Peace in an Age of Metal and Men (24 page)

Doing the right thing might not be easy, but it definitely doesn’t make a man popular. There I felt like a monster after shooting that kid, and being surrounded by villagers with pitchforks was not helping.

They had guns too. The boys from the poker game looked like they were leading the group. One had a shotgun trained on me and the other had a pistol and a flashlight.

“You get your hands up, fella.” Sheriff Flores pointed a rifle at my chest. “You shot Theo back there, and we’re going to have some words about it.”

“Listen, fellas,” I said. “I’ll raise my arm, but I need a battery first.” I shrugged my shoulder and showed that my arm wasn’t moving.

Flores shifted uncomfortably. “Just hold on, now. You’d best walk as you are down to the jail. We’ll figure what to do with you down there.”

I figured it had something to do with a noose at dawn.

The hot night air was stiff with tension. Glancing around, I saw half a dozen fingers on triggers and I’d bet not a single safety was on. It’d get ugly fast if one of them was itchy.

“Gentlemen.” I blew smoke out the side of my mouth. “I’m not the one who done you wrong.”

“The hell you ain’t,” said Theo, the man I’d shot for walking out of the tavern. He’d rigged a crutch out of a spare board and was leaning against it heavily. In his other hand was a sawed-off shotgun. “You’re comin’ with us as a prisoner or a corpse.” He lowered a shotgun at me. “I got my preference.”

“I’m not going to kill any of you,” I said. The image of the kid I’d just killed flashed in front of my eyes. “A man’s got to have morals.”

Theo twitched.

Far away, a sound like thunder filled the skies. The darkening sky lit up like the midday sun. Townsfolk turned, shouted, swore. A second later, the force hit us, knocking us back. They had taken out the perimeter towers. Cavalry was on the way.

It was also a perfect distraction.

I stepped forward, to the side. Flores’s rifle barked, but missed. My fist hit his jaw, staggered him back.

The roar of gunfire erupted behind me. A shot thumped into my back, not penetrating but feeling quite a bit like being slugged with a brick. I staggered, stumbled forward. Dropped to a knee and stopped.

The sky darkened. I didn’t move. Long seconds passed and under my duster I thumbed my tiny BB pistol.

Theo asked, “Did I get him?”

I came up shooting. The zip of that ridiculous pistol fired again and again. Half a dozen shots went out and half a dozen villagers dropped with leg wounds. There were more people than I could see. They were back in the shadow of the night. The guy holding the flashlight dropped it, more concerned with the blood gushing from his shattered shin.

Turning sideways to the shooters in the dark, I deflected a couple bullets from my duster and metal arm. The targeting laser on my pistol flashed, guiding one tiny bullet after another.

A shotgun roared behind me and the impact stole my lungs and dropped me to my knees.

Flores used the opportunity to level his rifle at my face.

Another low sound, like a far-off rumble of thunder, tickled the edges of my hearing. Closer, closer. The flyers wouldn’t be close yet. Not for another minute or two. What was that sound?

“Well, shit,” he said, shaking his head. “I suppose putting you in a hole’s a lot less trouble than putting you in a jail.”

I looked down the barrel of that gun.

Then it struck, like a whisper on the wind. From the gray dusk, a single boomerang swooped through the air and cracked Flores on the skull.

“Hyah!”

Marcus rode in, then. The sound was the thundering hoof beats of that gray gelding. He hunched down low on the steed, hardly slowing as he approached.

As he passed, I grabbed hard and pulled myself up, barely holding onto the saddle. It was a rough ride. Painful. Bruising in ways I didn’t know possible. Soon we were far enough away that the villagers faded into the distance.

“Much appreciated,” I said.

Marcus tipped his hat. “You said to look after those who needed it.”

“That I did.” I took the battery out of my pocket and loaded it into my arm. Power came back on immediately, though the new battery had a low whine as it worked. It didn’t ache at all, so I figured that was a good sign. “Now you’d best head back, kid.”

He scowled.

“They need you, Marcus. They need you now and they’re going to keep needing a man like you.”

Marcus nodded, tipped his hat, and walked away. He wanted to help, but where I was going would be too dangerous.

