Grit and Grace: A Metal and Men Novella (Metal and Men Series Book 1) (2 page)

I fired again. Daryl heaved me up by my head, then slammed me hard into the ground.

A vision of a girl—a slim, beautiful girl—swam in front of my eyes. She was young, maybe eleven, and she smiled a huge grin with shining white teeth. "Dead oak," she said. Her voice was a soft whisper. She produced a card with those words and some coordinates written on it and slipped it into the front pocket of my duster. The Roth boys acted like they didn't see her. Was she really there? Was this a lost memory?

A pit of blackness swallowed the world.

I woke, sprawled in a pool of my own regurgitated bourbon and beef brisket. Blood mixed with the mess—probably my own. My head hurt, which just about fit with what the rest of my body was doing. Every beat of my heart sent little pulses of pain through my body. My back was sore, so I stretched it and tried to sit up.

Standing unsteadily, I patted myself down. The Roth boys had taken my guns, my glow cube, and my cash. There wasn't a lot of it. The guns were the currency with which I bought most of my way through life. Also, they stole my damn boots. As I limped across the warehouse, I brushed the reeking vomit off my hat.

"Hetty," I said.

"Yessir."

"Got into some trouble, there."

"You don't say,” said Hetty. “I was kinda thinking you were dead so I was just about to shut this operation down for good."

Pain pulsed in the back of my skull, the network of connections searing their imprint upon the inside of my skull. The skullset that let me talk to Hetty was connected to state-of-the-art tech. "Hetty, did I ever tell you about that time my little brother Evan wandered off?"

"Well, no, I believe—"

"He was little, maybe three, but got himself into one of those cargo shuttles down in Low Austin. One second he was with me and our mama. Next second, he was halfway across town. My mama had the biggest fit you ever seen a mama have."

I paused and gave a good hard listen at the door. There weren't any voices this time.

"Well, there were eight of us boys. Seven's a whole lot easier to feed than eight, so when she told my pa about it at supper, he just grunted and asked me to pass the potatoes. Pa always was a bastard that way. Mama wasn't too keen on that. Next day, she went out and spent up our whole savings on neural chips for her seven boys. From then on, she never had trouble tracking us, no matter where we wandered off to."

A long pause made me wonder if Hetty was even still listening. Then, "Winston, you got a point in all that?"

"Mama got us all our first neural chips back in the day so she could trace us all the time anywhere we went. Nowadays, people trace just about anything that's worth something to them."

"We been over this, Winston. The girl's not traced. She's got somethin' that's not letting them do it. She's dark. She's important, but we can't just trace her. That's why they riled up half the bounty hunters in Austin, remember?"

"Not talking about the girl. You got a trace on Nellie?"

There was a pause. "Well, yes I did," she said.

I smiled. "Much appreciated. Those Roth boys took her, and I intend to get her back. A needler like that's something special."

"Hon, that's no business of mine."

"I'll be damned if they aren't headed straight for Lena Goodwin."

"Well, that's more like it."

"They want to kill her. I suppose she humiliated them." As I said it, the thought occurred to me that any quarry able to humiliate the Roth brothers was most likely out of my league.

"Well," said Hetty, "you'd best get your ass in gear."

"Found him the next day," I said.

"What?"

"They found Evan the next day. Everyone always asks that. Company that ran the cargo shuttles found him and tracked down our family through a DNA match. He was waiting for us when we got home from getting implants. He was a little hungry but otherwise perfectly fine."

A hot wind greeted me in the doorway. I stepped out into an unforgiving world, squinting at the red sun setting on the horizon. Waves of heat danced along the concrete landscape before me. In the distance, the harsh, black Austin skyline scraped at the swirling clouds in the sky. A windwall wrapped the city, protecting it from storms; the wall’s jagged fingers swarming with flying vehicles out in the distance. Thousands of city folk made their way through the dark towers trying to get to their safe little caves in the sides of man-made mountains.

I winced as the hot ground burned my feet through the holes in my socks. I needed that payday. I needed bullets, guns, a place to stay, and some food to eat. A whiff of vomit hung like a halo about my head. A new hat would be nice.

There wasn't much around the warehouse. A few short buildings hadn't fared so well in the latest megastorm. I headed for the closest, hoping that Connor Roth was either not as crafty or not as much of an asshole as I suspected. If he trashed or stole my car like he took my guns, I'd be in a hell of a spot.

I hopped over the short remains of a broken wall and landed solidly on a cracked section of concrete. The far walls of the building still stood tall, casting deep shadows in the red glow of the setting sun. I squinted, straining to see into the darkness.

She was still there.

"Suzy," I said. "What would I do without you?"

Air shimmered in front of me. The jet-black curves of my sleek, convertible 5700 Series Mustang brought a smile to my face. Fully integrated camouflage and a low power idle must have kept it off of Connor's scope. I ran a finger along her side. She was beautiful. She was the love of my life.

I hopped inside and pulled open the glove box. Connor might have taken most of my guns, but there was one I always left in the car. It was ancient. My neural implants wouldn't connect with it, and the son-of-a-bitch kicked like a mule. It was a Colt .45, modified a hundred years ago by my great-great-grandfather. It was ugly and heavy, but I kept it around anyway. I checked the ammunition. Ten plain old lead bullets.

A lead bullet would have a hell of a time punching through an average person's skin. Blame the nanomachines for that. Nannies could slowly replace a person's skin with a stronger, tougher hide. They could assemble tech inside a person's eyes to interface with the sub-neural network. A reasonably advanced batch of nannies could even help heal tissue and fix damage done by implanted tech.

