the battery indicator creep up. I wondered why these things didn’t allow the rider to move and charge at the same time, killed all of about point-eight of a percent of the waiting time.

Eduardo reckoned I should make it to Jackson by tonight, which meant maybe another five hours’ ride. I tried to calculate in my head how much was enough to make it there.

Too long spent charging the bike and I’d be forced to spend another night out in the wastes or finish the journey in the dark. Not enough time spent charging the bike and I’d again be forced to spend another night out in the wastes after running out of juice. Knowing my luck, that would happen when the town was in sight.

“Fuck it,” I said again, liking the way it sounded out loud.

I packed up the gear and loaded it onto the bike, eyeing the slope back to the road and deciding against trying to ride it down. Wary of falling down and breaking my spine, I opted to take the longer route back via the gentler gradient away from the road.

I settled my goggles over my eyes but left the scarf around my neck as the dust there wasn’t anywhere near as bad as before.

With the sun on my right shoulder, I twisted the throttle to open it wider and set off north for Jackson and God only knew what else.

* * *

Just as I was starting to think I might be getting better at this, Lady Luck decided to take a shit on my day.

I thought I was learning. That, having survived gunfights, grenades, snakes, and whatever the hell the other stuff was that tried to kill me, like rocks with legs, I was starting to be some badass wasteland rider. After a week of this, I was served a reminder that I didn’t know shit.

Birds. Fucking birds. I’d seen pictures of them, and I was sure that some of the topsiders saw them through the glass domes in their fancy little pleasure gardens.

It started with a smudge on the skyline ahead of me, which I thought for a minute was a dark rain cloud ready to dump some kind of acid on me. But when the not-cloud started to pulsate and move like it was alive, suddenly the thought of a little light acid rain sounded like a nice afternoon.

“Oh, hell no,” I muttered to myself as the not-cloud turned to head right in my direction.

I slowed, looking left and right for anywhere to hide, like I didn’t already know I was in the middle of nowhere. There were some rocky hills off to my right and my mind yelled something like, “Hey, there might be caves there,” before it answered itself and said, “Are you a fucking idiot? What the hell lives in caves out here? You wanna get eaten by some mutated bunny rabbit, jackass?”

As I was arguing with myself, the not-cloud got much bigger, forcing my already distracted brain to try to calculate some kind of combined impact speed. My right hand relaxed the throttle even more, until I yelled at it to not make me an easy target.

I cranked the throttle, making the bike whine louder as the front wheel lifted slightly. I leaned forward to keep it on the ground as the swirling mass of black things dropped low to the ground, coming right at me.

I wished I had a shotgun. Hell, I wished I had a fucking flamethrower or some other nasty shit on the front of my bike. I wished my bike was a buggy with a roof, and also that it had flamethrowers.

While I was pointlessly considering all the stuff I didn’t have, they closed on me. At the last second, I fumbled with my left hand to pull the short-barreled piece from under my left arm, twice almost ditching the bike and losing some speed but deciding it might be worth it, and managed to point it ahead of me to squeeze off a few rounds.

It worked, in a roundabout sort of way, and created a small gap of clear sky right in front of me. I tucked in, ducking my head and trusting my untested ability to keep the bike pointed dead ahead while I tried to hide my head in my crotch, and felt the thumps of small bodies bouncing off me and the bike.

I put my head up, looking desperately over my shoulder to see it—them—wheeling and spinning to turn back and come after me. I cranked the throttle wide open, still leaning over the bars, and tried to hang on with the gun still in my left hand.

And then I saw it—a mile, maybe a mile and a half ahead. Straight lines on the horizon that could only have meant civilization. I concentrated, riding as hard as I could and not daring to look behind me. I had no idea what I’d do if they were gaining on me anyway, so I just hung on and tried to close the distance fast.

I could make out buildings, a low wall, and gap in it that had to be a gate like the one at Salt Lakes. When I was close enough to make out details and thought I might actually make it, a guy in a long coat stepped out and raised a gun right at me.

56

Resupply

Rivera

“North?” I asked. “Just north?”

“No other way to go,” Williams said, speaking to me but watching Valentina, who I knew was pretending to appear much better than she felt. “Only thing is, if you take off like your buddy did, there’s no telling what trouble you’ll run into.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean,” Williams went on, “you need water, provisions, something to keep you safe from predators at night, and probably something a little bigger than those.”

I followed the line of her finger down to my holstered pistol.

“What would you recommend?” I asked her.

She shrugged.

“At least one rifle. It ain’t exactly… safe out there for you people.”

“Us people?”

“City folk,” she said, shrugging again as if to convey that she meant no offence by assuming we were all rich, pampered, and entitled, with soft hands and servants. Of course, I was, but I liked to think leaving that life behind made me different enough.

“Us city folk have managed well enough so far,” I told her, unable to hide the mild injury in my voice.

She shot another glance at Valentina, eyebrow raised.

“Just trust me,” she said. “You spent many nights out there?”

“No… not really.”

She smiled. I conceded the point.

She walked, beckoning us to follow and slowing after half a dozen paces so Valentina wasn’t left struggling behind. She was still weak and a little dizzy at times, like when she stood up too fast or had to climb stairs.

“You’ll need plenty of water, we can see to that easy enough, but the other stuff’ll cost you.”

I kept my face straight. It seemed as though everything cost out here in one form or another. I wasn’t accustomed to the arguing and haggling that came with every single transaction, and it exhausted me. I knew that if I gave in to that exhaustion and just agreed to the first price I was given, then I’d be paying through the nose forever.

We followed her inside a store on the same strip as the tavern we were in, and the door opened to hit a little bell hanging on a piece of string above it. Before the tinkling faded, a woman came out from a doorway behind a wooden counter.

“Welcome, welcome,” she said, her voice somewhere between a whisper and a drool. She slurped saliva back into her mouth before treating me to a wide, toothless grin. “Oh, Mayor Williams, good to see you. And who might these fine folks be?”

“This here’s Sergeant Rivera and Ranger Valentina. They’re from Zion.”

“Oooo-wee! City people,” she crowed, pausing the slurp again. “Don’t see many of you around, not these days anyway.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I said, suddenly hearing how out of place my automatic manners sounded anywhere in the world that wasn’t the top five levels of Zion.

“They need a couple of screamers,” Williams said. “And they’ll want to see your rack.”

“Excuse me?” I blurted out, feeling the color rise in my cheeks.

The old woman laughed, or at least I think she laughed. It sounded more like someone was stamping on a leather bag filled with air. She turned to tap in a code on a number pad behind the counter. The wall gave an audible click before she pressed the panels for them to pop open, one after another.

“Whoa,” Valentina said, almost breathless. I had to agree it was a sight to behold, and only looked somehow better than the well-stocked armories back home because of the variety on display instead of the uniformity I was accustomed to.

“Yeah, these are my babies,” the old woman said dreamily as she regarded them fondly. “What takes your fancy? You want long distance or up close and cozy?”

“Got anything mid-range?” Valentina asked, enthused and renewed, like the presence of another person who loved guns had woken her up. “Carbines in six-point-five? Or the old five-five-six? Two-two-three?”

“Well, let’s see here. I got a nice rifle here that might be what you’re looking for. Good penetration and distance on it, only small enough you can use it indoor in a pinch and the ammo don’t weigh a ton like some others.” She lifted down a smooth black weapon about the length of my arm. It had a telescopic sight on top. She pulled back a lever and peered inside, like she didn’t know for a fact that the gun was clear. I’d seen enough armorers in my time to recognize one when I saw her.

Valentina took the rifle, which looked odd without a magazine attached, and turned away to pull it into her shoulder and try it out. She lowered it and lifted it a couple more times before turning to me and giving a nod.

“How much?”

“Now hold on there, Mister Zion,” she said with another gummy smile. “Let’s see what else you want before we talk money.” She turned back to survey her “babies,” tapping a thoughtful finger on her chin.

“Let’s see,” she muttered. “They won’t need that, no… that one’s just too big… ah. Perfect.” She lifted a short, chunky weapon from the lower rack and turned to lay it on the counter, running her hands down its metal lines.

“This here’s one of my favorites. Twelve gauge, fifteen rounds. It’ll rip up pretty much anything inside of twenty paces, and the good thing is you don’t have to be all that accurate, depending on what load you go for.”

“He’ll take that one,” Valentina said.

I had my mouth open to speak but shut it. I didn’t want to argue with her in front of the old woman, or hear my marksmanship get run down.

“Good choice,” the crone said, sounding happy probably because she was about to make a lot of money. “You’ll need ammo, obviously…”

“Four magazines for this,” Valentina said, patting the carbine on the counter before nodding at my “don’t have to be all that accurate” gun beside it, “and thirty shells for that.”

She nodded, lifting out boxes from under the counter. “Make it all myself, so there won’t be any problems. Everything is guaranteed, so any issues, you be sure’n come back to me.”

I laughed, despite myself, and earned a hard glare from her.

“Something funny?”

“No, sorry, it’s…”

“Spit it out,” she said, ironically doing just that as she spoke.

“It’s just that I rather suspect if we find a malfunction with the weapons, then we might not be alive to ask for a refund.”

Her face cracked into a slow smile as her index finger came up to wag at me.

“You’re sharp as you look, Mister, I’ll give you that.”

“You got the screamers?” Williams asked, changing the subject.

The old woman bent down again, straightening with a groan as she lifted two small canisters to rest them beside the guns and ammunition.

“And these are?” I asked quizzically.

“Screamers,” Williams said. “If you have to make camp, set it up like this,” she twisted the top of the thing that looked like a dull, silver flask and lifted it an inch, “and you’re good for maybe twenty-four hours.”

“That’s great,” Valentina said, “but what the hell is it?”

“It makes a sound that me and you can’t hear, but it drives the nasties out there crazy. Keeps most everything away from you, ’cept other people. Watch out for them.”

“There are people in the wastes?” I asked.

“Here and there,” Williams said. “Most people live in towns like here or Jackson, and there’s obviously the big cities you know about, but some live out in the wild.”

“And you do best to steer clear of those types. Nothing but extra fingers and eyes,” the old woman helpfully added.

“We shall bear that in mind, thank you. Now,” I said, drawing myself up, “how much?”

“Let’s see here, you got the AR and the bang-stick… hundred rounds… thirty shells… the two screamers… aw hell, why don’t you make me an offer?”

“Why don’t you give me a price like I was a resident?”

The smile cracked to reveal gums and the finger wagged again.

“Oh, you’re good, Mister Rivera… alright, I assume you’re paying silvers like you are Benji, so I’ll say an even two hundred.”

I looked at Williams, who’d very intentionally turned away to inspect something on a shelf. Figuring I was on my own on this, I took a long breath before answering.

“A hundred,” Valentina said firmly. The old woman chuckled as if the counteroffer was a joke but not quite an insult and shook her head slowly.

“The screamers alone are worth almost that,” she said as if she felt sorry for her. “I tell you what. Seeing as you’re on a righteous path, and I’d like to see some justice for old Hargreaves, I tell you what. I’ll let you take it all for one-seventy-five.”

“One-fifty,” Valentina said, shooting out her hand for the old woman to shake. Which she did almost reluctantly, eyeing Valentina then me as if trying to work out if we’d played her and not the other way around. Valentina began to gather our new belongings, looking up at me expectantly.

“Pay the lady,” she said with a smile.

“I obviously don’t carry that amount with me,” I said, wincing because I’d just announced I left that kind of cash in our room at the tavern.

“You have my assurance,” Williams said to the woman. “They’re good for it, and if they aren’t, the town will make good.” She looked at me, her eyes asking for confirmation that she was right.

“You have my word,” I said. “I’ll bring the money directly.”

* * *

I did, as soon as we’d carried all our new gear back to the room for Valentina to start taking the guns apart and putting them back together. Williams met me by the buggy where she was supervising one of the town guard carrying two large water containers.

“I assume you’ll be heading out soon as you can?” she asked.

“Yes, we’re too far behind our friend for comfort now, and quite frankly I’m anxious to catch up with him.”

She said nothing, just nodded and kept whatever negative thoughts she was so obviously thinking to herself. I went and paid the old woman, annoyed that she had clearly made a good profit from us, but not too concerned. I still had plenty of cash to smooth our way. For now.

Packing and carrying all our gear down to the buggy took us half an hour, and the wastelands beckoned us again.

57

Outsider

Quinn

I sat in a bar with both hands shaking. I stilled one of them by gripping the glass in front of me tightly, but that only served to transfer the shakes to the glass and threaten to spill the liquid inside. I solved that problem by opening my mouth and tossing it back, pausing to swallow and take a second gulp to finish the glass.

“Happens all the time,” a raspy voice said from behind me just as a bony hand landed on my shoulder.

“Yeah,” I managed, not recognizing my own voice. The hand came into view to wave at the bartender and point at my glass again.

“Let me buy you a drink,” I said, “as a thank you. And an apology.”

The raspy voice chuckled, then slipped into a strained groan as the guy sat on the stool beside me.

“This one’s on me,” he said, “for scarin’ you like I did.”

Scaring me was an understatement. I was already in serious danger of redecorating the inside of my last pair of pants before he stepped out and leveled what I now knew was a shotgun at me. When the three feet of flame lanced out from the end of the barrel, I closed my eyes and tried to wonder which was a better way to go out: shotgun blast to the face or picked apart and carried off by a thousand carnivorous birds.

Turned out neither was in my immediate future, and the shotgun blast went over my head to scare off the flock of… of whatever the fuck they were. Then the shooter’s eyes went wide as doorways because I was still burning flat out at him.

I’d lifted off the throttle fast, leaning back on instinct so I didn’t go over the handlebars again—man, was I sick of falling off that damn bike—and managed to aim to my left while the guy stepped back to my right, letting us pass each other by with about as much space in between us as would be considered intimate.

My glass got refilled and I fought the shakes in my right hand to pick it up.

“It’s just the adrenaline, is all,” he said. “It’ll go away soon enough.”

I turned to face him, lifting my glass and trying a weak smile. My brain hadn’t yet reconnected whatever circuits were required, so the words I was thinking came out of my mouth in the wrong order. He returned the smile, more amused than anything else, and lifted his own glass back. For the first time since I’d made it to the gates of Jackson, I actually got a look at the guy whose voice I’d mistaken for that of a much older man.

As my brain started to reengage and allowed me to apply rational thought again, I took a look at the other people drinking in the dingy bar. All of them seemed dressed for the road like I was, and for once the rifle slung diagonally over my back and the big revolver on my leg seemed to be completely at home in the environment. I saw guns I couldn’t even begin to figure out, in all shapes and sizes, along with knives and weapons that looked more like the bats we used back home when things got out of hand.

I turned back to my rescuer and checked him out in more detail. He was maybe my age, only weathered in a way that made me think he spent most of his time outside in harsh conditions. His dark skin was lined and seemed dull where mine was usually a little shiny, and his dark hair was faded like road dust.

“Just bad luck,” he said. “They usually only go for smaller targets. Don’t tend to bother the bigger stuff and most of the time they scavenge corpses. Guess they were feelin’ a little frisky seein’ you on that fancy bike.”

“I guess,” I answered weakly, shaking my head as I’d only just realized I hadn’t even asked the man’s name.

“Quinn,” I said, holding out a hand.

He shook it, the skin of his palms dry and rough, and smiled at me.

