Read Peace in an Age of Metal and Men Online

Authors: Anthony Eichenlaub

Peace in an Age of Metal and Men (6 page)

BOOK: Peace in an Age of Metal and Men
6.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Chapter 9

A man named Keith Woeberg ran a pig farm about a kilometer north of town. Hard to miss. It didn’t take me long to find it. There were pens and the stink of pigs. There was even a sign declaring the place as Woeberg’s Farm on the walkway. Seemed like the right place. Only, something was very wrong with that pig farm.

There were no pigs.

I pulled a piece of grass and stuck it in my teeth to help me think. The farm was huge and mechanized. A tall, metal barn loomed to the right of the path, with soil around it so grease-stained nothing grew. The other side of the barn was a series of fenced-off pens—some outdoors, some partially shaded. The nearest ones were empty. Buzzards circled lazily above.

The farm made up for its lack of pigs with an excess of stink.

If this was where the video came from, then a quick scan of the room with my glow cube would be evidence enough. There was no need to find the scruffy farmer. Once the evidence was in hand, Sheriff Flores would handle the problem. Probably. Flores would handle this locally, not bothering to bring in Trish. Zane wouldn’t have a problem with that, would he? It made me wonder why Zane thought my particular set of skills was needed.

There was nobody in sight, so I left the path and circled around the barn. The close end was a concrete loading dock, its metal doors wide open to the world. The scorching wind of the late Texas afternoon gently swayed the doors, rhythmically serenading the putrid homestead with a wailing metal-on-metal screech. The dry grass between my teeth tasted like dust.

The shadow behind the barn was deep and cool. It wasn’t cold in any real sense of the word, but it was certainly cooler than the blazing heat of the sun.

That’s when I heard the farmer.

“Here, piggy, piggy.”

The land outside of the barn was a flat stretch of dead earth. Running was an option, but talking might get me the information I needed. It just had to be done without confrontation or violence, since I was still unarmed. “Howdy,” I hollered. “Reckon you and I have some business.”

“Here, piggy, piggy,” called the farmer. “You done volunteered to be next.”

“Howdy!” There was no way he couldn’t hear me. He was calling to the pig at half my volume, so unless the man was completely deaf, he’d heard me just fine.

But he didn’t react to my voice.

The farmer, Keith, rounded the corner. His plain white shirt was crusted with black, dried blood. His untrimmed beard stuck out at angles from his chin. In one hand he held a wicked knife; in the other he held something that appeared to be a bolt gun. When he saw me, his eyes flashed bright and his face twisted into a mask of rage.

“You!” he snarled.

He swung his heavy bolt gun up.

Too slow. I took two long steps forward and backhanded the gun aside. A shot rang out, a slug of metal launched high into the air. The farmer twisted backwards and ducked down. He held hard onto the gun. With a tinny thunk he reloaded and brought his weapon straight back up.

But I wasn’t there.

Bolt guns are short-range weapons. Heavy equipment used to slaughter pigs, longhorns, or any animal that proved itself more useful dead than alive. Bolts will easily scramble a brain from two meters, and at five they could crack a skull. Any farther and it’d leave a person with a bruise and a good story to tell.

I ran hard. Who the hell did he think I was? I sure as hell didn’t know him. My muscles—my whole body was sore, but it felt good to stretch my legs. By the time Keith was back up and around the corner I was halfway down the length of the barn, where I skidded to a halt. There was a painted metal door, pockmarked with rust. I grabbed the doorknob with my three metal fingers and pulled, ripping the door from its hinges.

A wave of rotten stench rolled out of the gaping door. Bile welled up in my belly again, but I bit it back and plunged into the darkness. The buzz of flies welcomed me, enveloping everything in white noise. They landed, crawled across my face and arm. It was all I could do to ignore them.

Light trickled in from a window set high in the far wall, one that likely looked out over the slaughterhouse. A polished steel table dominated the center of the room. Behind it was another door. All of the corners of the room were inky blackness, made more so by the harsh light at my back.

I leapt up and slid across the table, meaning to head straight for the door. Soon as I hit the surface, though, I understood my mistake.

The table was slippery as snot on a glass doorknob. My butt slid fast, throwing off my balance and landing me hard on my back.

Keith was at the door. “You think you can come back here?” There was an edge of pain in the farmer’s voice. “You took my Suzie and now you think you can take my pigs?”

“Do I know you?” I didn’t. Who did he think I was? I spun, kicked the table hard, and made for the door. The table tipped and I heard a grunt from the farmer. My shoulder hit the door, and I was through before he was able to fire another shot.

