The Saffron Malformation (26 page)

             
Quey looked up at the roof and saw Dusty waving at him.  “Can’t get down,” he shouted to Quey.  Quey ducked as bullets ricocheted off his truck and then looked up at the top of his trailer.  He looked back at Dusty and shrugged and Dusty knew.

             
“How are we going to-” Rachel started.

             
“We jump,” Dusty told her.

             
“Jump!”

             
He looked at her and shrugged in much the same way Quey had.  “Sure.  Just to the trailer.”  Rachel looked over the edge of the roof.  There was at least five feet of pavement between them and the truck.  It looked, to her, like a gorge.

             
“You can’t be serious,” she said.

             
Dusty looked up the road toward the cliffs as the banging at the door behind him continued.  He could see the vehicles making their way down into lower Fen Quada.  “See that?” he pointed.  Rachel looked and her face fell and went pale.  “That’s a whole gang of ugly baring down on here right now.  We don’t have time to figure a better way, it’s jump or stay trapped.”

             
Rachel’s eyes shimmered.  Her hands trembled.  She wanted to throw up.

             
Dusty took her face in his hands and held her eyes to his.  “I love you darlin,” he told her.  “You know that right?”  She didn’t have to think, she closed her eyes and nodded fiercely.  It was the first time she realized just how sure of that she was.  “You know I wouldn’t consider this if I didn’t know you could do it right?”

             
She smiled at him while tears streamed down her cheeks.

             
“Don’t think about it baby, don’t even look at it, just watch me and follow after.”

             
She laughed nervously and tried to shake her head but he stopped her.  “Listen darlin, I promise, you just do this, just make this one jump with me and we’ll get somewhere far away where nothing like this can find us again.  Just do this one and you’ll never have to do another, alright?”

             
She looked into his eyes and nodded.  Terrified, gunfire cracking and filling the morning air with the smell of spent rounds, Rachel followed Dusty to the edge of the roof and climbed onto the ledge.  Hand in hand they jumped as the raiders made their way off the Costal Cliff Road and into Lower Fen Quada.

             
Some of the men who’d been in the raiding party intent on getting to the roof had come back down into the restaurant and were popping off rounds.

             
Reggie fired the rest of his clip into the restaurant, causing the broodlings to take cover as he rolled toward the truck, he didn’t notice Dusty and Rachel soaring through the air toward the rig’s trailer.  He hit one of the bandits in the throat, spraying blood and toppling him forever to the floor.  The others were either dead behind one of the holes he’d put in their cover or too heartbroken to continue shooting.

             
Dusty hit first and fell flat on his belly.  Rachel landed and rolled to the edge where she balanced for a heartbeat.  Frozen through every feature, her face was raw panic as her weight shifted the few centimeters it took to send her toppling over the side of the trailer.  Dusty reached out and caught her sleeve in his hand but it wasn’t enough.  Her hand scrambled against the edge of the truck, desperately seeking a grip where none was possible.  She fell, her head leading her body on its way to the ground.

             
Dusty shouted.

             
Quey heard the clamor of bodies colliding with the trailer and knew something wasn’t right.  He looked over just in time to see Rachel plummet from the edge, flailing.  It happened too fast.  He didn’t even have time to think before she smacked heavily against the pavement.  His stomach tightened when he saw the side of her head bounce against the street with a thick whack, a hammer breaking a coconut.

             
Dusty dangled himself from the side of the trailer and then dropped to the street below.  He and Quey hurried toward Rachel and began checking on her.  They turned her head and found blood.  Neither of them knew anything about being a doctor, but both had seen enough in their time to understand what might kill a person and what might just hamper them for a spell.  Tears poured from Dusty’s eyes.

             
Quey checked her for a pulse and found one easy enough, found her breathing too, though a bit shallower than he’d have liked.

             
“Is she?” Dusty couldn’t finish the question.

             
“Alive,” Quey assured him.

             
Reggie ran over to them and said, “Gotta move.”  It was the first time Quey noticed how loud the engines had gotten in lower Fen Quada.  They’d finally made their way down, intent on clearing the place out.

             
“Think her neck-” Dusty began but Reggie interrupted.

             
“No time to worry on that now.  I’m ‘unna load the guns in the truck, you two get her in.”  Reggie ran down the alley between two buildings across the street to where he’d left his car one block over.

             
Dusty looked at Quey pathetically and Quey nodded.  “He’s right.  If she’s hurt too bad movin her won’t matter.  Not like a doc’s gunna be on his way any tick now.”

             
People took to the streets, carrying what they could, throwing what they felt they couldn’t spare into the back seats of cars and trunks.  They loaded loved ones in with it and nearly crashed into one another in their desperate frenzy to get away from town.