“Reuben. Most people call me Ruby. Used to bother me at first, but now it’s kinda like free advertising, you now? People are like, ‘Hey, that sounds like something Ruby can handle.’”

I took another sip before asking the obvious question.

“What line of work are you in, Reuben?”

He sat up taller, investing a little pride in his words as if I was about to receive the sales pitch.

“Secure courier services,” he announced proudly.

“And what kind of thing do you courier?”

“Depends what it is,” he answered, still smiling. “My pop always said to be flexible, you know? If you’re too specific in your terms, then people might not ask you to do a job.”

“Give me an example?”

“Well, just this morning I came back from Cheyenne an—”

“I’m heading for Cheyenne,” I interrupted.

His eyebrows went up and a smile spread across his weathered face.

“Where you from?” he asked, suspicion and amusement evident when he spoke.

“Zion,” I said. “I’m a Zion Ranger hunting a fugiti—”

He flapped his hand at me, glancing around surreptitiously for any sign that anyone else had heard me speak. I frowned, not understanding why that would be so much of a problem. He drained his drink and dropped some coins on the bar before standing and twitching his head for me to follow. I got up, lifted my glass to my mouth to find I’d already finished it, and gave a nod to the barkeeper, who just ignored me.

Outside, Reuben led me away from the bar and walked through a puddle in the mixture of mud and cracked concrete that formed the streets of Jackson. Back at my bike, parked next to Reuben’s covered buggy, he tossed another coin at a scruffy kid in a leather jacket two sizes too big for him.

I watched the kid scurry off to be joined by others just like him emerging from the shadows, and asked what the coin was for.

“You pay them to watch your shit,” he explained, “else the little bastards help themselves to some of it. Trust me, it’s more expensive that way.” He chuckled to himself as if recalling some past event that he didn’t share, and used a key from a pocket to unlock the welded metal door and lift it straight up on a gas strut.

“You know, that bike ain’t really the right tool for the job,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

Reuben looked over both shoulders again, less subtly this time, and leaned in to answer.

“You hunting a fugitive an’ all…” His eyebrows waggled up and down conspiratorially to go along with his words. “Not wise to make it known you’re the law.”

“Is there a police force here? Any kind of authority?”

He chuckled again.

“Quinn, this place does what you might call ‘self-govern.’”

I took a look around, seeing more than one interested pair of eyes not looking away when they caught me staring back at them. I was more out pf place here than I would’ve been walking into a level-two casino in a dirty uniform and putting my feet up on a table, and that bothered me. I was always the one who looked like the scary guy people didn’t want to mess with, only here I felt like a rat walking into a trash compressor with no idea what was coming.

“You know where I can get a room? Maybe someone who can answer some questions about who comes and goes here?”

Reuben fixed me with a look that was part sympathy and part “dude, that’s a freakin’ dumb idea.”

“The first one’s an easy yes, but the second one…”

I said nothing, just stared at him until he gave up the act.

“Listen,” he told me seriously, “I ain’t tryin’ to shake you down, on my honor, it’s just… well, folks around here saw you comin’ and they won’t be so kind.”

“I don’t have time for this,” I snapped, taking half a step toward him to close the gap. “These bitches killed a bunch of people in Zion, took off, damn near killed a man trying to help me in Salt Lakes, then they ambushed me and stole half my gear. One of them is going back to Zion with me, one way or another, so I can get on with my life, okay?”

Reuben stepped back to give himself the space to look me up and down like he was assessing my honesty. I held my arms out a little to my sides, showing him that what he saw was what he got. I was tired, I needed a shower, and I needed to sleep before I got back on my way and did what I—like an idiot—thought I could do out here on my own without a clue how to survive.

He sighed, deflating.

“Alright, grab your gear and follow me,” he said as he shut the door on his buggy again and locked it.

“My bike. It’ll be okay here?”

“You got money?”

I nodded, probably a little too fast.

“Then your bike will be just fine.”

He looked around, spotting someone he wanted and walking over to them. I watched as the two men bent their heads together and spoke before sealing whatever deal they’d made with a handshake. Reuben walked back to me and rounded the back of his buggy to open up another door and bring out a pack, then he locked it up again and walked away. I fell in step beside him, my packs over my left shoulder so I could still draw the revolver if I needed to.

“There’s a place I like to use when I’m here,” he said as he threaded the streets filled with busy people stopping only to stare at the outsider. “Sheets are mostly clean and the water’s sometimes hot, but it ain’t too expensive and nobody’s robbed me there yet.”

I was filled with confidence at his words but kept that to myself, more interested in watching the eyes and hands of everyone taking an obvious interest in me.

“You transporting hookers again, Ruby?” a voice crowed out from my right.

“You wish,” Reuben called back with a smile full of teeth that his eyes didn’t seem to reflect.

I looked, seeing a woman so thin I could count her ribs on her chest. The clothes she wore made me think of the cheapest company a person could buy in Zion, where the only guarantee was catching something. She saw me looking at her and smiled, exposing all her missing front teeth before she lifted up her shirt to show a pair of tits that looked like someone had let the air out of them.

I looked away, not returning the smile but managing not to gag.

“That bitch’ll cut you every which way there is for the gear in your pack,” Ruby murmured. “Steer clear of that place unless you like living in chains.”

“Chains? Like, actual slavery?” I couldn’t believe what he’d said and spoke too loudly, earning a flutter of his hand for me to keep my noise down.

“Not as such, that’s still technically against the law here—”

“I thought there was no law here,” I challenged him.

“More house rules than actual law, but there are exceptions.”

“Like what?”

“Like if you can’t pay a debt, you have to work for the person you owe until they say it’s paid off… only they don’t ever say it’s paid off. You get where I’m going with this?”

“And prostitutes?” I asked, feeling my way through the fog of what he was saying and steering it back to how the girls from the north ended up in the lowers with a line of guys outside their room, still dirty from the water treatment plants and waiting for their turn.

Reuben stopped to give me the side-eye before starting up again through the busy streets. I bumped shoulders with people, muttering apologies until I got the lay of the land and just returned the angry grunts with my own.

“Why you so suddenly so interested in that?” he asked me.

“Because,” I told him, “I think that’s how people get smuggled into Zion with no questions asked.”

“So you’re not as dumb as you look,” he said with a smile, stopping in front of a two-story building and looking up. I followed his gaze, seeing nothing like I had back near the bar. No signs, no flashing lights, nothing to say this building was anything.

“This is it?” I asked, obviously sounding more disappointed than confused.

“We can’t all live in your fancy bunker, can we, Zion boy?”

“That’s not what I’m—”

He walked off before I could finish, leaving me with a choice of standing in the street in a town where I probably wouldn’t last the night or following him up the steps.

He knocked on the door, stepping back and arranging his coat in a vain attempt to look less ragged, snatching off his cap and smoothing down a mess of curly hair.

The door opened, revealing a woman so pale she could’ve passed for someone born and raised below fifteen with no access to the UV banks. To make the sight even harder to look away from, she was a large lady wearing some very small clothes.

“Ruby,” she crooned, holding out her wobbly arms to envelop my new friend in an embrace that I—if I had to guess—seemed like it would be sweaty. She kissed him on the head, and he lapped it up like a puppy, opening his mouth and sticking his tongue out before he spoke.

“You miss me, baby?” he asked her as they disengaged to release an unpleasant waft of body odor. My face tried to turn itself inside out, but I managed to stop it in time for her to pull away from him and cock one hip, with a lacy-gloved hand resting on the ample shelf of flesh.

“And you brought me a gift?”

Reuben chuckled again, stepping back and gesturing at me with his hat.

“This here’s Quinn. He’s from Zion, eh?” His eyebrows wiggled like he was trying to impress her. She didn’t look all that impressed. Reuben fidgeted with the hat in both hands like he’d already promised something and was hoping he wouldn’t end up looking like an ass.

“Quinn, this here’s my baby, Tatiana,” he said.

“Pleasure to meet you,” I said, offering my hand for her to shake even though I was more worried about her than I was pretty much everything I’d encountered on the road. Apart from the damn rattlesnake. Fuck that rattlesnake.

“Pleasure is all mine,” she answered, taking my hand so gently I had to fight down a shudder at the way her greasy fingertips stroked me.

“Baby, I was tellin’ Quinn here how you might possibly have a place he could stay tonight? Only he’s new in town, havin’ never been up this way before and, truth be told, he’s a little lost lamb. No offence,” he said back over his shoulder at me, “so I was wonderin’ if he’d be okay to stay here tonight?”

“Tatiana”—and I’d met enough working girls in my time to recognize a fake name and a low-rent cathouse when I saw them—eyed me up and down as if pretending to consider the request instead of what she was really thinking: how much to shake me down for.

“Seeing as it’s you asking, baby,” she said, stroking the pudgy fingers of her right hand under Reuben’s chin and making him giggle like a kid. She turned her eyes back to me and gave me a glimpse of the flint-hard personality hidden under the blubber. “You got the coin?”

“He does,” Reuben answered. “He’s gonna pay me back for makin’ sure his bike stays in one piece tonight.”

I kept my face straight, even though I hadn’t technically agreed to that, and nodded to her, seeing her face split open in a genuine smile.

“Well, come on in, boys. I bet you both need a bath and to get in some clean clothes now, don’t you? You want a drink, honey?” she asked, the last question aimed at me.

“Fuck yes, I do,” I said, not filtering the thought before it became words. Tatiana swept us inside and shut the door as other, much younger and slimmer girls, came over to take our bags and offer us drinks.

They swept away with our packs, Tatiana telling them which rooms they should go in and making me bite my lip because almost three quarters of the silvers I had were buried in separate pouches among my gear.

“You didn’t say you were taking me to your favorite whorehouse,” I muttered, leaning closer to Reuben and still wearing a smile in case anyone was watching.

“You didn’t specify otherwise, friend,” he answered, clearly enjoying being in his happy place.

58

On the Road Again

Rivera

The road was uneven, hammering us both around inside the buggy, so much so that even if Valentina had been feeling well enough to talk, she couldn’t have, as we both hung on tight. I toyed with the idea of slowing down, but we needed to make up ground as fast as possible.

Depending on how fast Quinn was moving, we were a few days behind him, which meant he’d likely be in Jackson by now. I felt simultaneously bad that he was out on his own and also concerned about what was happening behind us—both in my mind and in reality. The possibility of pursuit from Zion was a growing anxiety I carried with me all the time. It multiplied every minute, but that was a pressure I couldn’t share with anyone, not even Valentina.

The flat land started to undulate, at times reducing the forward view to a matter of only yards before the flattened track we called the road dropped away into a valley to expose a whole new landscape to us. The land went from patchy green to dusty rock again, with the odd, coarse shrubs protruding up from between rocks like they were making the point that they would do as they pleased.

We stopped after what felt like five or six hours but disappointingly turned out only to be three, and I opened a water bottle to hand it to Valentina. For once she didn’t huff or shoot me a look the way she did when anyone ever offered her any kindness, as if it were some slight on her abilities. She took the bottle and drank steadily, gasping as she lowered it from her mouth. Liquid ran down her chin.

I looked away, experiencing some inappropriate and potentially life-threatening thoughts that I’d prefer she didn’t suspect in any way. I took a walk around the buggy, inspecting the solid tires and stretching my seized joints at the same time, ending up at the passenger side where Valentina stretched. She was still weak, that much was obvious, and I worried I’d done the wrong thing in forcing our departure instead of letting her sleep for another day and recover.

I’d had a fever a couple of times before, though not for a while, and I recalled how drained it had left me feeling for days afterward. I felt sorry for her, which was a dangerous thing to do because she was undoubtedly one of those women who responded to sympathy as if it were offensive pity.

“You should eat something,” I said. “Keep your strength up.”

She nodded, reaching into the buggy to unfasten her pack and pull out a ration bar which she fumbled with until I couldn’t stand to see her failing any longer.

I reached out for it, almost feeling the air grow colder as she fought internally with herself over whether to accept help or bite my head off, before she relented and allowed me to take it and peel open the wrapper for her. Her eyes met mine briefly, the corners of her mouth twitching with a hint of a smile as she allowed herself to offer the smallest glimpse of gratitude.

I watched her as she chewed, subtly in case she turned on me, and tried to figure out why she was so hard-bitten.

“What happened to you?” I asked, surprising even myself that I’d spoken. I feared an angry response but, to my surprise, she just breathed out and lowered the food in her hand as she chewed and swallowed her mouthful.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” I hesitated, not sure what I meant but not wanting to waste the opportunity. “I mean, why do you have these… these walls up around you? What happened?”

She stared at me, something flashing behind her eyes, like she was deciding whether she should cut me, then seemed to give up. Her eyes glistened.

“You know I came to Zion as a child, right?” she asked.

I nodded silently, not wanting to break the spell.

“My father died not long after we got there. My mother was left with me and my older sister and no way to feed us, so she took a job cleaning for some casino on level four. My sister used to look after me when she worked, but most of the time she’d leave me in the one-room place we had and go out. That went on for years, my mom working through the night and coming back in the morning dead on her feet. My sister stopped going to the mandatory classes and spent more time away than our mother did…”

“Where is she now?” I asked. “Your sister, I mean.” I knew she’d mentioned her parents both having passed away, but I hadn’t heard about her sibling before.

She looked at me with sadness in her eyes and shrugged, offering a sad smile to ward off the very real feeling she was experiencing.

“Who knows? I haven’t seen her for over ten years. I just know she left me money after Mom died.”

A dozen questions started firing off in my mind for attention. I shook my head to clear it in case I blurted one out.

Where did she get money? How much? Where could she have gone?

“I think she went back home,” Valentina said, “to Helena... like the other working girls with prospects did.”

Then it hit me, just as she spoke, why Valentina had been so aggressive about the female victim we’d all assumed had been a whore. About why she was so angry that people had dismissed the life of a woman simply because of what they assumed she did for money. What she did to get by.

“Gabriela, I’m sorry…”

“Don’t mention it, Claude,” she snapped back with heavy emphasis on my first name like she was mocking me. It wasn’t subtle, and it told me in flashing lights that the old Valentina was back.

I climbed back behind the wheel without asking if she was well enough to take a turn driving. It was clear that she wasn’t, so I didn’t ask. Only twenty minutes after setting off, she raised her hand to point dead ahead, making me lift my foot off the throttle to slow the buggy and peer into the dust.

“What do we do?” she asked before I could figure out what I was looking at. “Rivera?”

“What is it?”

“It’s a vehicle,” she said. “A trader, by the look of it.”

I stopped, pulling to the side of the road and waiting for the lumbering frame to approach.

I’d seen trade caravans before, but none quite so well protected as this one. Most of them were large trailers or buggies with wide, flat beds pulled along behind them. None, so far as I’d witnessed, were metal tubes protected from almost everything imaginable.

It was tall and long, with large, chunky wheels like our own only bigger, powering it along the road. It slowed as it neared us, and two small sections of the metal skin opened. One sprouted a weapon barrel.

“Friendly,” I said, showing my empty hands. “We’d just like to talk.”

“How can I help you, my friend?” an accented voice called from behind the gap not showing a muzzle. “If you are looking for trade, I have some items but, alas, I am on a tight schedule to deliver paying cargo.”

“We’re provisioned well enough, thanks,” I said. “We’re looking for our friend. He came this way in the last few days, name’s Quinn, and he was on a solar-pow—”

“I know of your friend, Quinn,” the voice exclaimed happily. “He is also my friend, and we shared a meal together before we spoke of business. He traded with me, before continuing on his journey.”