“Zane,” I called him on my headgear. I was getting used to that kind of thing. It almost came natural.

Zane’s voice came in clear. “Headed right for you.”

A few minutes later he was there, with Abi and Tucker in the backseat. I hopped in to ride shotgun and Zane rested a hand on mine.

“You did it,” he said.

I pulled my hand away, irritated. “It don’t add up,” I said.

“What doesn’t?”

“Quintech is dropping Goodwin bombs. I thought they were rivals.” We rose high above the Quintech complex. The air up high was cooler and thinner. It was a relief breathing something that didn’t scorch on its way down.

“It’s complex,” said Zane. “I’m not a history professor.”

“No, of course not. They wouldn’t send a history professor.”

He cocked his head to the side. “Why would you say that?”

“Goodwin keeps other corporations close by having dealings with them. Closer they can get, the more power they have over them, near as I can figure.”

Zane’s expression got grim.

“Same works for people.”

“Oh, this again.”

I stood up. The car shifted under my weight. “Would you tell me if they sent you to fall for me? Would you even know?”

Long minutes passed in silence. Tucker chuckled to himself in the backseat.

“You’re being paranoid, J.D.,” Abi said.

She was probably right. “Why’s Tucker here?”

“Look, Crow.” Tucker cleared his throat. “I’m sorry about how that all went down last few days. I can’t leave you on your own. We go way back and it wouldn’t be right.”

“Zane’s paying you?”

“Yup.”

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

“Sheriff’s getting in position,” said Zane. “Turns out the tower has some ground-to-air batteries and we can’t get close enough yet.”

I sat back down in one of the cushy seats and reloaded my revolver. I checked my BB gun and made sure it was also fully operational. The compartment containing ammo seemed to have plenty left. My knife was sharp. My duster and hat were both in good shape, no worse for wear after the gunfight.

“Let’s go,” I growled.

Zane didn’t blink for several seconds. “What happened to you down there, J.D.?”

The memory of it threatened to stop me right there. The feeling in my gut swelled, but this wasn’t the time for regret. Not yet. “There’s only one kind of person who kills kids, Zane.”

We drifted over the last rise, and the entire Quintech complex stretched out before us. Grim, gray buildings dotted the landscape like warts on skin. A thin road broke free from the broken tangle of hills, arcing to and passing under an enormous black gate in the fence that surrounded the scattered buildings. Some structures had fallen, whether to war or age or something else, it was hard to say. There was, however, one building that stood tall. The top of that great, black building was a glass dome, shining with a flickering glow in the night. Just behind the dome stood a tower, which stretched almost as tall as the surrounding hills. Two turrets the size of longhorns jutted from the base of the dome.

“Head for the gate,” I said, pointing to the open gate along the ground route. “We’ll go in low and walk the last half-kilometer.”

He did as I said, and soon we were a few meters up passing through the enormous black gate. There was tech around that might have once been security. Bots lined the road, dormant or destroyed. On closer inspection, the gate itself was more than just open; it had been wrenched open by some incredible force. Likewise, the doors to the building directly in front of us were torn from their hinges. The way was open for us.

The first workers we saw were unloading a truck on the other side of the gate. There were two of them. Their eyes glowed a constant eerie green as they moved about their task. Their movements were fluid and smooth, like humans, but when they turned their gazes our way, they seemed to stare past us like robots. When Zane flashed his lights their direction they stopped and stared at us while we stared at them.

They used to be people. Their slack jaws and waxy skin made them look like walking corpses, but they were breathing. The taller of the two blinked once, tilted his head to one side, and then went about his business. The other one stared at us and didn’t move.

“Kivas,” Zane said. “Like the one you saw at the bank.”

“And in that bunker.” I swallowed. “You’re sure they can’t be helped?”

“They’ve been hollowed out. There’s nothing left of what they used to be.”

“How do you know that?”

Zane looked at me and said in a hard voice, “Goodwin ain’t exactly innocent.”

That’s when the husks attacked. One second they were slack-jawed workers, the next they were bloodthirsty killers. One lunged at the car, leaping several meters and latching onto the bumper. The other threw the heavy box he was holding, narrowly missing my head.

