Blood Rules (28 page)

He and Mags had followed his scent tracker just before the device had also fizzled out. But he hadn't needed a tracker to show him the dirt with boot prints matching those he'd seen back in the Bloodlands.

The scrubs had definitely been here, and since he and Mags had no decent light source, save for a weak glow from their arm screens and the tracker, Stamp had been forced to seek the means for fire so he could continue searching, messed-up leg or not.

While sloughing off her traveling bag, Mags glanced at him, her dark slanted eyes cool in the faint, deadened glow of her arm screen. “If I didn't know any better, I'd guess someone pulled an old e-bomb on GBVille.”

Stamp halted in his drag-legged search for two rocks to strike together. The very thought of terrorists sent a patriotic jolt through him, and he wished he'd been a Shredder during the days when those domestic freaks had blown off the West Coast. They'd been traitors, and he would've gone after them like . . .

Well, like a wolf after blood.

The comparison didn't sit well with him and, spent, pissed off, and ready to kill whoever had set off that e-bomb, he sorted through some rocks and found two that would suit his purposes.

“My leg's still workable,” he said. “When they find out who set off any kind of e-bomb, I'd like to set off after them, too.”

“You don't want to skip down to Waltonburg to get yourself repaired? It's the closest hub, and you could get your leg taken care of, as well as these computers of ours.”

“We can do without.”

Repaired. Stamp hated the notion of taking a pit stop when he needed to forge ahead.

“John,” she said, “it was off-putting enough in the New Badlands when we didn't have reception for the Nets on our computers. I'd like to have mine back.”

“Mags,” he said, falling into the same chiding tone, “since our van and any other transportation around here would no doubt be disabled by a power-sucking bomb, I think a trip to Waltonburg might turn out to be a hell of a long walk. Besides, what if other hubs were also attacked?”

If so, he just might put the scrubs on hold to answer the call of humanity's duty. The military hadn't been much for waging offensives in a long time—he'd been too young to ever fight as anything more than a Shredder. But if internal terrorists were resurfacing, in spite of sure and immediate death punishment . . .

Stamp tried to bend over so he could discard a rock and take up another, but his leg smarted, reminding him of what he'd already sacrificed for humanity. And what'd his payment been? Nothing but the government setting him aside, retiring him before his time. Turning its back on him.

Mags was quiet for a moment, thinking. Then she said, “I'd like to try to get down to Waltonburg. The police up in the hub were using manual bullhorns to spread word to anyone still paying attention that the power went out because of a grid malfunction, but that doesn't explain why all the vehicles I came across aren't working.”

“With the lights out and the zoom bikes and FlyShoes nonfunctional, how are people filling their time?” In spite of his pique, Stamp was genuinely curious. “Did they all join the running ones?”

“Some of them. You know how distractoids can barely stand to wait a nanosecond for a Nets page to download, so they were on to the next activity pretty quickly.”

Stamp would bet his good leg that the government was lying about a “power grid malfunction.” But he could see why they were acting as if nothing were terribly amiss. A hub full of whacked-out citizens would be a nightmare.

“But then,” Mags continued, “I saw a bunch of bodies lying around, and I figured out what was happening to the rest of the people.”

Suicides?

Stamp tried to make sense of that as Mags said, “I heard some cops talking. They had out more primitive tools, like riot batons and spears. They'd been prepared for mob uprisings because of how the video screens and jolly box corners had shut down, but I heard one guy talking about the announcements they'd already made to take the pills.”

That's right. Since Stamp had worked for the government, he knew that the pills, which every hubite carried, were secretly called
stunners
. The populace had been told that the pills should be taken if a biological attack ever occurred—that they would ward off any impending damage. It wasn't true, but most people who were a part of society would do anything the government said, and the pills acted as crowd control. It whittled down the numbers that the authorities would need to deal with, and the people who didn't take the stunners or who weren't enthralled with running could be rounded up and monitored through other means, like riot measures.

“Apparently, the pills knocked out everyone who was hanging around outside their homes, and probably inside them, too, if they heard the announcements,” Mags added. “I didn't want to be rounded up, so I kept to the edges of the city when I came back. The squares are littered with sleeping people, but they'll be waking up soon enough, thinking that they've been in a healing phase or something.”

“That's what they'll be told. And I'm sure they'll be instructed to take even more while General Benefactors scrambles to clean up this debacle. Afterward, the hubites will be happy about the kindness the authorities showed in saving their hides.”

He took his rocks and started to flint them off each other, creating sparks.

Mags grabbed one of his shirts that he'd kept in their now-defunct van and wrapped it around the nose of a corner gun. The sparks from his rocks eventually caught on the material.

Mags carried the torch, spreading orange light around as she waited for Stamp to stand with the aid of his crutches, then head toward the entrance of the cave, where the scrubs' boot steps led.

To the naked eye, there wasn't anything inside but for the rock and dirt, yet to Stamp and Mags, there were signs of upset ground, indicating that a man with big feet had paced around in one corner. Dog prints. More boot steps leading farther back to a place where indentations in the dirt showed where the scrubs had bedded down. And there was a charred ring of fire with a few minuscule clothing scraps among the ashes.

Yet there weren't any clues telling Stamp where the group had gone.

Or why.

As the torch burned out, he and Mags exited the cave. The sky was struggling out of its darkness, still a few hours from dawn. Above, GBVille remained quiet with the aid of those stunner pills.

“Gone,” he said, leaning against a flat rock to rest his burning leg. He also needed a break from those damned crutches. Padded or not, they dug into his armpits. “God
damn
scrubs.”