I laughed, a nervous explosion of emotion as I heard the first proof that he still lived, and rattled off more questions.

“How was he? Did he tell you anything? Did he seem well?”

“He was far from what you would call well, but he was unharmed. He told me of his chasing the two women. He called them his fugitives.”

“When was this? Where is he now?” Valentina asked, sounding just as concerned as I was.

“This was two days before today, and your friend was heading to the market town of Jackson.”

“How far is that from here?” I asked. “What can you tell us about it?”

I waited as an angry exchange of voices sounded from inside the metal tube. The big voice came back to the hole.

“My friends, I must apologize. As I say, I have paying cargo and I must bring them to their destination by tomorrow. I wish you good luck in your journey.”

With that, the shutter slid closed but the one farther back remained open so that the muzzle of the gun could cover them as the engine sparked to life and the wheels crunched on the surface to roll them away. We were left in silence.

“We should get moving,” Valentina said. “Maybe make a hundred miles before nightfall.”

* * *

We made eighty, with one more stop, and as the wind picked up to bring with it a light rain that stung the exposed parts of my skin, Valentina pointed out a hollow ahead of us just off the road.

My brain tried to tell me something about higher ground, but I was too exhausted to explore it fully. Instead, I slowed and pulled off the road onto the slightly rougher ground to roll down into the rocky bowl created either by some natural occurrence I didn’t understand or else as a geographical leftover from the world before.

Valentina wasted no time, rigging up first a shelter on her side of the buggy by clipping the heavy plastic sheets to the roll cage and angling them down to the ground where she piled rocks to keep the lower end secured, then crawled underneath to begin clearing away the debris on the ground. She laid down another sheet to create a mostly weatherproof place where we could hide from the wind and rain.

I set up the battery charger ready for the dawn, stretching out the solar array and pointing it in the opposite direction from where the sun setting, and dragged my bed roll free of my pack to slide it under the rigged sheet ready for later.

Activating the screamer device, I checked it worked before turning it off again and resting it on the driver’s seat, ready for when night fell.

We took some time alone outside of the hollow to do what we each needed to do in private, and as the sun set and the device silently worked its magic, we both added a layer of clothing and wriggled into our sleeping bags, ready to sleep.

* * *

When I woke up, I felt that strange sensation of momentary confusion one experienced when sleeping somewhere other than the bed they were accustomed to. I hadn’t slept in my own bed for days, mostly because it was no longer actually my bed, but despite being on the road, this felt different. It felt more odd than what was becoming my usual.

I sat up, my head hitting the stretched sheet where it sagged deeply in the middle and rewarding me with a harder knock than I’d have expected from thin plastic. The sloshing noise of running water reached my ears as it rolled off the end of our shelter to run into the ground past my feet. My right hand fumbled for the shotgun as my feet kicked to free me from the sleeping bag. I’d awoken with an overwhelming sensation of sudden claustrophobia.

“What is it?” Valentina asked from beside me. When I didn’t answer, she repeated her question more forcefully.

“I have to get out of here!” I gasped, having to put the shotgun back down and use both hands to free myself from the grip of my bedding. Breaking free, I snatched up the gun again and rolled free of the shelter into the sudden, harsh light of the sun, which was a good hand’s width above the eastern horizon already.

I brought the gun up into my shoulder and leaned into it, swinging the barrel all around in search of anything dangerous. When nothing leapt at me or growled from behind a rock, I began to relax, accepting that my brain was trying to deal with the myriad new experiences I’d forced upon it in such a short period of time.

“You okay?” Valentina asked cautiously, having extricated herself from the other side of the shelter. She held her own weapon ready but with the barrel aimed at the ground.

I took two steadying breaths, forcing myself to calm down, wiling my heart rate to lower.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, my words sounding harsher than I intended, due to my temporary shortness of breath. “I’m fine,” I said, more slowly this time. “Thought I heard a noise.”

“Really? Because it seemed like you just freaked out and had a fight with your bag.”

“It may have been partly that,” I allowed, closing my eyes and taking more deep breaths. Continuing to pretend I hadn’t just experienced a mild panic attack was pointless. “I’m fine now.”

“Good,” she said as she started to unclip the sheet and collapse the shelter which had sagged under the weight of last night’s rain. “So we can get moving soon?”

Another two hours on the road which, thanks to the overnight rainfall was nowhere near as dust-filled, led us into a section of dead straight path with rolling hills on both sides that looked like a magnified view of dimpled skin. The little hills were unevenly shaped but something about their spacing made me suspect it wasn’t as natural as it might look.

“I think this was a town,” I said over the rush of wind. “I think these were all collapsed buildings hundreds of years ago.”

“Why do you think that?” she asked, making me pause to find the best way to explain it. I never got the chance. She gasped and pointed at a rolling, swirling swarm of something black ahead of us.

“Birds?” she asked.

“Or insects. Or bats,” I offered, neither alternative filling her with any kind of reassurance.

She unstrapped to kneel up in the bucket seat, leaning down to place her own rifle in the footwell as she picked up my shotgun in its place.

“Just keep it steady,” she warned.

“No,” I shot back as an idea hit me. I fumbled behind my seat for the top of my spare pack, pulling open the fastenings with one hand as I kept the buggy rolling forward in a relatively straight line. I finally managed to work the second screamer free and bring it up to the dash just as the Geiger box began to chirp and rattle. I swerved to the right side of the road, but the needle danced higher, making me swerve back to the far left side where it dropped lower.

Handing up the device to her, she suddenly caught my drift and lowered the shotgun long enough to activate it and wedge it on the dash, before lifting the weapon back up and resting the short barrel on the forward support beam of the cage and taking aim at the swirling mess of flying creatures up ahead.

“Steady,” I called out to her as we neared, one eye on the Geiger box which still jerked and chirped just above the safe level indicator. I didn’t want to be caught there and have to stop in one of the inexplicably random hot zones.

Fighting the urge to go back as much as I was avoiding stomping the throttle into the metal board, I cringed down in my seat as the tumbling cloud of little flying creatures scattered and burst away in all directions. I looked behind us, certain they would re-form and give chase, but instead, they flocked back together and flew away in a different direction.

Valentina relaxed, sitting back down and strapping in as I checked the radiation readout and squeezed my foot onto the throttle to pick up our pace toward Jackson.

59

Earning a Wage

Quinn

As far as cathouses went, this one was at the nicer end of my experience. A slender young girl, maybe four or five years younger than me and probably just as pale as I looked under the dirt and grime, took my hand and led me up to the room where my packs lay untouched in one corner. I resisted the urge to check them to see if anything had been searched or removed.

She helped me out of my clothes, not pushing herself on me at all but keeping her eyes cast downwards.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Chastity,” she said, her voice sounding uncertain and younger than she appeared. I couldn’t help myself and laughed on hearing such a fake name, earning an angry look of embarrassment from her.

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. That was mean. What’s your real name?”

She shrugged.

“What’s that mean? You don’t want to say, or you don’t know?”

She shrugged again and got back to the task of helping me take my clothes off and ignoring the line of questioning. Annoyed, I took over and stripped off my jacket and shirt to reveal a T-shirt underneath that I suspected wouldn’t survive a wash as it needed to be cleansed by fire instead. I peeled that away with a grimace, holding it away from my body to drop it on the pile with the rest of my gear. I felt guilty that she’d have to touch it.

Now that the smell was released from being trapped by my clothes, I felt almost lightheaded and staggered a little as I shook my head to try to clear my senses.

“You okay, mister?” she asked, her voice radiating concern but her eyes not mirroring the sentiment.

“I fucking stink,” I complained. I looked around, trying to decide if sitting on the edge of the bed to strip off my boots and… oh my God, just the thought of my socks was enough to make me want to puke… I opted for a chair in one corner of the room instead and prized off the boots before holding my nose and finding, to my enormous surprise, that my feet didn’t smell anywhere near as bad as my armpits did.

Chalking that bit of information up to being not that interesting after all, I undid my belt and dropped my pants so that I was just standing there in my shorts.

Chastity—it made me stifle an eye-roll just to think of her fake name—sat on the end of the bed and stared right at me, like she was lost in a daze.

“What?” I asked, following the line of her eyes and looking at the neat lines of raised scar tissue on the inside of my left arm, marking the progress of time from elbow to wrist.

I turned my arm so that the scars were hidden from her sight. It seemed to snap her out of the trance.

“You want a bath?” she asked, her fake smile returning.

“I’d prefer a shower then a bath. One to get clean and one to relax.”

She nodded and walked into a side room which, to my amazement, was an attached bathroom. I didn’t think I’d ever paid for a room with this kind of luxury, and it made me worry how much the night was going to cost me.

I heard faucets squeak and water flow. Stepping into the bathroom, I saw steam rise from an old tub with the shower over it. I dropped my shorts and stepped in, closing my eyes as the hot water hit my hair.

I used my fingers to work my stiff hair and help the water find a way through the thick layer of dust that was quickly caking to mud. Opening my eyes, I saw the water running off my feet turn from clear to brown. Chast—ugh, the girl stepped up beside me, holding out a bar of lumpy soap which I took and began to work up into a lather in my hands before scrubbing myself all over, starting with my armpits, which felt like they were filled with sharp sand.

She reached up with slender fingers to slip the shawl off her shoulders, revealing a hollow beneath her collarbones that made me worry she wasn’t being fed enough until other details broke through to me. The way her joints seemed oversized for her thin limbs nagged at me until I figured it out.

“You got radiation poisoning?” I asked, realizing too late I’d upset her.

She bent down and snatched up the shawl, revealing a pronounced spine sticking out like a crest running in an uneven line down her back.

“No, wait, I’m sorry, I—”

“I’ll wash your clothes, mister,” she said as she fled from the room leaving me standing there under the running water and feeling like a real piece of shit.

By the time I’d scrubbed myself down multiple times and the water running off me was finally clear again, I killed the flow, not having the energy to run a bath and sit in the hot water in case I fell asleep and drowned.

Coming back out into the room with a towel around my waist and another in my hand rubbing myself dry, I saw she’d come back and was sitting on the bed in a pose I guessed she thought was alluring.

“Listen,” I said humbly, “I’m sorry about earlier. About what I said. I…”

“It’s okay,” she said. “And to answer your question, yes. I was born a little… a little different. Some people like it.”

I knew the truth of that well enough. Girls like her, or much worse off in a lot of cases, came to Zion to make good money as a kind of freak show. I never got how guys, and some women—I won’t exclude anyone—found that kind of thing a specific turn-on.

“I’m really tired,” I said. “I’ve kinda had a bad week, you know?” I thought about telling her what had happened but decided it would probably take too long. Hell, I was so exhausted I wasn’t sure I could even get the order of everything right.

Her eyes went to the cabinet on one side of the room to point me in the direction of more drink and some food. I forgot everything I was saying as my stomach took over control of my body and made me tear into it, not even pausing to check what it was before I chewed it down.

When I was done, I sat on the bed and wondered how I could broach the subject of wanting to go straight to sleep without offending her again.

“Listen, I’m sure you’re great and all, but… but I just need to sleep, you know?”

“Oh,” she said, obviously hurt.

“It’s not you,” I said, trying to alleviate the insult.

“That doesn’t matter to me,” she said, “only I won’t get paid unless I stay here tonight. Girl’s gotta earn a wage.”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly feeling less special than I had a minute ago.

“If you don’t want to that’s fine, I’ll just sleep on the floor, so Tatiana won’t know.”

“That’s dumb,” I blurted out. “Sleep on the bed, I’ll take the floor.” As soon as I said it, I felt a twinge in my back as if it were saying, “Hey, asshole, how about checking with me before you say shit like that, huh?”

“I’ll get cold,” she said. “We can just sleep next to each other. I’ll keep my hands to myself if you prefer.”

Feeling unsure if I’d been played again, I got up, walked to my gear and pulled the smaller revolver from the holster to rest it on the table beside the bed, lay back, and closed my eyes for what felt like about half a second before I passed out.

* * *

Meat. That was the word my brain was screaming at me when my eyes opened, and I tried to remember where the hell I was. Cooking meat, to be more specific, that was what my nose was telling my brain, and my brain was telling me to get up so I could eat some of it.

The girl was asleep, arm draped over my stomach a little lower than was probably appropriate with her head on my chest, feeling as though she weighed just north of nothing. She was as naked as I was, and being morning, well…

I slipped out of the bed, turning away and stretching my arms and shoulders, which were telling me they’d had about enough of being on a damn bike, and looked around for my clothes to find they were still gone. Wrapping the towel around my waist, I dug into my packs and pulled out a long-sleeved T-shirt which I pulled over my messy hair, and on impulse I added the shoulder holster to it, checking next that the bullets hadn’t silently escaped from the small revolver as I slept, and I tucked that in there safely.

I pulled the door open, looking out over the landing before glancing down and seeing my clothes clean and folded beside my boots, which had been scrubbed and returned to an impressive shade of black. I bent down, picked up the bundle of clothes in one arm and my boots in the other hand, ducking back inside to get dressed as quietly as possible so that I didn’t wake the girl.

It felt good to be in clean clothes, not suffering that itchy, abrasive feeling of sweat-stained fabric grating the top layers off my skin every time I moved, and even found that whoever had cleaned my gear had removed the dust from the pockets of my leather jacket.

Adding the belt and the other revolver to my thigh, I reminded myself to give both guns, and my rifle for that matter, a thorough cleaning before heading back out again.

I paused at the door, seeing the girl stirring or at least pretending really well, and walked down the stairs toward the source of the meat smell.

“Good morning,” Reuben said with evident amusement from his chair beside Tatiana, who was wearing the most offensive explosion of pink gauze and frills I’d ever imagined. I’m sure I would’ve found it sexy under different circumstances, like if Tatiana was half the size and Chastity was twice what she was, but before I’d had food or coffee, it was hurting my eyes.

“Sleep well, Zion?” Tatiana asked with a knowing smile which I tried to return roguishly.

“Better than I can remember,” I answered, taking a seat at the table and smiling my thanks at another girl who poured coffee from an old metal pot into a glass with a handle. I took a sip, finding that it tasted like piss water filtered through shit, and set it down again while trying not to let my opinion show.

“What’s on the agenda today?” Reuben asked, looking just as fresh as I did but infinitely happier.

“I need to find someone who can tell me about who comes and goes from town,” I said. “I need information.”

“A valuable commodity,” Tatiana said, suddenly all business as if forgetting Reuben’s attentions in favor of a more interesting prospect. “Especially for an outsider.”

“Any helpful leads?” I asked, eyeing both of them and figuring that the madam would probably be better placed to help me out than the courier.

“Go to the white stone building west of the south entrance,” she said. “Ask for the Cat. Tell him I sent you.”

“The… cat?”

“Hey, you wanted help, and that’s where you’ll find it.”

60

Currency Exchange

Quinn

Walking through the streets of Jackson in the daylight was a different experience altogether. Gone was that malevolent feeling that armed gangs were shadowing my progress on both flanks, and in place of that brooding sense of impending conflict, I felt a different kind of danger.

This new danger threatened the heavy contents of my pockets, and I fought the urge to check the grip of the revolver with my fingertips again and again just to remind myself it was there. Each step made me imagine that the coins I carried were literally jingling to announce a payday for whoever was smart enough, or violent enough, to take them from me.