I drew, aimed, and shot the husk on the ground through the skull. The other one scrambled up on top of the hood. Zane grabbed it, broke its neck, and tossed it over the side. A part of me died that I thought was already dead from shooting the kid in the bunker. It was a part that seemed to become emptier and emptier but was always empty. Somehow it kept hurting and it kept right on dying.

Zane put a hand on my shoulder and this time I didn’t force him away.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The wide open was making me nervous, so I nodded down at the broken door and Zane guided us in that direction. When we were close I hopped out of the car.

Three buildings away, the tower loomed in the dark, backlit by the glow of moonlight in the darkened sky. At the base of the tower was a shining glass dome surrounded by weapons. Two massive rods—energy weapons of some sort—jutted up into the sky. They would need to be disabled before the remains of our army could attack the tower. That tower was the key to everything, but all of the buildings were connected. Entering a few buildings away would give us cover on our approach, but it would slow us down.

As I used my metal hand to grip the side of the car, a twitch of power crushed the metal under my grip.

“Sorry,” I said, grinning sheepishly at Zane.

“Do you wreck every tech that you touch?”

“Yes.” I pulled Zane close. “Yes, I do.”

The smell of dry piss hit like a flash flood. It filled the entryway and the air practically thickened with its presence.

Abi stepped tentatively into the building, her eyes like cold steel. She clutched her rifle so hard her knuckles were white. Tucker followed, the narrowed slits of his eyes seeming to expertly scan everything all at once. Zane’s expression was one of barely concealed mirth.

“Last chance to turn back,” I said. “Nobody will think less of you for it. Likely not all of us are coming out, if any at all.”

Abi said, “I need to get to the central control for this place. Best odds of that are that tower, but it’s possible we’ll get what we need in the underground labs.”

“Underground labs?” I asked.

“You studied the blueprints, right?”

“Um, yeah, of course.”

She shook her head. “I give up on you, J.D.”

Tucker grinned. “Me too.”

Something moved deep inside the building. A sound, somewhere between animal and human, echoed through the halls.

I sniffed. “You see a coyote, shoot it. You see a person, shoot them. We’re not here to mess around.” I drew my revolver. “And if you see Francis, hit him as hard and as fast as you can.”

“J.D.?” Zane asked.

“What?”

“Does everything look the way it’s supposed to look?”

My right eye seemed to be giving me the same image as the left. If the system came back online they’d likely be different, but no, that hadn’t happened. There was no way to know if another backup would come online to start making things hard for Zane and Abi.

“Looks good so far. Our best shot is to hope real hard that he doesn’t have another backup.”

Zane had another idea. “If you start seeing funny, you let us know before it gets bad. It wouldn’t be hard for them to trick us into friendly fire.”

“If he starts overriding your tech, then you won’t be able to hear my warning.”

He held my hand and folded it into a fist. “Not if you warn hard enough.”

The lobby was a monument to a battle raged long ago. Bullet holes did more than pock the marble walls. Someone had come in here and reshaped the walls with a hail of gunfire. It was as extreme a redecorating as a person might get, including even a skylight that opened up to offices above. Layers of dust covered burn marks and cracked, caked filth that might have once been blood. One corner was a nest of cleaned, cracked bones.

The far wall writhed as we moved through the room. A brown mass covered a several-meter radius and hissed as it slowly spread.

Tucker pointed to the mass and put a finger to his lips.

Something moved above. The clack of claws on stone echoed from somewhere unseen. Each noise caused the brown mass to react in a wave, and each wave expanded the mass a little more.

“What is it?” I whispered to Zane.

He peered at the mass for a minute, then shrugged. “Let’s not find out.”

The short hallway that connected the next building was visible across the rubble-strewn lobby. Someone had put up a barricade, but whatever it was meant to stop hadn’t stopped. Half of the barrier was swept away and gaping open. Pushing through, I crept as quietly as my boots would let me. It wasn’t very quiet. Not quiet enough. The mass on the wall crept closer to our exit.

Bugs. Millions of bugs spread in a mass across the wall. More spots along the wall sprouted their own smaller masses. A few started flying.

“Seed bugs,” I whispered. “They’ll bite, but it’s not bad. Just keep quiet and move quickly.”