My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom of the building any more than my nose had adjusted to the stench. Fat flies crawled over my skin and I had to shake them free before moving again.

The floor was a metal grate, slick with blood and filth. The door to my left opened easily, so I took it. This door had a solid feel, so I slammed it behind me and braced myself against it. The flies were thicker there, buzzing so loud it sounded like a band saw cutting oak.

Nobody ever wants to see the inside of a slaughterhouse. They think of a pig farm as a magical place where cute piggies go in and ham steaks come out. Hooks, knives, pliers, hammers, bone saws, and bolt guns hung on pegs. Chains—filthy chains—dangled from a dark ceiling. The whole place reeked of death and pig shit. There was blood everywhere: dried blood, fresh blood, slick blood, and hardened blood all across the table, all over the floor. Even the metal grate of the floor was caked with ichor. Like before, I had to force back the urge to vomit. Unlike before, I failed.

I turned and emptied my gut onto the ichor-covered floor. The sharp burn of whiskey and stomach acid coated my mouth and overwhelmed my nose.

“Shouldn’t a come back here, Tom,” called the farmer. “You know what I got for you.” There was a click and a low hum, presumably the bolt gun powering up.

The farmer thought I was someone else, an enemy of his. Why? He was going to shoot me on sight, which put a kink in my plans to talk things out. Could he even hear me? I pressed my palm to my forehead. There had to be a better plan.

Of course, there was. Violence.

No. It was a matter of principle. I’d die right there if it meant proving that I could go without violence. I’d meet a horrible, violent end just to prove it to myself. Shit. That didn’t prove anything, did it?

“C’mon out. Get what’s coming, Tom,” said the farmer on the other side of the door. His heavy footsteps started again, clomping past my door and farther down the hall. He must not have known where I was. He was trying to draw me out.

Then I saw the hook. It hung from the ceiling right where I’d seen it in the video. Dirty, black, and wicked, it had held the body of a boy less than a day ago. The sausage machine was there too, jammed up in the corner. This was where I needed to scan. A sample from the floor and a scan of the area was all I needed.

My cube lit the room with a flickering green glow. The scan started, lights taking everything in. With a scrap of cloth from my shirt, I sopped up some of the muddy blood on the floor as the cube worked through its array of scans.

A few more moments were all I needed. Then I could run.

The footsteps had stopped.

Where was he? He’d been clomping down the hall, past the room I’d gone into. How far had he gotten? I held my breath and pressed an ear up against the steel door. It was cold against my face. Cold and silent.

Thoomp!
Something hit me hard in the ribs, sending waves of fire through my left side. I dropped to my knees and spun to see Keith at the opposite end of the room. His boots were off and his face was a mix of triumph and rage.

“When you ran off with Suzie, I thought of coming after you, you know.” The bolt gun clicked and hummed as another bolt locked into place.

I gasped for air, but each breath was a fresh kick of pain in my ribs.

He stepped closer, leveling the bolt gun at my head. Behind him, the glow cube flickered through the cloud of flies, finishing its scan.

“A farmer can’t leave his pigs, can he? Not when he’s got no kids and no wife. Never had kids, but you”—he kicked me hard right where the bolt had tenderized my ribs—“took my damn wife!”

The floor hit my face. I felt bad for the guy. He’d had a tough life. He was a victim of this as much as anyone, maybe even as much as those kids he killed. It’s hard to hate a guy who’s had it so tough.

But I managed it, anyway.

The farmer shook his head. “Tom,” he said, leveling the bolt gun at my head. “You got no idea how good this is gonna make me feel.”

I sucked in breath through my teeth, reached up with my metal hand, and gripped the business end of the bolt gun so that it was aimed straight at my palm. He’d have to be a damn fool to fire with the barrel blocked like that.

An explosion of light and noise ripped the two of us apart. My arm thrown backwards, twisting me and sending a fresh batch of pain through my ribs. Everything went silent, replaced by the ring of damaged eardrums.

Keith got it worse. The impact of the bolt with my indestructible hand sent shockwaves back down the barrel of the gun. The whole thing shattered under the pressure and shards of it peppered the surrounding area, including the poor farmer’s chest and arm. He staggered back.

It was my chance. I struggled to my feet, staggered forward, and pegged him to the wall with my metal forearm.

“Listen up.” I met his gaze, scowl for scowl. “You’re done. I don’t want to do nothing to you and you’re disarmed, so—”

He wasn’t disarmed.