I knew it was paranoia, the same kind I’d feel back home if I’d ventured to the upper levels and gambled in one of the few casinos I could enter before winning big and trying to make my way back home without getting my throat and my pockets slashed.

I had to remind myself that money, out here at least, was just another tool. It opened doors; it acquired weapons and, I hoped, information too.

That was, if I could hold onto it long enough to use it.

I started to feel a little more at home than I expected to, seeing the dirty kids dashing from shadow to shadow, always staying out of the adults’ reach and looking for any opportunity, like the rats that inhabited the shadows with them.

I was one of them. Not now, but I had been. It didn’t matter if it was the muddy streets of Jackson or the airless lowers of Zion, I knew those kids.

That realization didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. Knowing these kids meant I knew they’d pick my corpse clean before anyone raised the alarm if I was dumb enough to get myself killed and dumped in an alleyway.

I kept my pace quick and my eyes and ears open as I walked. I found the south entrance easily enough and slowed as to look for a white stone building. I saw my bike, still where I had left it, with all the parts still attached, and counted three short shadows lurking within sight of it.

Having walked further than I expected to, I turned back on myself, seeing no fewer than three people suddenly look away and find a different direction to walk in. They were the amateurs I guessed, because I must’ve walked right by at least two others who were better at tailing someone and didn’t panic when the unexpected happened.

Following someone was an art form, and no amount of training could teach the instinct of when to stop and wait and how to keep your cool when the target stared right at you.

Going back to my bike, I slid my hand into my pocket and pulled out one coin, leaning on the wall near one of the kids watching the vehicles. The shadow melted into focus toward me and grinned white teeth through a dirty face. I looked at him, seeing the front two teeth missing, giving the murdering little bastard an almost cute look, and I waved the coin at him as I held it between finger and thumb.

“There’s a white stone building,” I said, jerking a thumb back in the direction I’d come from, “that way.”

The kid nodded, eyes glued to the coin. A decent earning first thing in the morning.

“Show it to me,” I said, slipping the coin back in my pocket.

“One now, one when you get there,” he said, proving himself to be a better haggler than I was.

I laughed at the little shit’s audacity.

“I give you a coin now, and you’ll take me on a wild goose chase to some dark alley and leave me there,” I said, narrowing my eyes and bending down to eye him closely. “Better still, you’ll probably get me lost and make me give you another coin to get me back.”

The kid smirked involuntarily. I’d busted his plan.

“Tell you what,” I said, sweetening the deal for my own safety. “You take me straight to the white stone house and I’ll give you two coins when we get there. Deal?”

The kid eyed me suspiciously, trying to figure out if I was good for it. My next words sealed it for him.

“That’s my bike anyway, so if I’m not being honest with you, then you know how to get back at me, right?”

The missing front teeth showed me the gap in the smile as he got what I was saying. I worried then, thinking that if anything went wrong, I’d be left walking to Cheyenne.

He set off, whistling with two grubby fingers in his mouth for another street rat to pop out of a doorway. The kid pointed to his eyes and then to Reuben’s buggy before slipping under a lateral railing and setting off through a crowd. I panicked for a second as the much smaller child melted into the sea of adults, then realized the kid hadn’t been paid so it didn’t do him any good to intentionally give me the slip. I took three steps into the street before I saw him standing still waiting for me, like he’d just remembered he was a guide to someone who didn’t dart around the streets like a rodent.

He walked at a more sensible pace that allowed me to keep up, leading me away from the crowd until the foot traffic thinned out. I turned a corner and found myself in an empty street. Just as I was about to curse, a hiss from a doorway caught my attention and I turned to see the kid flapping his hand at me, beckoning me over quickly.

I slipped into the doorway, looking down at him to see a dirty finger held vertically against his lips, then looked back out the crack of the door to see two guys jog into the deserted side street and look around. Without a doubt, they were trailing me, and I thanked the kid with a pat on his messy hair for intentionally losing them.

Inside my own head I was a little more critical.

Need a damn street kid to save your ass? Switch the fuck on, Quinn, you useless ballsack.

The kid got my attention back with a tug on my sleeve, leading me back out of the shadows and into the crowd he’d just steered me out of, to take a different direction of twists and turns through the back streets. He knew them as well as I knew the pipes and conduits of the lowers, and in a different reality we could’ve been the same person.

He stopped, pointing at a building that I wouldn’t automatically describe as white. I mean, it might’ve been white at some point in the past, but I’d probably call it gray or maybe just dirty before I’d call it white.

But I digress.

True to my word, I tossed the kid both coins, one after another so he didn’t drop them. He checked them both and shot me a gappy smile before disappearing into the flow of human traffic again.

I walked up the front steps and was about to deliver a strong, decisive knock on the heavy front door…

… which was wrenched open before I could drop my knuckles. I stepped smartly to one side as a guy was propelled out the door, having no control over his direction or his immediate destiny. I cleared the porch in time for the guy to yelp the words, “Oooh, shit!” before the meathead carrying him like a bag of dirty laundry stopped, hauled him back with a grunt, then launched his burden out into the street.

I watched, impressed with the distance he got, and winced in sympathy as the air being driven out of his lungs echoed between the buildings. With one pathetic hand, he pushed his face up out of the mud. I looked from him to the guy standing in the doorway and smiled.

The meathead, about a foot taller than me with a scarred, leathery face and a bald head to finish the look, gave me a cold glance and leaned around to assess his handiwork. Evidently satisfied that the guy he’d ejected wasn’t coming back, he took a step backwards and went to swing the door shut in my face.

“Hey, whoa there, buddy,” I said, acting on instinct and shoving my boot in the door so it bounced back.

As the door swung open to reveal me standing there wearing my best “have you heard the good news?” expression, his features darkened; his meaty brows pulsating and contracting.

“I need to see the Cat,” I said. “Tatiana sent me.”

The last part I managed to get out just in time. It looked like I was about to follow the last dude out into the mud until the words triggered recognition in his brain. He relaxed, and stepped aside so I could walk in. I did, hoping it wasn’t a trap so he could eat me or anything, and tried to keep my right hand close enough to the revolver on my leg without looking like I was going for a weapon.

He stood in front of me, getting close and filling my nose with a stink of onion so bad it made my eyes sting. His top lip was twisted where an uneven scar ran from his left nostril to his mouth.

“Ugh,” he rumbled, like the words were a burp bubbling from the pit of his stomach. The grunt was accompanied by a gesture that I took to mean, “Get your arms up, asshole, so I can search you.” I did as I was told, holding my arms up to my sides as I tried to close all the pores on my exposed skin along with my mouth, so I didn’t breathe anything in.

“Gun under my left arm,” I said, not bothering to point out the one on my leg because, let’s face it, he’d be the worst bodyguard in the world if he hadn’t already registered it.

The sweaty monster reached in to take my second piece, allowing me a close-up of his face and the mesh of old scars that covered his head and face like a journal of every fight he’d ever been in. His left eye was cloudy and didn’t reflect the poor light coming through the few windows lighting up the interior of the hall.

Was that an injury or a birth defect? I wondered. Probably better not to ask.

With both guns taken by surprisingly deft hands, I watched in horror as he tucked them both, one after the other, into the front of his pants.

I was still stinging with embarrassment for almost shooting my own foot off, so the thought of having to explain to this Cat guy how my gun killed his doorman by blowing off his junk wasn’t one I much liked.

He may have looked and smelled like a dumb animal, but meathead did a second pat down on me after taking the weapons to make sure I didn’t have any others. I mean, it was Searching 101 for me, but seeing how other people in other places had developed that same level of self-preservation and common sense impressed me for all of half a second, before it dawned on me why these people had to be so careful.

Meathead turned my shoulder and propelled me toward another door with a grunt, making me fully recognize that I’d just given up all of my weapons willingly, without knowing what I was getting myself into.

The next room was dark, with an assortment of blankets hung over the dirty windows as curtains. It gave the room a kind of temporary look, and at first the low light made it hard for me to see until my eyes adjusted, so when the guy spoke, I had to fight back the urge to let out a sound like, mbhaarh!

“That’ll be all, Mister Kindly,” a smooth, velvety voice said from the shadows cast by an ancient chair with a high back and cushioned sides. I peered into the gloom to make out a man, at least I guessed it was from the voice, lounging on the chair, one leg draped over an arm. As my eyes adjusted, helped by the few lit candles, I made out thin limbs and shaggy, long hair.

Behind me, meathead gargled another rumbling grunt that sounded just fucking odd and left the room, taking my guns with him.

“Mister Kindly?” I asked, needing to get that off my mind at the earliest opportunity.

The shadow chuckled.

“Mister Kindly doesn’t talk, on account of having some… differences, when he was born.”

The memory of the scarred lip hit me, and I saw it for what it was. Doctors called it a cleft palate, which in some cases is fatal for a baby. This one had obviously survived and going by the size of the bastard, he must eat pretty well these days.

“So, Tatiana sent you, did I hear that correctly?” the smooth voice said, almost purring the words at me. I got the connection, guessing the whole Cat thing was part of the act.

“Yeah, she said you’d be able to trade certain information with me.”

“Information about what?” the voice asked as the shadow swung around to rest back on the chair, lying over the opposite arm. “I mean, I can’t trade something I don’t know. That would be… what’s the word? Unethical.”

I kept my face still and my mouth shut, wondering what the hell ethics meant out here. This place made level twenty back home look like… well, much the same, only with mud and sunlight.

“I’m looking for two women who would’ve come into town a day ago, maybe two at the most. They were driving a buggy and they had guns,” I said, hoping the bare facts would jog the guy’s memory.

“Slow down there,” the shadow said. “I need to know a little about who I’m trading with first, and if you’re good for the coin.”

I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a purse heavy with silvers to drop it noisily on the table between us.

“I’ll concede to the coin being good, so what about you?”

“I’m from the south and I’m looking for them,” I said testily. “That’s all you need to know.”

The purring voice laughed before the lazy answer came back with a little more spit in the words than I expected.

“You’re from Zion,” it snapped, stating facts and not asking for confirmation. “You’re a bounty hunter looking for a payday by bringing back a runaway killer.”

Okay, not even half true, but I went with it. I guessed I’d been overheard talking to Reuben in the bar last night and the whispers had been passed from person to person until they ended up in this information broker’s ears.

“So I tell you about myself and buy the information?” I asked. “Isn’t that the same as me paying you twice?”

The shadow leapt from the chair and paced into the better light. I fought down a gasp at the size and shape of the eyes I looked into, finally understanding why the cat theatrics were part of the game here. I was looking into the black centers of big, feline eyes.

“You’re a clever one,” the Cat said, smiling at my struggle to resist reacting to his eyes. “And what if I sell on the information about you?”

“Well, it makes a difference to me, is all,” I said. “In fact, I’m hoping you’ll definitely pass on my story to others who come here, maybe even looking for me.”

“You want me to tell a false truth to others who seek my services in good faith? Tell me, Zion, is that how you build a reputation and make money back in your big city?”

“No, I’m not asking for you to tell them a lie,” I said. “They’re my friends and I don’t want them to get lost looking for me.”

The Cat leaned back, looked me up and down, then nodded. “Very well, but this will cost you more.”

“How about I tell you which part of your story is wrong instead?” I offered, certain that news of the outsider would still fetch a few coins for him.

He turned away, flicking a tail—a goddamned tail—at me before answering with a gracious nod.

“I am from Zion,” I told him, recovering quickly, “but I’m no bounty hunter. The women I’m hunting are, but I’m a Zion Ranger and they are fugitives wanted for murder.” The Cat eyed me as I spoke and smiled, seeming genuinely pleased to know something that nobody else did. He walked back to the chair and stepped up onto it to sit down and curl up comfortably.

“Two women, armed with guns, came through here yesterday. They stopped only long enough to take on supplies and left through the north gate.”

“To where?” I asked. The Cat glanced at the untouched coin purse as if to say that the first transaction had been conducted. I dug into my other pocket and made a show of hesitating before I dropped it down beside the other, hoping my act would say that I was almost out of cash. The Cat smiled smugly.

“They said they were going north, but I heard they bought hazard suits, which can only mean one thing.”

“Which is?”

He looked at the coin purses again.

I snapped, “Bullshit. I’ve paid for the information and given you more, so tell me what you know.”

The big eyes caught the light as they regarded me coldly, like I was a thing to be played with or ignored, and nothing I could do would affect which one he’d choose.

“They will turn east, cutting through the poisoned valley to Cheyenne instead of taking the long route there via the east or Helena on that northern road.”

“Thank you,” I said, earning a bored, dismissive wave of a hand that reminded me of Rivera. “If my friends come, a man and a woman from Zion, tell them I’ve gone after them. If anyone else asks, tell them I’ve gone north.”

The Cat nodded again in understanding and agreement before he stamped a foot twice on the wooden floor to summon the giant mute. Mister Kindly burst back in, eying me up like a snack before looking at the Cat for instructions.

“Kindly see our new friend out,” he purred.

* * *

At least the bastard had the good grace to give me my guns back and wait for me to holster them before he picked me up and tossed me out the front door like a sack of shit. I hit the mud in the same place the last guy did, and I guessed as far as a reputation went, it at least put off the casual clients without the coin to be serious.

I picked myself up, annoyed that my clean clothes were muddy already. The kid, probably looking for another coin or just hanging around to see me get tossed through the air, scurried forward as I got to my feet and dusted myself off.

“What do you want?” I asked. “I’ve already paid you once. Twice actually. Get lo—”

I stopped as he turned and pointed into the crowd at two men, eyes fixed on me, walking purposefully in my direction.

“Thanks, kid. Want to show me a quick way out of here?”

The little bastard rubbed two fingers together with a smile.

“Fine, you little shit, one more coin.”

The kid obviously decided that was enough because he ran off for me to follow. Behind me I heard shouts—like I’d actually stop and talk to the two shady assholes tailing me. We melted into the crowds to evade the men for the second time in an hour.

Twice more the little bastard intentionally got me lost, and twice more he managed to get another coin out of me so that I probably contributed about eighty percent of his weekly earnings in just that morning. Ending up back at Tatiana’s on request, I thanked him by aiming a swipe at his head when he asked for another coin and almost fell down when he avoided it with all the speed and reflexes of a rattlesnake.

“Get what you need, friend?” Reuben asked as soon as I walked in, eyeing my muddy clothes with amusement. I guessed I was the only person in town not to know how a visit to the Cat would turn out for me.

“Yeah, but I think I need to go now,” I told him. My tone must’ve cut through, because he stood up and walked to check the street outside by twitching back a curtain.

“I see one,” he said, still peering out into the street.

“There were two. I need some stuff before I break out of here. Can you do that for me?”

“Well, I might, only these particular guys ain’t exactly friends of mine, you dig?”

I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to be digging for, but I went along with it anyway.

“Tell me what you need,” the strong, authoritative voice of Tatiana announced from behind me, “and I’ll send one of the girls out for it. Ain’t no way anybody’s coming up in here to make a ruckus.”

I turned to thank her, seeing another lacy monstrosity of green and faded white that showed off too much of everything I didn’t want to see. I averted my eyes, hoping I looked like a gentleman instead of like a man about to lose his breakfast, and told her.

“Chastity? Chastity, honey, you go on down to that trade store on Fifth and make sure he knows you’re one of mine.”

Chastity nodded, glancing nervously at me in case she was going to have to pick up anything dangerous.