Tucker and Abi crept past me while I stood in the entryway. Zane met my gaze as he passed and nodded assurance. The mass of bugs crept closer and closer with each light footfall. When I moved forward, a few of the bugs flew from the wall, flitting around my face. I flinched, and my elbow hit an ammo box that was balancing on the barricade.

The metal box fell. Noise pierced the dead silence like a nightmare car crash. All at once the seed bugs burst from the wall, filling the room and hallway in a great moving shadow. They pulsed as one mass. Everywhere, they clouded my sight and crawled on my skin. Each breath threatened to take in bugs.

“Go!” I said and shoved the others forward. Bugs swarmed into my mouth. There were so many. I choked.

Abi and Tucker scrambled through the door before the wave hit. The bugs bit. Each bite stung like hell.

A hundred bites burned like a hot brand.

I lurched through the door at the end of the hallway and Tucker slammed it shut behind me. Bugs crawled on his skin too. He swore and swatted.

Abi shouted a cry of pain, rubbing the back of her neck. I looked to see, but the bugs got in my eyes.

Somewhere in the darkness something growled.

Zane cried out in pain.

Gunshots.

“What?” I asked, swatting the bugs away as best I could. “What is it?”

On my arm, where the first bugs had bit me, a piercing white-hot pain shot straight down the nerves. To the bone. My knees weakened. Another pierced my neck like a hot iron.

Somehow through the red haze of pain I saw Tucker pick up Abi.

“Move,” he said. His voice sounded more annoyed than anything.

It was impossible for me to figure any other plan, so I grabbed Zane and ran. Tuck pulled us down a dark hallway with glossy, slick floors. The bugs followed, biting, swarming into eyes and mouths. Zane swatted at them furiously. There were so many.

Molten lead traveled the length of my legs and settled at the base of my spine. Every inch of my skin felt rubbed raw and screamed at my clothing. The spot where my metal arm met flesh was the worst, with grating inflammation flaring with every movement. The sight of my own hand shocked me; it was puffy and red, with fierce yellow pustules forming on the surface.

Breathing hurt.

“In here,” said Tuck. He held open a door and shoved us through. He managed to close the door without letting the bulk of the swarm in and even managed to toss something out before the door sealed shut.

“What was that?” Zane asked through gasps.

“Bug spray.”

A whoosh sounded from outside and soon the steel door was so hot that wisps of smoke started coming off of it as the paint ignited.

My breath wheezed and the thundering of my heart was the only thing I could hear. I collapsed against the wall, next to Abi. My eyes were swollen shut. Breathing got harder; each breath rasped painfully. In. Out. In. Out.

Out.

Out.

I clutched my neck. Breath wouldn’t come in, hard as I tried. Something brushed against my hand. Agony. More air eked out of my lungs.

My eyes opened. Tucker was on top of me, a knife pressed against my neck. There was rage in his eyes, but there was pain there too. A tear beaded at the corner of his eye.

A long moment passed. Tuck locked gazes with me. One of his hands held mine down, while the other pressed the knife up against my neck.

A high-pitched noise, like a whistle, sounded. It was several long seconds before I figured out that it was my own breath. The whistle started high, but got deeper and wheezier. Soon my breath was coming in great rasping gulps. Tucker let go of my hand and stepped back.

The others were gasping too. Their bodies—or more likely their nannies—were fighting off whatever venom came with the bug bites. Pain slowly eased and with a great effort I forced myself into a sitting position.

“Almost had to give you a tracheotomy,” Tucker said.

“Thought you were going to murder me.” My voice came out in a gravelly whisper.

“I thought you were dying.”

“Would have been a damn shame for me to die without you having the pleasure of murdering me.”

Tucker slapped me on the knee, sending icy hot waves of agony through my whole leg. “I’d never murder you, J.D. I’ve got too many good war stories with you in them and it’d be a damn shame to stop telling them.”

“Why didn’t you get it?”

“Nanny-venom,” Zane said. His voice sounded worse than mine. He winced. Angry red welts covered his face. “Targets the nanomachines in your blood. It kills them and gives you a hell of an allergic reaction at the same time.”

Tucker smiled. His face was covered in tiny red spots, but to him they were nothing more than an annoyance. Smug son of a bitch.