A series of images slid through my head, and I responded by remembering my own series: a baseball field, an acoustic guitar, my grandfather. It's one of the security features of my Mustang. She's able to receive my neural cast, but she liked to be extra sure that it's me sending commands. The images were my proof of identity. The car gently lifted into the air.

"Head northwest," Hetty said.

"Away from the city? How far?"

"Far." There was a pause. "They've got some distance on you."

I cursed under my breath. Outside of Austin, Texas, was a wasteland of tiny towns and abandoned desert. There wasn't anything out there worth slowing down for, let alone stopping. Likely if the girl headed northwest she was headed for Canada through the mountains. The Texas-Canada border was fuzzy up there, as was the rule of law. My spine tensed at the idea of heading up that far north.

Maybe I didn't have to. I checked the pocket of my duster, but it was empty. What had that card said? The girl had put it there, I was sure of it, but what exactly did it mean and why would the Roth boys have taken it? "Hetty, the words 'dead oak' mean anything to you?"

There was a pause. "There's a Dead Oak up thereabouts."

"A town?"

"Somethin' like."

"Well, I reckon we just might have a destination. Can we catch them before they make it there?"

"No, but you can get there just after they arrive. They're headed straight for it, and they have a pretty good lead."

"Wonderful."

A few mental commands later, my Mustang was roaring low over the dry red dirt of The Chihuahuan Desert. A bubble of calm air kept my hat from flying off.

"Hetty?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to take myself a nap now. I'm not dying, so don't shut everything down quite yet."

"You sure are sleepy today."

I ground my teeth. My head still hurt. "Yup." I pulled my hat forward and put my feet up on the soft black leather seat. I closed my eyes and let the world roar by in peace.

My bare feet sizzled on the still-hot gravel. An hour after sunset and the stuff still practically glowed. I had ditched my socks. For some reason, I had decided it wasn't worth it to ruin a perfectly good pair of socks. Pain coupled with a scent like grilled beef served to remind me of my stupidity.

A couple deep breaths soothed the pain, but only because I had turned down the receptors. One of the advantages of a quality neuro-implant is the ability to turn down pain. Instead of pain, I felt only a dull warmth and a quivering sense of unease.

An ancient library loomed in the darkness like an enormous, squat bunker in an otherwise ruined landscape. It wasn't in the town of Dead Oak, but it was close enough to not matter. On the horizon I could still see the silhouette of the town's dome-shaped buildings. People still lived this far out, scraping a living from the hard earth. A touch of pity made me pause and shake my head.

The Roths' vehicle was parked outside, and I moved forward to hide behind it. The thing resembled a heavy-duty Civil War–era troop hauler, originally used to fly low and fast, dropping off twenty or more goons under heavy fire. It was armored and red, like the dirt of the great deserts. The cabin up front was fully armored and very much locked. The back was open but empty.

"Nellie's signal's coming from right next to you, hon," Hetty said.

"Ain't no way I'm getting in there without the code." I could sense the signal from the truck probing me for codes I didn't have.

"Winston, I thought you were the best?"

"I never said that."

"This little truck's going to stop you from getting your baby?"

"I never said that neither."

"Uh-huh."

"I just need a plan." I closed my eyes and tried to think. If the Roth boys stopped, then they must have thought the girl was nearby. Probably in the library. The question was, would they split up or stay together?

Connor Roth thought himself a tactical genius. I had no doubt he'd split the boys up with some clever plan to cover every inch of the place and seal the entrances at the same time. Truth is, it was probably the best plan available to him.

He wasn't counting on me, though.

Peering up at the dark building, I spotted a way inside. There was a row of windows. One of them would give me easy access to the top floor. Once in, I would be able to take out the Roth boys quietly and then focus on tracking that girl. All I needed to do was climb a few stories, subdue three highly trained and heavily armed thugs using nothing but my wits and fists, and then catch a girl who in all likelihood had already defeated me in one-on-one combat. It wasn't the ideal plan. I flexed and stretched my fingers, feeling a sense of warmth and unease where my skin was still open from my earlier climb. The brick, at least, would be gentler on my fingers than jagged metal. Positive thinking gets you places.

Creeping forward, I stooped down to keep out of sight from the front door. If there's anything I know about tactical geniuses, it's that they don't leave obvious entrances unguarded. Near the wall, an enormous burr oak hid me from most directions.

I pulled my hat down hard so it wouldn't fall off. My big toe fit in the crack in the concrete facade of the ancient library. I pushed my way up, reaching high above my head to the next handhold. Step, reach, step, reach. I slowly made my way up. Ten meters then twenty passed below me. Branches of the tree scraped my back.

My toe slipped, sliding out of its hold and ripping the toenail clean off. I cursed under my breath and held tight to the weathered brick with my sore fingernails. My hands were bleeding again, and now so was my toe. A warm-water sensation of not-pain flowed from the tips of my fingers and toes. I was glad I had dulled my pain with neurotech, but a little worried about what I'd have to deal with when I turned everything back on.

I jammed my bloody toe back into the wall.

The window was almost in reach. A few more pulls and I'd be there.

Voices drifted up from below. I froze, my numb fingers digging into the cracks between the bricks.

"Just signal when you catch her." Connor's voice carried in the cooling night wind. "I'll keep an eye from above, in case she tries to sneak away."

"Sure."

"Start down in the basement and work your way up. Daryl, you stick by the door to the stairs. We don't want her doubling back on you."

"Uh-huh."

"Charlie, you better go full stealth for this."

"But—"

"I don't give a shit if it hurts. Bend the fucking light all the way or that bitch is going to make a fool out of you again." Silence held heavy in the night air for several long moments. "Anything moves outside this building, I'm gonna toast it from above, so y'all better ping me before stepping outside to pee, you hear?"