“I need a hazard suit, in my size so make sure it’s a lot bigger than you are. Don’t let them give you an old one with only one layer, make sur—”

“He’ll give her the good stuff, if he knows what’s good for him. Pay the girl.”

I pulled the third of four purses I carried from a pocket and handed her one, not knowing if I was paying double or half until she grinned and weighed the coins in her hand. Clearly I’d handed over way too much.

“I need rad meds too,” I said, hoping to get something like my money’s worth out of the transaction. She nodded, seeking permission from Tatiana to leave, which was given. She threw on a coat and left fast.

“Go grab your gear,” Tatiana told me, “and settle up for the room and girl before we get you out of town, Mister Zion.”

61

Visiting Dignitary

Zion

The airlock into Zion’s customs area stuck about three feet too short to allow Eduardo’s caravan inside, so additional Rangers were called in for both doors to be manually opened at the same time.

Eduardo got out, his young apprentice shadowing him as he exchanged unnecessary pleasantries with the bored lieutenant in charge of the customs area that day.

“I have the honor to carry with me an important guest to your city, all the way from Helena Crossroads,” he announced, opening the rear doors and bowing to allow the blond man with the pinched expression to step down. Gone were the simple traveling rags he wore when Quinn had met him—an encounter that still stung as he was denied the final word in the confrontation—and instead, he wore a tailored suit of white cloth and clean black shoes to match the black silk shirt he wore beneath the jacket.

“Who is in charge here?” he asked with such evident authority that the lieutenant temporarily forgot that it was him.

“Well?” the stranger demanded of the assembled Rangers.

“That’s me, sir. Lieutenant Fra—”

“Irrelevant,” the man interrupted. “I am here on invitation of your Senator Byers.”

The Rangers eyed each other, all of them knowing the recent gossip regarding the senator.

“Sir,” the lieutenant said. “I’m very sorry to inform you that the senator was killed in an incident last week. If you prefer, I can pass your request up the chain of command an—”

“Do that,” he said with evident disgust. “I shall wait.”

With that, he went back up the steps into the caravan and closed the doors.

* * *

Lieutenant Franklin, unsure of what to do, told his sergeant to carry on and retreated to the control room to place the call personally. He got through to the junior commander in charge of his section, who placed a call to the commander who, in turn, was forced to interrupt his meeting.

Demanding to know what was so damn urgent, the junior commander quailed on the comm as he wasn’t entirely sure. The commander took a few basic details and placed a call himself to the lieutenant who, he hoped, had more of an idea what was going on than the officer between them did.

“Customs, this is Lieutenant Franklin,” he said as he picked up the handset to answer the incoming call himself. He expected the junior commander to pass on instructions to him. He did not expect the commander to start tearing him a new asshole.

“Franklin, this is Commander Everson. Tell me what’s so damn important down there that I just left three people, the deputy director among them, sitting in my office waiting for me to deal with business you’re calling urgent.”

“Sir… I…”

“Get to it, son.”

“Sir, there’s a man here says he’s looking for Senator Byers.”

“And?”

“And sir, if you recall, Senator Byers was ki—”

“Assume I’m higher up the chain of command than you are, Lieutenant, and, just for fun, assume I hear about it when senators get themselves killed in Zion.”

“Sir, I apologize, I… well, this guy seems important. He’s come from Helena to see the senator, and sir… I don’t know what to do about him.”

Everson took a breath, forcing himself to be calm and trying to remember being a young lieutenant without a clue.

“Offer the guy your compliments and ask him to wait in the holding area. I’ll send someone down to talk to him.”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” Franklin said into an empty comm as the commander had simply hung up.

Meanwhile, Everson returned to his office, offering his apologies to the three people present.

“Urgent by your standards or theirs?” the deputy director asked, prompting a sycophantic laugh from the others.

“By theirs,” Everson answered. “Someone from Helena shows up in customs, asks for Byers, and they panic without even asking the guy for his na—”

Standing, his boss slammed her coffee cup down on his desk.

“Deputy Director?” he asked as she swept from the office, moving far faster than her large frame suggested she could. She didn’t answer, leaving him standing there in stunned silence before he weighed up the merits of following her.

He did, guessing that if it was serious enough to rouse the head of the Rangers, he should at least be there to tear a strip off any of his officers, should the need arise.

He caught up with her, trying to offer his apologies and assuring her that if any of his staff had acted out of turn, he would personally see to it that they faced the full consequences of their ineptitude.

She ignored his words, walking briskly not in the direction of customs but toward her own office. Seeing them through the open doors, her startled secretary stood and smoothed down her skirt.

The deputy director rounded on him. “See to it that our visitor is treated with the utmost respect and have him brought directly here.”

That said, she breezed into her office. The doors shut behind her, leaving the confused commander behind.

* * *

She stood, trying out a smile that felt as false as it probably looked, so she dropped it to return to her default setting of cold, harsh efficiency. The visitor was shown in by a uniformed junior officer, and he turned a charming smile on the young man before slipping a coin into his hand as if tipping a servant.

Behind him in the open doorway hovered her secretary, who nervously interrupted to ask if she could bring him anything to drink.

“I’ll take a vodka if you have it,” he said airily, not waiting for any confirmation before turning back and flashing the same celebrity smile at the deputy director. As the door behind him shut, the smile dropped, leaving a look of scornful derision. He unbuttoned his jacket and sat without being invited, casually lifting one leg over the other and leaning back in an obviously pointless bid for comfort.

“I assume I have the honor of addressing the deputy director of the vaunted Zion Rangers?”

“Angela Summers,” she said. She contemplated offering a hand but that would mean walking around the desk as it was clear the man wasn’t going to stand up. She sat instead, clearing her throat before a knock came at the door.

“Come!” she snapped, grateful for the interruption but making out like the little people bothered her. The secretary leaned in, holding onto the doorframe as though she didn’t mean to intrude.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry… we don’t, ah, we don’t have any vodka…”

“I’m sure the gentleman was joking with you,” the deputy director snapped. “Bring us a pot of coffee and get the door on your way out.” She sat heavily, resting her hands first on the table, then into her lap. Should she be less defensive or more threatening? Having decided she’d made the wrong decision, she forced herself to keep her hands in her lap. Best to not seem indecisive.

“How can I help you?” she asked with cold professionalism.

“My predecessor,” the man said with a sigh of disdainful boredom, “decided that subterfuge and subtlety were the ways to get this done.” He picked an imaginary piece of something from the sleeve of his jacket, then looked directly at her.

“Subtlety and subterfuge got her killed, I understand. I,” he placed a hand humbly on his chest as if he were a mere public servant making the ultimate self-sacrifice for the good of others, “suggested a different path. Now that the old way has failed, it’s time to do it my way.”

The deputy director went cold to her spine and reached a shaking hand out to the communication console.

“Who are you calling?” the man asked simply.

“My… colleague in this venture.”

“But Senator Byers is dead, is he not? One of the rabid bitches from Cheyenne cut his head off, did they not?”

The deputy director paled again, unsure how anyone in Helena had found out the details so quickly when they hadn’t reported it to Helena by any means. As far as she knew, the only contact had been face-to-face and conducted in secret, yet here this man was speaking so openly with her about the plot she was embroiled in.

“Not,” she cleared her throat to rid herself of the squeak, “not Byers. Another powerful man in Zion. He was what you might call behind the scenes, before.”

“Then by all means,” he gestured at her comm magnanimously, “bring him forth into the light so that I may bear witness to him.”

Ten minutes of painful silence passed—painfully, for the deputy director at any rate—during which the man had sipped his coffee and grimaced, then left it untouched on the deputy director’s desk. He surveyed his perfectly manicured hands, and waited.

A knock at the door of the office. The secretary reappeared in the crack.

“Yes?”

“Mister Rivera is here to see you,” she said meekly, yelping a little as the door was pushed open and a man in black pants and a black shirt with an open collar strode in. He stopped, stared pointedly at the secretary, who scuttled away, then swung his body around to offer his hand to the stranger.

“Augustus Rivera,” he said smoothly.

The man stood, buttoning his jacket in a move just as smooth, and treated him to a winning smile as he shook the proffered hand.

“Mister Hadley,” he said, sitting down again and looking expectant as though the real meeting could begin now that the other players were present.

“Outside of the three of us, who else knows about the arrangements between you and us?”

The deputy director looked at Rivera before answering, seeing no help in his expression.

“There was a necessary plant worker in the water purification facility chosen, but he was…”

“He was murdered by the same assassins who killed your senator and my erstwhile compatriot,” Hadley finished for her.

She nodded agreement.

“So, now that certain pieces have been removed from the board, how do you propose to complete the task?”

“We, obviously we need your assistance in procuring the necessary resources and materials to enact—” Rivera started.

“Speak plainly,” Hadley interrupted him. “I don’t have the time or the patience to listen to your political speeches.” He let his head fall back and let out a groan of exasperation. “Ugh! This place!”

“Mister Hadley,” the deputy director said carefully. “If you can still provide what Diana was proposi—”

“Hah! Is that what she was calling herself?” Hadley interrupted, wiping fake tears from his eyes as his mocking laughter subsided.

“If you can still provide what your predecessor had promised us, then we can still make it happen,” she said firmly, annoyed with the man who treated her office like it was some dive in the lowers that would soil his suit.

“And trust you to have all the other necessary wheels in motion when you’ve proven so catastrophically inept at preventing three, three, Cheyenne Hunters from walking through your front door and killing people that nobody knew about? What guarantee can you give even for my safety while I am here?” Hadley asked, opening his hands in a gesture that annoyed her again, like he expected her to lay gifts at his feet.

“I’m sure that a dedicated team of trusted Rangers tasked with your personal protection will satisfy?” Rivera asked, not bothering to look at the deputy director for approval.

“More filthy, uneducated, clumsy oafs like the one you sent after the assassins?”

Rivera and the deputy director exchanged a meaningful look.

“I met your elite on the road a few days ago, called himself Quinn. He was quite unimpressive, I must say.”

“You saw Quinn?” the deputy director asked. “Where?”

“On the road between Jackson and Salt Lakes. He’d had a brush with them and was on some personal mission to earn recognition. He’ll die, obviously, either by his own stupidity or misadventure.”

“Did you, by any chance,” Rivera asked quietly, trying and failing to sound casual, “happen to encounter any other Zion Rangers?”

“There was another, only I was resting and did not see them. Why do you ask?” he watched with piqued interest as the two locals exchanged another look.

“Quinn’s friends, the rest of the team investigating the murders, left to go after him,” she said finally.

“Ah, I see. Am I to assume that they did so without your permission?” Hadley asked, genuine amusement on his face.

The deputy director nodded.

“And you expect me to accept that your people, none of whom I know or trust, will keep me safe while I am here under your roof? No. I will call on my own people already here. But by all means, deploy your guard dogs for the sake of appearances.”

“Your own people?” Rivera asked, knowing nothing of this and assuming Byers didn’t either.

“You think Diana came here all by herself?” Hadley asked with comedic shock. “No. The Helena Royal Guard sent a team, all of whom I will be speaking to about her death and the fact that none of them laid down their own lives in her place. She may have taken the incorrect approach, in my opinion, but she was still a senior member of the guard and deserved better.”

His flash of anger opened a small window of insight into the rage that boiled away just under the annoyingly smug and calm exterior. Enough to give Rivera an opportunity to pry behind the armor.

“Might I enquire as to your official reason for being here?”

Hadley smiled and leaned back, all traces of his sudden anger gone.

“I’m a wealthy man. I’m here to trade.”

“With no goods? Just you? That raises alarm bells to me,” the deputy director scoffed.

Hadley let out a sigh of pure condescension, then lowered himself to address the ignorant, small-minded comment.

“Men of wealth do not haul goods personally,” he told her. “They arrange the deals and handle matters of finance, then get their trained dogs to bring the goods. Is that not how things work here? The wealthy and the intelligent make the plans and their servants carry them out?”

The deputy director gave him a cold look, unable to miss the obvious insult, providing Rivera opportunity to change the subject.

“I trust you’ll allow me to arrange more suitable accommodation than your predecessor insisted upon?” he asked.

“I assure you, Mister Rivera, that I will not be staying in some lightless hovel.”

“I have just the place in mind,” Rivera answered. He stood and gave a small bow of respect before leaving the room.

Outside, he placed a call to his personal servant who managed his household, then another to the most expensive casino on level two, whose most expensive suites afforded the inhabitant unfettered access to the pleasure gardens under the clean dome. Returning to the office, he sat again, assured partners that arrangements had been made, and turned the conversation to more sinister matters.

“The way I see it,” he said as he smiled and leaned back in his chair, “the scum from Cheyenne actually did us a favor.”

“Is that how you see it?” Hadley asked with a cold amusement. “Please, do explain your logic to me.”

“Simply put, they gave us a public enemy. Word of what happened to the senator has already spread, and with a little fuel added to those particular fires, we can spread discord and enmity towards Cheyenne. Was not the original intention to blame them for the… incident in the first place?”

Hadley pretended to think about it, having come to that simple conclusion days prior. “It has a certain poetic appeal,” he allowed. “But blaming thousands of deaths on the mysterious villains from Cheyenne will take more than just a rumor.”

Another knock came at the door, this time allowing three of Rivera’s servants to file in, their heads lowered out of respect for the rich and powerful.

“This is Mister Hadley,” Rivera told them. “He is a very important man visiting us from Helena. You are to take him to my preferred suite in the Setting Sun where the manager will see to his needs. One of you is to remain with him and serve him, and I imagine he has baggage that will require saving from the hands of some overzealous Ranger in customs. That will be all.” He dismissed them with a wave.

“And my bodyguards?” Hadley asked.

“I’ll have them at your rooms momentarily,” the deputy director assured him.

Hadley left, sweeping from the room with a grace that was as theatrical as it was aloof, leaving the two conspirators alone.

“You’d better kick your part of the plan up a gear, Rivera,” she told him quietly.

“My dear deputy director, my appointment as senator in replacement of Byers is a foregone conclusion. However, the timeline for it cannot be rushed. All in good time.”

He left the room with a smirk as if the world had finally become a little more interesting. She picked up the comm device and dialed an extension by memory.

“This is the Deputy Director,” she said. “I have a special detail formation requiring a Sergeant…” She shuffled papers around as if looking for the name. “Sergeant Forge. I understand he was assigned to Operation Hunter before it was closed down. Yes, I need him in my office. Thank you.”

Dropping the comm, she prepared herself to open up their conspiracy by the smallest of layers to one man. A man she had been assured would be loyal to the most powerful player in their game.

62

Switchback

Quinn

Trusting other people is not a thing that comes naturally to me. As much as I hate relying on anyone but myself, I had literally no choice unless I wanted to get caught by the two guys tailing me everywhere. I didn’t know them, but Reuben recognized them and was smart enough to be scared, which probably meant I should be scared of them too.

The only explanation I got was that they were hired muscle on the payroll of one of the local tough guys. Back home when people like that had the dumb idea to show their faces, we took them down on whatever charges we could bring. If they were smarter than the average crook, that meant throwing resources at them until we had surveillance on every outlet they had their grubby finger into.

Word of advice: when you go after someone, go after their money first. Guaranteed way to get their attention.

Back home when the guys—or girls, you know, being a kingpin wasn’t exclusively a boys’ club—got too big, we tended to lock up a few of their dealers and close down their rock salt income for a few days. If they didn’t get the message and duck their heads back down, then we stepped it up and found problems with their legitimate business interests. Phony health violations with their food vendor carts, shutting down their bars for mandatory maintenance that didn’t exist, that kind of thing.