His knife plunged into my belly and he spat in my face.

I took half a step back, punched the man in the gut, then lifted him high in the air by the ribcage. I sent him up, above me, thankful that my metal arm was long enough that he wasn’t able to stab me again.

Slamming him down hard on the table, I pulled out the needle-nose pliers I’d taken from the wall. I jammed it into his ear, nabbed a little tag of metal, and yanked. Blood and wire pulled free, more than I thought possible. His screams pierced the haze of my ringing ears. Wires just kept coming. His blade dropped to the floor.

Once the tech was out of that ear, I flipped him and pulled out the one on the other side.

“You need to listen,” I said. “And these aren’t helping you do it.”

His eyes regarded me with pain and fear. His body was so tense he seemed frozen to the spot.

I leaned down close to him and said in the clearest, calmest voice I could muster, “I’m not Tom. There’s no more pigs on this farm. You’d best go after Suzie, because there’s nothing good that’s going to happen here when these townsfolk figure out what you’ve been feeding them.”

He stared at me slack-jawed. Blood covered the sides of his face.

Clutching my bleeding belly, I staggered out of the room. After looking back a few times to make sure he wasn’t following, I did a quick check of the wound.

It was ugly. A deep, gaping hole oozed a river of blood. Pressure. It needed pressure. And stitches. The farmer’s house wasn’t far away. Maybe I’d find a kit there and I could stitch up. Maybe there was a place in the barn where the man worked on pigs. He would have some basic veterinary supplies.

Sunlight pierced right into my skull when I stepped outside. Then the dizziness hit.

Right about there was where I collapsed.

Chapter 10

The thick odor of fine barbecue tickled my senses as deep sleep grudgingly gave me up. I didn’t open my eyes at first; I just soaked in that smell. There wasn’t any pain. Everything was calm. Finally, peace was all I could sense. There really isn’t any better peace than that of a good barbecue. I pulled in a long, slow breath. Beef brisket, I thought. Someone who knew what they were doing was cooking because there wasn’t too much spice, but a perfect amount of char.

There was something else, though. It was just behind the beautiful scent of charred meat. The sour sting of rot hung in the air.

Gears started turning. Where were my aches? The painful reminders of my scrapes and bruises were completely gone. There wasn’t even any pain where I’d been stabbed in the gut.

My eyes snapped open.

A too-bright light shone down on me, eclipsed by a man’s shaggy silhouette. He leaned over me with a razor-sharp scalpel in one hand and a red-hot poker in the other.

“Mornin’,” said the farmer, his scruffy beard sticking out around a grimy surgical mask. He fumbled with his tools, getting them both in his left hand so he could offer his right for a shake. “Name’s Keith. Keith Woeberg.”

“Crow,” I said. “J.D.” My right arm wouldn’t move.

“Oh, right.” Keith reached down at something I couldn’t see, something on my chest. With a tug he removed it.

All of my pain hit like a longhorn running. I choked back a scream. Nearly blacked out.

Keith took a step back. The red-hot rod gave him an ominous cast. “I’m done. Got her all cauterized for you.”

 

I felt my belly with my fingers. Sure enough, where the cut had been there was a jagged series of bumps. My fingers still came away wet, but it wasn’t a gusher. Gingerly, I pushed myself up on my elbows.

Then crashed back down.

“You lost a bit of blood.” He nodded to a couple of empty plastic bags. “It’ll take some time for the synth to replace it for you.”

I lifted myself again, then swung my feet around so I could sit up. Keith had fixed me in just about the filthiest operating room there’d ever been. There were flies everywhere, and the steel table was a slick mixture of old blood and new. I only hoped that I had enough blood nannies left to fight off the dozen infections that Keith had probably given me.

“’Preciate it,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Well, seemed like patching the hole was the right thing to do after stickin’ you.” He peered at me, squinting. “You care to explain for me why you looked like Tom?”

“Can’t say that I understand it myself.” My hat was on the table next to me so I picked it up, cleaned it as best I could, and put it on.

He blinked a few times and shook his head as if to clear it. “You messed up my headgear something serious, then everything went to shit. Once I saw you weren’t Tom, I figured I’d better fix you up.”

Keith offered me an arm. I ignored his help and hopped down to the floor on my own. The dizziness nearly dropped me, but a hand on the table was all I needed to keep my balance. After a minute, I was walking again.

“Well, Mr. Crow.” Keith’s voice was flat. “What business you got here?”