He'd been hoping to corner them in an isolated spot, just like this, where no one would capture his activities on their arm cameras. He'd also been sorry that the chase was over before he'd gotten here to find the scrubs absent.

Mags flicked his gun so that the rest of his embered shirt crisped to the ground, then climbed on top of that flat rock, sitting, drawing her knees up, and resting her arms on them. She was still wearing those featureless light clothes that they'd put on previously, and he kind of missed that tight, one-piece suit she'd had on before they'd arrived in GBVille.

For a distracted moment, Stamp thought of how that suit reminded him of old pictures of Catwoman in Nets comic books. He'd liked Catwoman.

There was heat in the depths of his belly, but when Mags talked, it brought Stamp back to utter coolness. Shredders didn't get distracted like the populace. Shredders kept their heads.

“The scrubs probably got scared when the power went out and they were smart enough to leave, just in case all hell broke loose,” she said. “God-all knows they wouldn't need zoom bikes to escape trouble if they thought it was on their heels. I wouldn't be surprised if they've speeded far away by now. That's what I would have done if I were a scrub.”

There was a note of something unidentifiable in her voice.

Admiration?

Nah. Mags was all the way on his side. She wouldn't have any feelings for the scrubs beyond disdain. People like Mags and him didn't have many feelings.

But as soon as he thought it, she went and made him think again.

“What're you really going to do about your leg, John?”

It made him shift, the way she used his first name softly like that.

“I'll get it fixed,” he said. “But later. First I'm going to follow any trail that the scrubs left.”

She slid him an exasperated glance, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. He didn't like how this conversation—and a few others they'd had—was going. He didn't like anything he couldn't fully grasp.

“What's your glitch now?” he asked.

Like she'd been doing so much lately, she sighed. Sighs were never a good thing with Mags.

Then she came out with it. “You want to hunt down the scrubs while the trail is fresh, is that it?”

“Sounds practical to me.”

“You realize, of course, that you're on crutches. And that we'd need to walk all the way to wherever the scrubs have gone, even if they have the ability to speed there much faster than we can stroll. And if we did find them, you wouldn't be very fleet of foot and they'd probably kill you within two seconds.”

“You'd rather give up and go to Waltonburg, then start hunting down the scrubs all over again, after their trail might fade? Mags, they can't be
that
far away. I'll find them, then snipe at them, one at a time from a safe place, with some well-aimed silver knives or darts, duty done.”

“If we go to Waltonburg, and if it hasn't been bombed, we could get some transportation there. Plus, there's good repair help. It'd be more efficient if you value your damned life.”

“I'm not an invalid who needs to be rebuilt again.” But when he took a step forward while making his point, he almost lost his balance.

Stamp pushed his crutches away, and they thudded to the ground. Mags's shoulders tensed, but otherwise, she didn't react.

“Who're you to fly in the face of my orders?” he asked, his voice hoarse. He'd never heard himself like this.

“I was only suggesting, John.”

“And when did we get to be on a first-name basis?”

Unlike his tone, hers didn't sound weak. “Oh, I don't know—I think it was around the time I saved your ass from the scrubs back when they ambushed you in the New Badlands.”

Fuck this. She didn't own any part of him just because she'd performed a quick-minded rescue for them both.

He began to drag himself away, but she stopped him.

“Is it so wrong to give a damn about you?”

It was as if something caved inside him, and he nearly halted in his tracks.

But he couldn't look back at her. If he did, he'd face something he couldn't deal with, something he'd been trained to avoid as a Shredder.

As a survivor.

Stamp gathered himself and kept on going, locking his sight on the scrubs' boot steps, which would surely lead him somewhere.

Mags dogged him, and he was sure she'd grabbed his crutches. He wouldn't admit it, he wouldn't even thank her, but he'd need them later.

Sure enough, he did, right around the time he heard the staccato barking of dogs on the cusp of the hub, less than a mile from where he was following the prints toward the asylum while skirting the edge of GBVille.

Stamp recognized the signs of beast dogs on the prowl, and he wondered if they were even farther ahead on the trail of the scrubs than he was, sniffing them out, tracking.

Or if they were hunting something else altogether.

It might be a good idea to see what they were up to,
if
he could catch up.

Bolstered, he looked behind him to his partner, who was already holding out his crutches to him, her expression a study in
You misheard me—I actually
don't
give a shit about you.

He couldn't help grinning, even at Mags.

O
nce again, I was sitting in front of 562 in the main area of the mine shaft, willing her to look at me so I could listen to any more tales she had to tell.

Being so consumed with her, I'd battled sleep, although I'd find myself nodding off frequently, my body needing to regenerate after our activities. But no matter how many times I availed myself to 562, asking her to look into my eyes to tell us what she knew about all the years she'd lived and just what she was when a full moon appeared, she didn't respond.

At least she was moving round today, but all she was doing besides staring at the floor was scratching at her skin—that pale expanse of flesh that didn't have a down of hair on it, like her face. It was as if she were trying to get at something far below, bringing it out.

“Please stop that,” I said, but I didn't reach out to grab her hand. There'd be huge teeth and hell to pay, no doubt, even though I suspected that 562 had a soft spot for all of us except Chaplin.

Was it because everyone was a were-creature or vampire, and 562 had a bit of both in her? That would explain why she seemed so familiar with me upon our first meeting.

But what about Taraline? Why was 562 so enraptured with her?

I suspected it wasn't because 562 was related to Taraline in some way; it might've had more to do with the veil. The covering oneself beneath some hair or material or whatever it might be that made a thing or person feel safe.

562 responded to my request to stop scratching by folding her hands together in her lap, then going back to her still resting. But those scratches had left blood on her arm, and I couldn't help longing for the red.