I digress.

These assholes were hired muscle, and that meant someone with the money to hire said muscle had an interest in me. I didn’t know what that was and frankly I didn’t want to, so we collectively decided that the best thing I could do was get the fuck out of town.

How to do it was the big problem. I had a lot of town to cross to get to my bike. Carrying three packs and a rifle over my back made it easy enough for a baby to follow me.

With one pack on my back, where I’d moved all of my coin—because, did I mention I don’t like trusting anyone?—I slipped out the back door and followed one of Tatiana’s girls. She was carrying another pack with just clothes and my bedroll strapped to it. The one I was carrying probably weighed more than she did.

The thought that I was being set up crossed my mind every three or four steps, but I had to suck it up and ride it out. I had literally zero control over this part of the plan.

I was being helped by strangers, which weirded me out, and my mind tried to reason why one set of strangers would help while another wanted me for other reasons. Reasons which Rivera would probably describe as “nefarious” or even “iniquitous.” I suppressed a shudder at the thought of Rivera using those words and embarrassing himself.

A few minutes before I slipped out the back way, Reuben, who had been shamed into bravery by his large and lovely lady, went out the front with a hood pulled up over his head and carrying another of my packs, which contained spare gear and some ammo I couldn’t carry on me for the weight of it. Walking with him was one of Tatiana’s taller employees wearing a similar getup and her head bowed low.

The ruse was a poor one, but at the least it would serve to distract or split the men looking for me long enough that I could get away.

Reaching a section in the wall, the girl slipped a key out of her pocket and turned it in a lock hanging down from a welded steel bar. She dragged the little gate open enough for us to get through but needed my help to drag it back into place. From the outside, it appeared to be no more a door than the rest of the wall surrounding it.

“We wait here?” I asked, not knowing how far outside the town walls the rendezvous was set for. She nodded, pointing at a small depression near a few scattered rocks about the size of a full-grown man crouching down. I got the message and hunkered down there with her as I unslung my rifle and rested the barrel on the rocks, aiming at the gates a few hundred yards away.

It didn’t take long. My bike appeared from that direction and headed down the road to about where I’d encountered Reuben the first time, and stopped. Sure enough, seconds later, a dark buggy roared out of town, tearing after the bike, and caught up quickly.

I watched, imagining the conversation going along the lines of, “Hey, where’s the other guy?” and Reuben saying, “We traded vehicles. This here’s my bike now. You want it, you’re gonna have to pay me for it.”

I imagined some other threats and cursing coming from the two confused thugs before one of them grabbed Reuben by the front of his coat and pulled a pistol to press it under his chin. I fidgeted, settling my sights on the asshole before switching to the other one because I couldn’t be sure not to hit Reuben. If they took him, I’d be bound by my damned conscience to get him back. More words were exchanged but I didn’t bother giving the mental voiceover. This was the part where they were either going to believe the lie or not.

They did.

Panicking about losing their mark, evidently being more scared of their employer than anything else, they jumped back in the buggy and took off, tearing up a cloud of dust from the road as tires chirped and spun. The high-pitched whine of their motors faded.

I relaxed. The lie about the vehicle trade had been good enough, at least for now, but the next part relied on me actually being out of town by the time they caught up with Reuben’s ride and found they’d been had.

I worried what would happen to the people who helped me afterward, but Tatiana said she had it covered. By now, she would have left to talk to the goons’ boss to find out a way to smooth it over. If I didn’t already suspect that she ran more than a Jackson cathouse, then her easy assurance that she could handle some local crime boss spelled it out for me.

I hurried over, finding Reuben smiling with his face, but the look in his eyes rather suggested he’d shit in his shorts.

“Go quickly now,” he warned. “Stick to the left side of town until you pick up the road and head north. You should make it to the valley in under an hour. That’s more than enough time to get there and get off the road before they catch up with my buggy and figure out they’re in deep shit with their boss.”

That you’re in deep shit with their boss, I thought, not saying it out loud because it was something he clearly knew already.

“Thank you,” I said, one hand resting on his shoulder.

He smiled like he was grateful for the excitement. “Go on, get outta here. And remember what I told you.”

* * *

What he told me was that I needed to ride pretty damned hard in case the thugs gave up and turned back. If I were them, turning up in empty-handed wouldn’t be an option. If you were going to report a failure to your supervisor, it was better to show up late and looking like you’d put yourself through hell so they at least knew you’d tried your hardest.

Failure is sometimes unavoidable, but failure through a lack of effort just straight up pisses people off.

It took me near on twenty minutes to skirt through the town, but heading back through it would only alert other eyes to my more precise location and invite another pursuit from behind, which might trap me between two forces.

I concentrated as I rode over the uneven ground, but I couldn’t help wondering who the hell wanted me in a town where nobody knew me. Nobody from there went to Zion and nobody from Zion sure as hell ever went there, so why they were so interested in me? It was a mystery. Not an interesting one, either.

When I picked up the northern road, I was able to squeeze out over double the speed I’d managed until then. The trick here was avoiding the ruts worn into the ground where the heavier wagons came in from Helena. From the map I’d studied, even if it was about as detailed as a stick drawing, I knew the shorter road led north to Helena and the much longer, looping road east had to go around a mountain range to get to Cheyenne.

This was why I planned to take the shortcut, even if it was described as the dumbest thing I could do on my own, and I was assured I’d die if I tried it.

Well, screw that.

The valley to my right was easy enough to spot, given that two big-ass mountains were literally split down the middle to leave a gap maybe fifty paces wide. I stopped to look at the entrance, which only made my brain put on a deep voice and warble that I should BEWARE.

It was the perfect ambush spot. High sides, only two ways to go—backwards or forward—leaving me feeling trapped before I’d even set foot inside. I could see maybe a mile and a half dead ahead before the split in the tall rocks turned to shut off my view of anything beyond that.

It was like chasing an armed suspect in the lowers on your own, knowing that the corridors down there were narrow and dark. Unlike most Rangers, I at least knew what it was like to live in those shadows, not knowing if the next corner would come with a knife in the neck. This was a whole new world of nope.

Every turn would be blind. Retreating would leave me exposed to gunfire. Getting caught in that natural crack in the earth would be more dangerous than almost everything I’d already done since leaving Zion, and I hadn’t even begun to imagine the weird mutated shit waiting for me.

I looked left, north to where the road dropped away and showed me miles of open wasteland. Dust was being kicked up on the farthest horizon, too far away to see without the scope on my stolen rifle—which still stung me, not going to lie—and the realization that it wasn’t just a swirling dust bunny made my decision for me. No way was I going to waste the advantage I’d been given by acting like a goddamned pussy.

I twisted the throttle to launch me forward into the dark ravine. It took my eyes a few seconds to adapt. I needed to cover the exposed section and be out of sight around the first bend before the thugs caught up with Reuben’s buggy, figured out they’d been duped, and came back down the road after me.

Every rock I leaned the bike to avoid made me worry it would get up and run after my tires. I worried about falling off. I worried about noises I was imagining. My brain conjured horrifying images of the creatures that no doubt lived there.

Hell, I was just plain old shitting my pants about it, but that didn’t stop me from twisting the throttle harder and leaning into the bike for more speed.

By the time I made it to the bed, watching as what appeared to be a solid wall of rock opened up to show me a break like an alley in a town. I was almost mesmerized by it until my front tire nudged a rock and threatened to wobble me off the bike. I straightened up, rode around the corner, and risked a glance over my shoulder. I could no longer see the entrance to the canyon.

I turned the bike off and set it on the stand to lift my rifle up—ready, in case they had followed me.

Clickclickclickclick—

It took me a second to realize what the sound was. Naturally, my first thought was that it was a rattlesnake, just as my second and third thoughts were also “a fucking rattlesnake.” Then my brain kicked into gear and told me what it really was.

I looked back to the bike where the Geiger box was still strapped to the bars, its needle bouncing up somewhere in the region of “oh hell no.”

Forgetting the rifle, I tore open one of my packs to pull out the hazard suit and begin laying it out. I ended up sitting on my ass trying to force my boots into the elasticated legs. Realizing I was moving so fast I was probably going to rip something, I stopped, forced myself to calm the fuck down, and tried again.

Finally, standing up to lift my arms into the suit and get it up over my shoulders, I remembered to take my guns off so I could still use them. They’d need decontaminating afterwards, just like my bike would, but something told me I’d be needing them.

With mask and hood on, my breath misted up the inside straightaway. That was more annoying than anything else, and I could barely sight down my rifle to make sure the goons weren’t following me.

They weren’t. One good thing, at least.

I got back on my bike and rode, switching my eyes between the rocky path and the Geiger box for the weak spots Reuben told me were all over the valley. Spots where I could take off the mask and breathe for a while. Spots where I could set up camp for the night and light a fire big enough to keep stuff away from me but at the same time not big enough to attract things.

The poisoned valley, that was what the creepy Cat had called this place, and from what I saw laid out ahead of me, there was no way anything could live in this scorched, irradiated shithole.

63

Respite

Quinn

Just as the urge to freak out and rip off the hazard suit rose dangerously close to the surface, the needle on the Geiger box flatlined so fast I thought it must have just quit on me.

I slowed to a stop, leaning forward and tapping it as if a little blunt force could make it wake up, but it stayed in the green. I wasn’t willing to risk trusting it, so I turned around and rode back fifty yards until the needle jumped up again and the rattling clicks started up to tell me I was back in a hot zone.

Turning around again, I watched the needle drop at the same spot on the track, which made me trust it a lot more. My Eureka moment came when I stopped trying to think too hard and just looked.

A flattened patch of dust with all the bigger chunks of rock brushed away to the edges. A darker patch in the center of that little clearing where stuff had been burned. Tire marks.

This was a place where someone had made camp for the night, unless I was way off base, which was possible. I’d just spent a day sweating my ass off inside a plastic bag so my nuts wouldn’t shrivel up to raisins. You could say it had made me a little kooky. But now I felt safe enough to rest up and get some air.

Ripping off the respirator face mask and peeling back the hood left me spinning around on the spot as I tried to get my arms out of the sleeves. My skin was sticky and wet with sweat, which just made it harder to get the itchy hazard suit off.

When I finally peeled my upper body out of it, I stood there sucking in the dusty air and feeling my damp skin tighten as a stiff breeze blew over the dead valley. I guzzled down half a bottle of water. The one I’d connected to the drinking tube inside the suit had long since run dry.

My hands started to shake and my breathing quickened, until it became a problem. My head felt light. Panic welled. I collapsed into the dirt and panted, feeling so anxious that I wanted to get back up again and pace, but suddenly too weak and dizzy to manage it.

“Keep it together,” I snarled at myself, rubbing the heels of both hands into my skull to try to force out what I worried was a panic attack.

A fucking. Panic. Attack. For God’s sake!

It took me a long time to slow my breathing down. I didn’t know exactly how long, but it felt like a long time. I focused on the little things, like the feel of the ground. The way the little sharp rocks hurt my ass. How the air felt like it was made of burnt plastic.

I realized the last sensation was the combination of me sweating profusely and the hazard suit’s lining, and with that thought came the return of calm.

I was back in my immediate environment, in my head I mean, and the panic had passed. It left an almost visceral impression on my soul, but it wasn’t happening right then, so I guessed I was happy enough.

I was so damned tired from the stress of the chase and everything I’d been through that I lay back, not caring about the discomfort of lying on the graveled hardpan ground, and didn’t have the energy to worry about the possibility of piercing the suit.

The fact that I didn’t care worried me even more. It meant I was being reckless. Stupid.

“Fuck it,” I yelled, wondering why I had such a minimal vocabulary when I was on my own. I looked up and tried to make some sense of where the sun was, to figure out the time of day, but gave up after half a minute. Maybe longer.

“Fuck it,” I said again with less enthusiasm, and gave in to the physical and mental need to rest.

I took a pack off my bike and dumped it on the ground, pulled out the solar charging kit, and aimed it toward the sun in a half-assed way.

I threw down my bedroll beside the blackened smear and looked around for anything to burn. In the distance were some skeletal-looking bushes. Walking there would mean walking back, and I wasted maybe another minute trying to figure out how important a fire really was.

Memories of snakes and packs of leathery dogs flashed pictures in my mind, as if my brain were raising its hand and saying, “Hello, excuse me, but ARE YOU A FUCKING IDIOT?”

“Oh yeah,” I said out loud, surprising myself that I could do more than merely curse. I set off toward the promise of fuel, but that same part of my brain that still had skin in the game reminded me to take the Geiger box in case I was about to walk through a radiation hot spot.

I wasn’t, which made me feel both justified in bringing the thing and annoyed with myself for carrying the unnecessary weight with me. I got there, knelt with a groan belonging to an old man, and sawed at the dry branches with my knife to break them away in manageable pieces to carry back.

That took longer than I expected, much as the walk back up the slope to my bike did, and by the time I got back, I could barely stand up any longer. That was when it dawned on me that I hadn’t eaten a damn thing in hours. I dug around in a pack with numb fingers for anything to eat and forced down some rad meds, almost gagging as my throat was as dry as the valley I’d stupidly decided it would be a good idea to ride through.

Sitting with my back leaning up against the bike and my body mainly out of the sun, I let the food and water work on my insides until I started to feel a little human again.

Figuring I stood a better chance of succeeding and, you know, not dying horribly alone in the middle of nowhere, I was happy with my decision to camp early and not try to squeeze any more distance out of the day. The chance of finding somewhere safe to stop when the sun went down was about as high as me finding a casino willing to let me stay and play for free around the next bend, anyway.

Starting the fire and setting aside half of the magic lump of resin shit that kept everything away from me a couple nights ago, I got as comfy as I could on the bed roll, lay down in the shelter of my bike, and watched the tiny flames crackle angrily as they ate up the bits of dry bush until my eyes grew heavy in the darkness.

64

What Am I Doing?

Quinn

I woke before the sun was up, giving me time to sit there and rub the sand and sleep out of my eyes while my brain rebooted.

I guessed I’d reach Cheyenne by nightfall, unless I did something else dumb like falling off my bike or waking up a hibernating bear. Hell, I didn’t even know if bears still existed and if they did, whether the mutated fuckers even hibernated anymore.

The sun broke the horizon but brought with it no heat, not yet anyway. I knew it would come soon, and decided to get geared up and moving before being cooked alive in a sweat marinade.

I started the bike and checked the battery level, kicked back the stand and rolled out with one eye on the Geiger box. Sure enough, inside of a quarter mile, I got those familiar tingling sensations that accompanied the needle dancing high into the danger zone.

I thought as I rode, keeping my pace steady, and considered what my play would be when I got to Cheyenne.

Going to the authorities was my first thought. Perhaps there’d be some kind of affinity between us, like I’d found in Salt Lakes. But then, how close were the bounty hunters and the local officials? If it were anything like Zion, then the criminal elements intertwined with the official ones the higher up the food chain they both got. That left me considering other options.

I could lie low, using the money I had left, and try the underworld approach to finding them.

Or I could straight up declare myself the law and come in shooting.

Each option wound its logical way back to me getting dead, so I went back to plan A.

Go to the authorities and stake my official claim. Ask for their help.

If I ended up being turned away, then at least reporting that I’d gotten all the way to Cheyenne before failing due to a lack of resources and backup would go a long way to it not being a failure. Nobody could say I didn’t try.