Did he know? It seemed odd, but this polite farmer in front of me didn’t give me the feeling of someone who would kill children. “Maybe Zane forged the video.” That didn’t make sense either. Why did Zane want me to be here so badly?

“Come again?”

The glow cube was still on the table, so I snatched it up and shoved it in my ammo pouch. The information it gathered might be useful, but I wasn’t quite ready to hand it over to the town’s sheriff.

The first step lit my ribs on fire. The second was worse. It took a minute to regain my composure. “Keith,” I said. “You notice anything funny going on in town? Anything that doesn’t belong?”

Keith seemed to think about that for a minute. “Swallow Hill’s nothing but simple. Small town, we keep to ourselves. Some small trade for goods, but no real outside contact. Folks like it that way.” He touched the table, where sticky blood coated everything. “Mr. Crow, what’s happening here?”

“Haven’t figured it yet.”

“But where are my pigs?” His voice was getting high. Panicked. “I looked. All my pigs are gone. Where are they?”

I braced myself against the pain and pushed my way out of the room into the big slaughterhouse. From there, I made my way outside, squinting at the setting sun.

“Thought you said it was morning,” I said.

“Figure of speech. It’s still afternoon.”

“That bank still open? How long was I out?”

He blinked at me. “Most places close during the hot part of the day and open around evening and stay open past sunset. Why do you need a bank?”

“Why does anyone?”

“Well, changing money, I suppose.” He scratched at his scruffy beard and sent a dozen flies into the air. “Long-distance transactions. Savings. I don’t know. All my loans are community backed, so I’ve never much had a use for a bank.”

“Exactly.”

He fell in step next to me. The pain in my ribs felt like a fresh stab wound every time I took a breath, but the actual stab wound felt numb. More than once I stumbled and Keith had to get an arm under me to keep me from falling. More than once I shoved him away and stood on my own.

When we reached the main street, I found a nice bench and had myself a sit. Keith plopped down next to me. There were more people out this time of day. Every one of them gave me the stink-eye as they passed, though now I didn’t blame them. I was just about as bad as Keith; blood drenched my torn shirt.

I didn’t know what I was looking for. Part of me wanted to get an idea of who went into the bank. Instinct told me that if that was a base of operations, it probably was best if I did some survey before going in. Zane must have sent me here for something and if that was the case then I wanted to know everything that was happening in town. Another part of me thought it might be nice to sit awhile. A long while.

Nobody went into the bank. Nobody came out.

“Well, I don’t remember the last time I ever went to a bank,” said Keith. “Been years since I used cash for anything. Got it all up here now.” He tapped a finger on his forehead. “Headchecks. You switched yet?”

I grunted something that I thought might be interpreted as an answer.

“Well, it sure is nice. Stars being mostly credits in the system now. Cash is for outsiders. This way, I just think my money to someone and they got it.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s been common around here awhile now.”

The man who had been winning poker left the tavern. He looked around, then marched straight to the bank. Apparently his winning streak had held, because he carried a pack that seemed heavy with coins.

“He uses coins,” I said.

Keith squinted. “Can’t play poker with headchecks.”

“Is he a local?”

“You don’t just think it, though. It’s all up in the neuro-tech. You think images to unlock the transaction. Usually you pick images that you wouldn’t usually think of—aw, dammit I just thought of mine.”

I stood up. A wave of dizziness hit me. I sat back down.

“Hold on,” said Keith. He closed his eyes, pensive thought on his face. “There. Got it locked up again. Now as long as I don’t think—dammit. Hold on.”

Standing up slowly this time, I made my way across the street to the bank. Keith didn’t follow. I pulled the heavy steel door open and slipped inside. Harsh white lights stung my eyes. Straight ahead sat a single teller’s desk: polished steel with a gold inlay. A steel railing separated the teller’s desk from what was presumably the customer section of the bank. Behind the teller’s desk was a wall of steel and black metal. Set inside that reinforced wall was an outline of a door with no hint of doorknob. The poker player was nowhere to be seen.

The hum of power vibrated in the floor and the teller’s desk lit up. Behind it, the projected image of a perky, young blonde appeared. Her image seemed to tap her fingernails on the desk as she silently regarded me. Her smile was wide and almost made it up to her eyes.

“Can I help you?”

I quit my rubbernecking and stepped up to the desk. Hat held close to my chest, I bowed my head slightly and cleared my throat. “Looking to put something in safety deposit, ma’am.”