The attack left me weak, but Abi was worse. She didn’t get the swelling like I did, but nasty hives and sections of her skin had a worrisome blackened look, like it’d been kissed by flames.

Flames. The steel door was hot to the touch. We wouldn’t be going out that way. Tucker had led us to a stairwell, and it appeared as if up and down were both viable options. Options. Options were good. The floor and stairs were smooth concrete, and the walls were undecorated cinderblock. This hadn’t been a public area of the facility, by the look of it. I struggled to remember the layout of the buildings from the diagrams on the glow cube. Would we be able to cross to the next building if we went up a level?

“Down,” Zane said between gasping breaths. “The buildings are connected below, so we should be able to get where we need to go.”

“Up,” Tucker said. “We don’t know the buildings are still connected down there, but I saw the skyway with my own eyes on the way in.”

“We’re sitting ducks up there,” said Zane.

“We’re trapped if it goes bad down there.”

I got an arm under Abi’s shoulder and helped her up. She gasped when I touched her and gritted her teeth against the pain.

“We do both,” I said to Tucker. “Take Zane and I’ll take Abi. You two should be able to punch through defenses below and take out those cannons. They’ll tear the flyers to shreds if they stay up.”

Tucker narrowed his eyes at Zane. “I go alone.”

I didn’t have it in me to argue. “Fine.”

Tucker said, “I can slip past their defenses.”

He was right. As the only unmodified person around, he had the best shot at sneaking around undetected.

“You remember what to do if the situation goes bad, don’t you?”

“Blow it up?”

“Yup.”

The stairwell was concrete and steel, crumbling from some unknown trauma. With my augmented eye, the glow of my cigarette was enough to see the dark outline of the way ahead, even once Tucker’s light was out of view. Abi moaned. Her head lolled to one side before snapping back upright again. Zane’s brow knit with worry.

The light from the cigarette was only enough when I puffed hard, so I kept a steady pull on the tobacco as best I could. As we ventured farther down, the air grew sickly and dry. It had a mummified taste of death on it, and I was glad for the spice of my smoke. At the bottom of the stairs the landing opened up into an undecorated space a few meters on a side. I helped Abi sit down on the last step and squatted down to look her in the eyes.

She met my gaze, held it for a few seconds, then blinked, unfocused. Zane handed her a flask and she took little sips from it.

Zane pulled me to the side. “She needs rest.”

“How long can we wait?”

“We have some time. Tucker will draw most of the attention. If we wait here, we can sneak through.”

It made sense. “Except that’s setting Tuck out to dry. He’ll take all of the focus if we’re not in position when he strikes.”

“The goal is to get Abi to the main building where she can link. Tuck knows his place in this.”

“He’d be killing himself as a distraction.”

I glanced to Abi, but she wasn’t sitting anymore. She had a look of cold determination on her face and she stood with fists balled at her sides. She took smooth, controlled breaths through her nose.

“We’re going,” she said, leaving no room for argument.

The steel door at the bottom of the steps opened onto another hallway. A short distance in, the hallway opened up into a larger room, the extent of which wasn’t lit by my dim cigarette. The place had a musty feel—air heavy with silence. The darkness seemed to press in, tempting me to use the tech in my eye even more to see into it.

The figure stood at the edge of blackness, staring at us with two pinpoints of blue light.

Zane drew.

Then it was gone, melted into the dark as soundlessly as if it were a shadow.

There were only a few paces between the door and the larger room. We crossed them quickly, peering cautiously around the corner as we got there. The figure was gone, disappeared somewhere into the unknowingly large room. Despite the stuffy feel of the air, the surrounding area was polished and clean. A chemical hint of recent cleaning still lingered in the air behind the musty scent of unmoved air. Shrugging, I moved into the room, headed roughly through the middle in the direction that the main building must be.

The room was huge, seeming to stretch on forever into the dark. The way footsteps echoed in the giant chamber made the effect sharper. After a distance, it was clear that the single underground room stretched below several, if not all, of the buildings in the Quintech complex. The structures above were tiny compared to the vastness of this room. Columns supported the roof, some crumbling but all still standing. The room seemed to be an open lab, littered with tables, computer equipment, and strange tech I couldn’t identify.