My mental ramblings caused me to be a few seconds slower than usual when the shimmering horizon ahead of me started to grow dark shadows. I couldn’t tell at first if it was a low mountain range or buildings, and I didn’t get to find out then, because at that precise second, my bike decided to shit the bed.

A mechanical, metallic clunk made me jump as I felt it travel up my spine via my balls before a screaming noise came from the rear motor and the bike began to slow.

“Ah, come on!” I bawled inside my suit as the bike shuddered to a stop. I got off, missing the stand and letting the bike drop to its side where it lay, like it was an animal I’d just ridden to death. I paced a circle around it, not having a fucking clue what to do and resorting to kicking it in frustration.

That turned out to be a bad idea. Not only did it hurt like a motherfucker, but I managed to get the leg of my pants caught and tore them as I pulled back.

“Shit,” I cursed. “Shit, fuckin’, ass, fucki—”

I fell down, landing so hard, it knocked the words out of my mouth before my brain did that thing again where it tapped me on the shoulder to scream good advice at me. It told me that if I didn’t want to end up with a face looking like an old man’s ball sack, I’d better grab the emergency kit. Like, right away, if you don’t mind too much.

I tore open my pack, finding the emergency kit in the second bag, and fumbling for the roll of heavy tape. Finding the end, I wound it around the tear near my ankle to seal the suit up again.

I used most of the roll, all the while breathing so hard that my face shield looked like a shower screen. Had to force myself to stop, telling myself I might still need that tape for another time.

Breathing heavily, I put the gear away and stood to try out my repair. I hoped it was enough. If it wasn’t, then I hoped I’d die of radiation poisoning fast and not live like a lumpy cripple forever.

That thought brought up an image of my mom. Her cheeks sunken. The whites of her eyes yellow as her internal organs all gave up on her near the end. I had to fight with everything I had left not to cry.

“Get a fucking hold of yourself,” I snarled, hitting myself in the side of my head to try to shake my brain back to sense.

I looked along the road, such as it was, where I could make out the shimmer of distant shapes. I convinced myself they were buildings, that Cheyenne was just a little ways ahead. That I could make it.

None of those possibilities were certainties, but my alternative—going back—was medium-rare death with a side of agony and despair.

I rearranged my packs, forcing everything into two of them and leaving behind anything I could live without, and managed to sling them both on my back to keep my hands free for my rifle. Another throat clearing noise came from my subconscious to remind me that I needed the Geiger box, so I taped that to my left arm where I could see it with just a turn of my head.

Setting my sights ahead and not looking back at the bike—just in case I lost my shit again—I started walking.

* * *

The needle stayed high for hours. The distance could’ve been covered much faster on the bike, thereby limiting my exposure, but I told myself there was nothing I could do about that and that I shouldn’t be a baby about it and just get the fuck on with it.

My pace lasted as long as I could manage before my feet got heavy and the weight of both packs on my back made me bend forward just to keep going.

Half the time I couldn’t even see where I was going. Each time I looked up to check if I was magically there yet, the damned place seemed farther away.

I was convinced it was Cheyenne. It had to be buildings.

My throat burned. Was that my body overheating or some joyous side effect of radiation poisoning? My mind must have been playing tricks on me too, because on top of the fact that my best hope for safety seemed to be getting farther away, I started to imagine that it was getting darker.

I had no idea how long I walked for, but when I turned back once to see how far I was from my bike, all I could see in that direction was the same goddamned heat haze, and as if the tricks my mind was playing on me weren’t already super-fun shit, my Geiger box decided to up and quit on me, too.

Or did it?

As much as it psychologically broke my heart, I forced myself to turn around and head back to see if the readings went back up, which they did after about fifty slow, trudging paces in the wrong direction. I turned around again and walked, forgetting about the horizon and watching the meter for any sign that the needle was going down.

It did.

All thoughts of extreme radiation poisoning forgotten, I tore off my mask and pulled back the hood to gulp in warm, dusty air. My fingers scrambled like a drunk man’s to get the cap off a water bottle. I chugged half of it straight down to find that the burning in my throat was, thank God, dehydration and nothing more sinister.

Or nefarious? my brain asked, trying to make a joke from what felt like a million years ago at Rivera’s expense.

I didn’t answer. Instead, I caught my breath as the water ran off my chin, and I drank the rest just as greedily as I had before.

My muscles started to cramp up now that I’d stopped moving, which told me I had to do the difficult thing and keep on going. Without the mask on, I could make out straight lines ahead in the haze, telling me that I wasn’t imagining it all along, that this had to be Cheyenne.

“Just another hour,” I told myself in a voice that sounded like I smoked salts off a sheet of aluminum, adding my customary “fuck it,” for good measure.

Feeling slightly restored by getting out of the hazard suit and drinking a whole bottle of water, I tried to pick up the pace. Then my brain gave me another nudge, telling me not to be a dumbass. I opted for a steady pace I could maintain without bringing my temperature or heart rate up any higher, and that brought me to a distance where I could clearly make out a huge sprawl of low buildings.

I kept an eye on the Geiger box for the same reason I didn’t take off my suit and only kept it unzipped to the waist with the hood back and the mask off. That kept me sweating, but at least I could replenish those lost fluids with the last two bottles of water I carried.

Dark was falling when I got within reach of the buildings. There was no wall, a fact I found either reassuring or worrying, depending on what the reason behind it was.

Staggering into the cover of the buildings, I fought the urge to just drop to my knees and sleep right there. Instead, I followed what remained of my instincts and headed toward the place where there were people, all of them giving me shocked looks and avoiding me.

“Please,” I said, “can you tell me where I can clean off? I’ve been…”

I waved a weak hand at the irradiated wastes beyond the town, now shrouded in darkness. People avoided me more then, grabbing each other to keep them back from me, all except one woman who came through the crowd like a slow-moving bullet.

She was tall and strong, with bare arms under a grubby vest showing the flowing lines of muscles under the swirling patterns of tattoos. Realization hit me hard then, just before she cocked back the right side of her body and hit me much, much harder.

65

The Bitches of Eastwick

Quinn

I woke up. Or at least my eyes tried to open before my brain started screaming at them like they were about to cut the red wire instead of the blue one on a bomb.

I risked a peek through one eye, shutting it tightly immediately afterward so I could check over the snapshot I managed to take and assess it for relevant facts.

I was lying down, that much I could tell from the feedback of my body, which in turn reminded me I still had the ability to sense gravity. That was reassuring. I saw the ceiling, higher up than any in Zion would’ve been below level four and too well-lit to be back in Jackson.

I risked another peek with my right eye, this time failing to understand how it wouldn’t open as wide before I got that nagging reminder through the medium of pain that it was probably swollen half shut. That pain grew into a wave of sickness that traveled down to my stomach and back up, luckily bringing with it only some hot gas that smelled like sulfur and bile.

“He’s awake,” a voice said.

My immediate response was to clamp my eye shut again and lie still like I was still unconscious, much in the same way a little kid would hide behind a set of drapes with their feet sticking out underneath.

“About time,” another voice answered. “We ought to charge him board if he sleeps any longer.”

“No, we should just kill him. He was warned.”

“He’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give him that,” the first voice said in gravelly amusement.

“It’s only a little radiation poisoning; nothing that’ll kill him. Or did you mean the eye? Admiring your handiwork?”

“I don’t think he’s any stranger to getting hit in the head, do you? And what the hell are these scars all about?”

I flinched then. It was involuntary but enough that I felt the air around where I lay vacate suddenly as if they feared I would strike like a snake. I gave up pretending to be out and opened my eyes slowly, letting the world come into focus again to show three women all of different ages, yet so similar in appearance that they could be three generations of the same bloodline.

Blinking shifted the last of the fog, even if the pain and nausea that accompanied it remained. I focused on the three women looking down at me wearing a mix of facial expressions.

Anger. Curiosity. Admiration.

I recognized two of them. A back corner of my brain had already connected their voices to images I had seared into my memory.

The younger one smirked at me in a way that was a little too predatory to be friendly, and the older one who’d held a blade to my neck—don’t think I’d forgotten about that—gave me a cold look that seemed to promise pain and retribution.

The other one, one I hadn’t seen before, had darker hair and zero family resemblance to the others, but she could’ve been related somehow. She had dark hair, almost red, barring a few streaks of white around the roots, and pale skin that looked like she’d spent too long in the sun.

She wasn’t old old, but I got the impression she’d had a hard life. As I was looking at her and she was looking right back at me, the whisper of sharpened steel on leather pierced my concentration. My eyes flickered left to look along the length of that same triangular-shaped blade and into the hard eyes behind hit.

“We warned you,” she said menacingly, “that we’d kill you if you followed us.”

I said nothing. She hadn’t killed me, even when she’d had the chance without it being an execution of an injured man tied to a bed, and that told me something.

I didn’t know what it told me just yet because my head felt like it’d been marinated in shit and stomped on.

“And yet here he is,” said the red-haired woman as she reached out a hand to gently lower the blade from my face. “Which means he didn’t believe you or he felt that his task was more important than the threat.”

“Or he’s retarded,” the younger one said without a trace of hostility in her voice, like she was just offering a logical explanation.

I smiled—crookedly I think because the left side of my face felt numb—and tried to wink at her.

“I’m gonna go with the third answer,” I slurred. “Where the fuck am I?”

“Eastwick. Western outskirts of Cheyenne,” the oldest one said.

“Being a smartass doesn’t make him dumb,” the one with the knife argued. “Besides, he’s killed two of us. Two.”

Red-haired woman seemed to consider me on a deeper level then, as if trying to figure out how someone so dumb as I evidently was had managed that.

“How?”

“What?” the angry one asked.

“How do we know he killed two of our sisters?”

“He admitted capturing one,” the younger one said, still with a somewhat amused smile. The hope that she at least liked me enough not to kill me evaporated with her next words.

“And we know that’s bullshit. Stands to reason he killed them.”

“Listen,” I tried, my voice croaking and making me sound weak. I went with that. Not looking like a threat right now could only be a good thing. “I’m just trying to do my job. Trust me, going home empty-handed is worse than whatever you’re going to do to me.”

“You want to bet, fucker?” angry snarled as she brought the knife up to my face again.

“Leave him!”

I looked between them. The two older women scowled at one another until the knife dropped away and was sheathed while the younger one just watched the whole thing with amusement. She hadn’t been involved in the shit that went down back in Zion, but as far as I was concerned, she was still guilty. They all were.

“You,” I said, looking at the one who wanted to kill me. “You’re a murderer and you should stand trial for what you did.”

They looked at me in shock. I doubled down and tried to at least get myself killed quickly instead of suffering some long incarceration or worse.

“You’re under arrest. You’re coming back to Zion with m—”

I froze as the knife reappeared fast and pressed into my neck.

“Stop,” red-haired woman snapped angrily. “He could be useful.”

“Useful? How?” the younger one asked. Red hair ignored her and leaned in closer to me, not making a move to stop me getting my throat cut.

“Tell us everything you know,” she said.

I fought the urge to start with my first memories or a list of dumb facts that were irrelevant. The fact that I’d have to fictionalize any kind of happy childhood memory made the task harder, so I didn’t bother being a smartass.

“I’m a Zion Ranger,” I said defiantly. “This bitch murdered six people—seven, if that guy back in Salt Lakes doesn’t make it—and I was sent to bring her to justice.”

My venom and righteousness held them for a second before all three of them started to laugh. The laughter grew louder and more out of control.

“Kid,” the red-haired woman said with the same sadness the angry one had used when they captured me. “You have no idea what’s going on, do you?”

They had me there. I guessed I didn’t know.

“Who sent you?” Red hair asked seriously. “Exactly.”

“My commander,” I said uncertainly. “We… why did you kill the senator?” I asked, trying to understand at least some of what was going on.

“The senator?” the younger one laughed. “He really doesn’t have a clue, does he?”

Angry woman took the blade away but didn’t sheath it. She looked to the one in charge and received a nod of permission. With a sigh that sounded like it was laced with pity, she started talking.

“The bounty wasn’t on your senator; it was on the infiltrator from Helena. You need to understand that you’re not getting out of this anyway, so none of this makes a difference. Don’t be thinki—”

“Sister,” red hair admonished her. Angry woman closed her eyes and took a breath before starting to speak again.

“Your own people are planning on mass murder, Zion Ranger. Of your own people.”

“Wait, what the fuck? No, this is bullshit, you’re ju—”

“It’s true,” the younger one said. “We were contracted to put an end to it.”

“Put an end to what? What the shit?”

“Helena and some of your own people are planning this together,” angry woman told me.

“I don’t understand,” I said, my head swimming in confusion on top of the pain. “Why would my own people do anything like that? And what’s Helena got to do with it?”

“You sure you didn’t hit him too hard?” younger woman asked her angry comrade.

“Because,” red hair said, fixing me with a hard look, “they plan to blame us for the attack and start another war.”

“Which won’t happen now,” angry said.

“So how did you know about it? Who hired you?”

They all exchanged looks before the red-haired one answered for them.

“Not all the people in Helena are bad. We were hired by a man from Helena who found out about the plan and wanted to stop it.”

A thought hit me then. A memory combined somehow with a feeling that had been nagging at the back of my mind for days.

“The attack won’t happen now, unless someone else from Helena goes to Zion and there’s nobody there to stop it.”

66

A Different Kind of Lowers

Valentina

After a second night spent in the Wastes, I took a turn behind the wheel. I felt recovered enough the previous afternoon, but Rivera seemed close to exhaustion and the only thing keeping him awake was the concentration of driving.

The walls of Jackson came into sight along with people milling about outside of those walls, all of them staring hostilely in our direction as we approached the gates and slowed.

Rolling into the town at walking pace, I tried not to gawp at the difference in standards between this new place and Salt Lakes where, if rudimentary, the town seemed so much cleaner in every sense.

Gangs of children ran through the muddy streets, clothed in rags and doing who knew what without any kind of supervision in sight. Parking the buggy nose in against a raised foundation, I killed the engine and climbed out awkwardly to stretch my muscles. Rivera did the same, earning a click from somewhere in his lower back and grunting with satisfaction.

“Where do we start?” I asked him, aware of the undisguised stares from too many people.

“This seems to be more your arena than mine,” Rivera answered, seeing my expression and quickly adding an explanation. “Remember why I brought you and Quinn into the investigation? I’m not exactly well-acquainted with the lower levels, and this looks a lot like the lower levels to me.”

“Only with more mud and daylight,” I added, relaxing. He hadn’t meant to be offensive. It was just his way. Half the time I was amazed he could say so many fancy words with his foot in his mouth. Any further discussion was stopped dead by the arrival of a burly man in a leather vest over a shirt that had once, long ago, been white.

“What have you got for me?” he asked in a rumbling voice that, if it had been in a movie, would’ve been subtitled as, “menacing growl.”

“Nothing,” Rivera told him, standing up to his full height and casually resting his right hand on the grip of his sidearm. The burly man smiled, showing more gaps than teeth, and held his arms out to his sides as if Rivera had opened negotiations in a way that amused him.

“Everything’s for sale,” he said as he licked his lips and sought past Rivera’s shoulder to look me up and down. The implication was evident, but neither of us jumped to take the bait.

“Well, I can assure you that nothing on this buggy is,” Rivera countered affably. Behind him, not so directly concerned with the man’s proximity, I watched as another man, much smaller than his spokesperson, melted out of the crowd to sidle his way to the side of the buggy and our equipment.