Her eyebrows shot up. She acted just like a person, but it was hard to know if she was a projected image of a real worker or just a clever machine. Maybe this was a testament to how good machines have gotten. Or maybe it reflected poorly on the state of humanity.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said. “There are no safety-deposit boxes in this location.”

“You sure?” I leaned close to her flickering, projected face. She was semi-transparent and close up it was easy to see the door behind her. “’Cause, I can see the door to the vault right there and it makes not one bit of sense for a bank to have a vault but not rent out space in it.”

She blinked. “Come again?”

“What’s that vault for?” I leaned even closer, gripping the steel railing with both hands.

“This location does not contain a safety-deposit box. There is no vault for storing customer goods. The vault is for the sole purpose of holding cash reserves.”

I leaned back, pulled with my metal hand, and snapped a steel bar off the railing. “Whoops,” I said. With a quick twist, I bent the bar into a cane and leaned on it heavily as I walked out of the bank.

Sheriff Flores stood at the entrance, a scowl on his face. His pistol was out, but not pointed at me. He didn’t say anything, but his eyes were flashing with artificial light.

Hands raised, I said, “Just doing a little banking.” He didn’t respond, so I edged my way past him and crossed the street.

Once I was back on the bench with Keith, I lay the cane across my lap.

“Y’all are insane in this town, you know that, right?”

Keith blinked hard at me. “That you, J.D.?”

“Yup.”

“You’ve had a long day. Sun’s coming down. Should we head back to the ranch and I’ll let you bunk up at my place?”

“Nope.”

He looked at me.

“Too much work to do,” I said. “And too much walking.”

With that, I stood up and walked into the falling dusk, using the cane to keep me from stumbling. A clever man might be able to figure out this problem without violence. Maybe clever wasn’t my thing, but with enough time to ponder I was sure to come up with something.

To my surprise, Keith fell in step beside me.

“Go home, Keith.”

He didn’t answer. The sun ducked behind the horizon and soon the moon was out. As the air cooled, exhaustion crept in. Between blood loss and a poor night’s sleep, I was fading fast. It wasn’t long before the mere act of walking was making me breathe fast and my heart race.

“Nice town you have there,” I said.

“Swallow Hill wasn’t always like that.” Keith looked a mess. He spoke a little louder than was strictly necessary—probably a side effect of his ears getting messed up so badly. It was a little surprising that he could hear at all, really.

“Sorry about your ears.”

“The war messed up the town something fierce,” he continued. “It was bad before that, though. I wasn’t big enough to understand, but lots a folk didn’t come back after that. Nobody visited after the war. Nobody.”

A stray hunk of asphalt tripped me up and Keith kept me from falling. It was getting harder to focus. The road ahead doubled in my vision for a moment, but I aimed for the middle and kept walking. Abi wasn’t far. I’d make it. I had to.

“Folks fell to subsistence farming. My family’s pigs made me popular. A man has a lot of friends when he’s the only source of bacon in town. Life was good for a time. Comfortable.” A pained expression crossed his face. “Hardly anyone ever left for a while. The few goods we needed from outside were delivered by automated systems.”

“Sounds nice.”

“It was peaceful. That’s all we wanted after the war.”

That’s all anyone wanted after the war. Any war, really. After all that sacrifice, aren’t we owed a little peace? “You pay for peace,” I said. “You pay hard for it.”

A time passed with the only sound being the tap-tap of my makeshift cane on the broken road. The story of Swallow Hill saddened me. The thought of a small, peaceful town existing after the war sounded like a dream come true. Most towns had been forced into servitude to one degree or another. We in the outlands provided resources that the city consumed. Here was a town that didn’t do any of that. Here was a town that was left alone. But what did they sacrifice to gain that independence?

I stopped walking and turned to Keith. “You killed kids, Keith.”

“I know.” His lower lip trembled. “I figured it out once you wrecked my headgear.”

“You didn’t know what you were doing.”

“I should have.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Everything looked so perfect through the tech. Sounded perfect too. I should have known something was wrong. I just didn’t think…” His voice choked off in a sob.

A hundred questions swam around in my head, but I couldn’t make much sense of them in my current state. “You’re following because you want to make up for it?”

BOOK: Peace in an Age of Metal and Men
6.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

The Night Rainbow by King, Claire
House Rules by Chloe Neill
Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
Triumph by Janet Dailey
The Gorgon Festival by John Boyd
The Elephant Girl (Choc Lit) by Gyland, Henriette
Wet Part 3 by Rivera, S Jackson
Death of an Addict by Beaton, M.C.
Skin Like Dawn by Jade Alyse