I stepped back, lifting a boot to rest it on the front fender so that I could keep both men in my sight and pretended to lace it up.

“Like I said,” burly guy went on in an even more menacing tone as if his manners and patience had already run dry, “everything is for sale.”

“And like I told you,” Rivera answered, still being polite but forceful, “nothing we have is.” The two men stared hard at each other for a few seconds before Burly smiled again and relaxed, stepping away like he was backing down. I saw it because I was looking for it, but Rivera saw it too. The man to the left of the buggy made a rush forward and a grab for something in the back of our ride, giving me the time to step to that side and whip the gun off my hip to take a stance and aim it at him.

“Don’t fucking move,” I said, the words ripping the air and silencing everyone within earshot. The man froze, only moving his eyes to his boss, who turned back to Rivera to see the gun held at his waist and aimed casually at the man’s ample gut.

His eyes went down to the gun, then back up to Rivera.

“As I said,” he repeated, “nothing we have is for sale. Good day to you.”

Burly frowned in confusion, as if he’d pulled this trick a hundred times with people he didn’t know, and it had never failed to work. That confusion turned into an evil, gap-toothed smile of victory, when the sound of a gun’s action clicked in the silence and I saw the barrel of a gun press into the back of Rivera’s head.

“And like I said,” Burly told him, unable to keep the gloating out of his tone, “everything is.”

“Not today, Hog,” a voice announced from behind them. I risked a glance, not wanting to give the guy I had covered enough time to draw a weapon or run but needing to see the threat behind Rivera.

I snapped my head to my right and back again. The wannabe thief was still glued to the spot, but the mental image I snapped made me so confused that I wasn’t sure what I’d seen.

I looked again, seeing the same thing and allowing my brain to work it out. Behind Rivera was another one of Burly’s crew, it had to be because they had the same look, and he was holding a revolver to the back of Rivera’s head. I expected something like that, but what I didn’t expect was another guy, dark-skinned and wearing a long leather coat, holding a shotgun hard up against the kidneys of the guy threatening my boss.

“Stay out of it, Reuben,” Burly snarled. “This ain’t your business.”

“I’m makin’ it my business,” Reuben answered. Burly, or Hog, which I didn’t think was much better, seemed to hesitate before holding up both hands and taking a step backwards.

“Solof’s crew’ll hear about this,” Hog warned before he snapped his fingers for the two cronies to retreat to his side. He lingered for another second, giving each of us murderous looks, before turning and stomping off to be swallowed by the tide of people flowing through the street.

I relaxed, standing up straight and holstering my gun, to see that Rivera had done the same and was offering his hand to the man called Reuben. He holstered his own piece, an archaic sawn-off with a pistol grip and shook the offered hand.

“Reuben,” he said with a smile. “You must be Rivera.” He turned to face me, smile growing wider, which I felt was a little creepy, and spoke to me.

“And you have to be Valentina. Mmm-mm-mm. Your boy wasn’t messing around when he described you.”

I was about to tell him he was an asshole when it dawned on me that Quinn must have said something nice about me, even if that made him a misogynistic dick. I was so taken aback by it that I forgot to tell him he was an asshole and the moment passed.

“You’ve seen Quinn?” Rivera asked before I had a chance to put the guy in his place.

“Sure have! He was here two days ago. Helped him out a lot, even if I say so myself.”

“Where is he?” Rivera demanded, impatience cracking his good manners even when a gun to his head hadn’t.

“Slow down, boss,” Reuben said with a smile. “All in good time. Now, grab your gear and cough up some cash if you want your wheels to be here when we get back.”

* * *

As if he could make me think he was even more of an asshole, Reuben led us through the streets to a house which, when the door opened and I saw how the girls inside were dressed, made me give him a glare that told him exactly what I thought.

It was wasted on him. He made straight for the biggest woman there and acted like her pet.

Tatiana, which was a stripper name if ever I heard one, only I couldn’t see her spinning around a pole with any grace unless it was a steel support pillar, sat us down and offered food and drink.

“Girls, take care of our guests’ weapons, would you?” she said smoothly.

“If it’s all the same—” I started.

“My roof, my rules,” Tatiana said, still smooth and smiling but meaning every word. “The girls will clean them, and you’ll have them back before you leave. The sand out there gets into every crevice, if you know what I mean.”

Reluctantly I handed over my sidearm and my new rifle to a girl that looked so thin, an air recycling duct could suck her in. Her opaque slip over matching underwear left nothing to the imagination, and when I caught Rivera’s eye, bless his heart, he didn’t know where to look.

We ate, which was good, and heard about Quinn’s activities after just missing him here. I mentally kicked myself. If I hadn’t been sick, we could’ve caught up to him or at least been close enough behind him that we could’ve followed.

Reuben explained what he and the girls had done to make sure he got away cleanly. That was welcome news in a way. But why was that other gang chasing him? Knowing him he might’ve actually done something to deserve it, but I suspected not this time.

“He went north to Helena,” Reuben explained, “but instead of carrying on, he cut right through the dead valley to go after the women he was chasing.”

“Both of them? On his own?” I asked, annoyed that the reckless idiot would try something like that instead of waiting. Granted, waiting wasn’t a smart option with all the thugs sniffing around after him.

Tatiana insisted we stay the night, which made Rivera bluster something about paying for rooms elsewhere in the town, as he didn’t want to inconvenience her. Tatiana laughed at him, enjoying his discomfort, and repeated her insistence.

“Tell me about this Solof guy,” I said after the meal.

The mood at the table darkened, like I’d just mentioned a family member no one ever mentioned.

“Solof’s bad news,” Reuben said.

“You seemed to have no issues fucki—uh, messing with his goons earlier,” I said, remembering that we were in company a little too late.

“Hog? He’s not one of Solof’s guys,” Reuben said, shaking his head in amusement. “He’s a local nobody, runs a crew of five, and mostly deals in scrap metals with a side hustle of messing with anyone from outside town.”

“So,” Rivera said, confused, “if you’ll excuse me for asking a potentially stupid question, why did he invoke the man’s name when you challenged him?”

Reuben leaned back and let out a sigh as if to say what was done was done and there was no going back, anyway.

“Solof runs the biggest crew in town,” he explained. “On paper, he’s a trader with a dedicated run to Helena. But if there’s anything unsavory going on in town, he’s usually behind it, or leastways gets a cut of it for allowing them to conduct their business here.”

Rivera shot me a look, as if to say that we knew how to handle mobsters who expanded their enterprises back in Zion.

“Why don’t the local authorities intervene?” he asked Reuben naively.

“Local authorities?” The man grinned. “What local authorities? Nothing like that here, not any longer.”

“Meaning?” I asked, leaning forward.

Reuben sighed. “Before my time, there was a town guard, but they got a little heavy-handed. Some guy took it upon himself to ban ownership of firearms so only his guards had the edge and… and, well, let’s just say that it didn’t go down the way he expected it to.”

“You fought back?” Rivera asked, horrified that anyone would lift a hand to authority.

“We did, and the result is what you see here,” Reuben gestured at the wall behind him and the town beyond that safety barrier. “Nobody tells us what to do, but if anyone gets too big for their boots, then the town kinda… sets them straight.”

“So,” Rivera asked, unable to understand or accept what he was being told, “this place is lawless?”

“That’s one way of looking at it, dear,” Tatiana said. “Another way is that we self-govern. The only people who are usually at risk of such criminal exploits are outsiders like you fine people. You have to understand, this isn’t the clean utopia you have back in Zion.”

I said nothing and, luckily, neither did Rivera. Everywhere we went, there seemed to be this reputation that Zion was some crisp, clean underground palace. The fact that none of us ever ventured north probably went a long way to support that, but I didn’t think now was the time to tell them we had more than our own share of problems.

The bed was soft, and I was even offered company in a veiled way, which I declined as delicately as I could. I wanted a shower and more than a few hours’ sleep on an actual bed instead of under a tarp next to a small fire, hoping that a mutant coyote wasn’t going to try to eat my face.

It dawned on me that Rivera would be getting the same offer, and as much as I thought he’d turn red in the cheeks and stammer out some kind of excuse, I realized it actually bothered me that he might take them up on it. Shaking that dumb thought away, I enjoyed the hot water and slept like a baby.

* * *

Morning came with breakfast, clean clothes, and expertly cleaned weapons being returned to us. It didn’t surprise me, because nothing I’d seen of Tatiana made me doubt she was a woman of her word. She oozed confidence, partly because she was a big woman who walked around in lingerie, so when she ordered up breakfast and invited us to sit with her, the return of our gear came as no shock.

What did surprise us was the loud hammering on the door.

Tatiana nodded to one of her girls who picked up a heavy revolver before answering the door with a hip cocked alluringly. A man walked inside uninvited, smiling like a predator at the girl whose eyes sought out Tatiana’s, only to receive a slight shake of her head.

“You must be our visitors,” he announced in a strong voice, eying us up like he was hungry. His smile was false, but I saw enough danger in the man not to give him a reason to cut either of us down. “My name is Cai Solof. I’m here to extend an invitation to you.”

“Commander Claude Rivera,” came the answer from beside me in a voice like silk. I hated it when he turned on the topside charm, but right then I think it worked. “Zion Ranger Corps. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

He stood, offering his hand, which earned an amused frown from the intruder who took it and squeezed to demonstrate the strength of his grip. I watched Rivera fight the wince of pain as the guy had him beat by half on muscle alone. He was tall, thick-armed, and rough. His balding, shaved head was crisscrossed with so many scars it almost looked intentional, and he smelled… I couldn’t place it, but there was a tang surrounding him that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable.

Blood, my brain told me. That smell is blood.

“I’m here to extend you both an invitation,” Solof said flatly, his smile not reaching his eyes. “I’ve been contracted by the Helena Royal Guard to ensure your safe travel to Helena Crossroads immediately.”

I started to speak, saying, “We’re going ea—”

“What a wonderful gesture,” Rivera said loudly to cut over me. “Sadly, we have grave news to bring to the Helena Senate, so an escort there would be most welcome. Shall we say, first thing tomorrow? Give us time to explore the town for a day?”

“No,” Solof said in a tone like rock. “Now.”

Epilogue

Hadley took a seat in the opulent room organized for him. His bags had been brought, and the man who hovered expectantly for a tip quailed when the cold, rude stranger from Helena asked him why he was still there.

Hearing the door click shut, Hadley let out a satisfied sigh of achievement and swirled the contents of the glass in his hand, listening to the gentle clink of ice against crystal. The contents swirling around the ice were from a bottle he’d brought with him, as even the finest swill they served in the dark, dirty bunker city of Zion was close to undrinkable to his refined palate.

He rose, slipped out of his clothes, folded them meticulously, and laid them out to be washed according to the precise instructions left out for whichever peasant came to collect his laundry. Then he experimented with the controls to the walk-in shower occupying a significant portion of the bathroom.

Satisfied with the temperature of the flow, he stepped inside, breathing deeply to inhale the steam and rid himself of the last traces of his uncomfortable journey. He would have much preferred to travel in style. But the need for secrecy was paramount, so he’d been forced to obtain passage via more common means, and those means left a film on his skin that required scrubbing under hot water.

He spent a long time under the stream, soaping his body multiple times until he felt satisfactorily clean before killing the flow and stepping out.

Wrapping a clean towel around his waist and rubbing his body with another, he walked back into the main rooms of the suite to look through his case in search of some comfortable evening wear.

“Feel better?” a woman asked from the plush armchair in the corner.

Hadley turned from the case to face her, one hand holding a pistol with all the casual ease of a man accustomed to violence.

“I heard you minutes ago,” he said. “You’re getting sloppy.”

“I was getting bored waiting for you to finish pampering yourself.”

“I presume you managed to slip past my security,” he stated, investing as much sarcasm and scorn into his opinion of the local forces as was possible.

“No, I was already in here,” she replied, standing with lithe movements as if she uncoiled. She was tall, with olive skin and dark features that made her both beautiful and intimidating. Hadley gave a huff of amusement and dropped the gun on the bed to continue toweling himself dry.

“Everything went as expected?” he asked her as he selected clothing and dropped the towel around his waist. She didn’t flinch.

“As well as could be expected,” she answered. “I have four operatives embedded here and all are ready. Did you know she was calling herself Diana and masquerading as a low-rent whore?”

Hadley chuckled again. “All part of her master plan to conduct our business covertly. Evidently she wasn’t covert enough.”

“Hardly,” the woman answered. She picked up the bottles of alcohol and inspected them before helping herself to a measure of the drink he’d brought from home.

“I hear the scene was something of artistic brutality,” Hadley said with relish, searching her features for any glimmer of pride or horror at the memory he invoked.

“Everyone knows the Cheyenne are animals. In truth they were impressive, even if they screwed us by killing the water plant foreman.”

“Impressive?”

“I got there and found the guard detail taken out, but the senator was…” She shrugged. “It looked too clean. So I painted a new picture.”

“You cut his head off and stuck it on his dick.”

“And tied him up before making it look like he’d stabbed himself in the back. I imagine they’re still guessing what that means.”

“They’ve already closed the case and moved past it,” Hadley said. “But the results are satisfactory. We’re in the perfect position to enact our plan now.” He pulled a shirt over his shoulders and faced the mirror to fasten the buttons.

She nodded.

“Join me for dinner. I’ve booked a table and I’ll need someone who understand this awful place a little better than I do to guide me through the menu options.”

She tossed back the drink and held out her arms to indicate that she was ready. Hadley slipped his feet into shoes and gestured for her to lead the way after opening the door.

The sight that greeted them in the hallway was uninspiring to say the least, and potentially appetite-killing. A Zion Ranger.

The overweight, unshaven man in uniform with a gun at his hip overshadowed by a roll of excess flab snapped to attention. Then his gaze wavered.

“Valentina? How did you get th…” His words trailed off. The woman wasn’t who he thought she was. “Sorry, I… sorry.”

Hadley and the tall woman both scowled at him as they passed him and headed for the lobby.

“What the fuck was that, Woolman?” Sergeant Forge hissed at him. “Keep your mouth shut if you want this detail, okay?”

“Yeah, Sarge, sorry. But… did you see her? She’s like Valentina’s hot twin.”

“Keep your mouth shut,” Forge reminded him. “Stay here and guard the room. I’ll go stay with them.”

Forge followed, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman he hadn’t seen before but who looked so familiar, it made his spine tingle.

Thank you for reading Hunter

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ALSO IN SERIES

Hunter

Traitor

Fugitive

Looking for more great Post Apocalypse?

Get the Commune Box Set, featuring all four books in the best selling series. 2000+ pages of suspense-filled, gritty, post-apocalyptic fiction, filled with characters that leap off the page. The world has ended. A few have survived. This is their story.

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Get the Toy Soldiers Box Set, featuring all six books in this Amazon bestselling series. Nearly 2000 pages of suspense-filled, post-apocalyptic fiction about survival against all odds.

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Forget life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness... Surviving is a feat in and of itself.

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“Aliens, agents, and espionage abound in this Cold War-era alternate history adventure... A wild ride!”—Dennis E. Taylor, bestselling author of We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

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Get the Spirits of the Earth Box Set, featuring all three books in the best selling series. 1000+ pages of suspense-filled post-apocalyptic fiction with a Paranormal twist. Perfect for fans of Stephen King, T.W. Piperbrook, and The Walking Dead.

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