Quey and Dusty finished lying Rachel on the bed in the back of the rig’s cab and looked out at the chaos.  Friends and neighbors screaming at each other, cutting each other off, ready and happy to leave the people they’ve lived with for years to die so long as they might make it out alive.

              Gunshots boomed loud and bullets tore through cars and shattered glass both in the vehicles and the storefronts.  The raid was close.

             
Reggie pulled his car beside the rig and loaded half the guns and ammo from his car into the truck and took a few pieces off the dead raiders as well.

             
“Arnie you’re with me,” Reggie shouted at the boy.  Arnie, wide eyed and breathing heavy, looked from the caravan of vehicles rolling through the streets ahead firing wildly at anything moving, to him.  “Now!  Move!” he barked and Arnie climbed out of the cab.  Nice thing about the carnage the grenade caused was that other people avoided that particular stretch of street.  Hell, some of them probably thought Quey and his crew were part of the Angels of the Brood.

             
Somewhere in Fen Quada above there was a massive explosion and a cloud of black smoke mushroomed into the sky.

             
“Know where we’re going?” Reggie asked. 

Quey nodded.

              “Thought you might.  I’ll take the kid with me and follow ya’ll outta here.”

             
Quey nodded again.  He had no words left.

             
“Come on,” Reggie said to Arnie and dashed to his car.  “You drive,” he barked and the boy nodded.  He knew it was drive or shoot at people and of the two driving was the one he was sure he could manage.

             
With everyone loaded and the chaos of the raid slowly pouring through the streets of Lower Fen Quada, the rig and the car revved their engines and rolled north toward the edge of town.

Rain and Stone

Sticklan Stone walked into Richter Crow’s office and sat down in the chair across from the desk.  Crow was on his computer finishing something Sticklan could care less about.  Sticklan waited patiently for the man to finish.

              “Thanks for coming,” Richter said.  His demeanor had changed over the last five years.  He was calmer, more professional.  Sticklan thought it might no longer be necessary to kill this man one day.

             
“Not a problem,” Stone replied.

             
“I have an assignment for you.”

             
Stone nodded and Richter passed him a sheet.  Sticklan looked at it, looked at the girl in the picture.  Her face was turned and her short dark hair fell across the little you could see, but the van parked along the street behind her was unmistakable.  Worn down and faded blue.  Sticklan glanced immediately up at Richter.  “Really?  She’s back?” he asked.

             
Richter nodded.  “Viona tried to hide accounts from me and thought I didn’t know about them.  No activity on them for years, I thought maybe they’d been forgotten after you caught up to them…” he trailed off for a moment.  “Apparently ‘Rain,’” he said the name with a bit of disgust, “Just wasn’t desperate enough until now.”

             
Sticklan looked at the picture again, then glanced up at Richter.  “You want me to kill her?”

             
Richter sighed.  “I’d like to see her first if it can be arranged.  All the things she’s done, I’d like to see her eyes before you,” he trailed off.

             
Sticklan smiled.  There was hope for this man.

             
“If you can’t, you can’t.  But I’d like you to try.”

             
“And the boy?”

             
Richter sighed.  “He’s been a lost cause from the git.”

             
Sticklan nodded.  “If I catch her, after you see her, I get her?”

             
Richter nodded.

             
“Anything I want?”

             
Richter nodded again.  “I don’t care.”

             
Sticklan smiled.  He wished he could see the young woman’s eyes clearly in the image, the solidness in them, then he could really relish how much he’d enjoy breaking her and watching that fire go out.

             
A few days later they got a new lead and a new picture, this one a bit clearer, and it troubled Sticklan but he wasn’t sure why.  Still that pushed him out on the road a few days earlier than he’d planned but that was okay by him.  It was good to be away from the house, from the day-to-day banality that came with dealing with men like Richter Crow.  No matter how dull the endless highway became Sticklan Stone preferred it to the company he found when not on assignment.  Richter was a man who believed he was special, the sort of fella that’s forgotten he’s just as fragile as everyone else.  Sticklan had watched him pine over his website, checking how many people are watching him, following him on various social networks, linking to the universal network so he can broadcast his lies and nonsensical self-praise across the galaxy.  The speeches and vlogs were humble in words but the very fact that they existed was self-important.  He was a man who’s allowed himself to believe he’s special in some way.  He’s a man who doesn’t realize how easily he can feel pain and how simply he can die.  Worst of all he’d instilled these ideas into his two oldest sons.  They sit in front of their computers, watching themselves as they talk to nobody about nothing and revel in the number of times people click on their prosaic proclamations regarding mundane superficialities.  I saw this movie.  It was good.  The new Tensight album is a little weak though track three is okay.  Bla bla bla put a bullet to their brain and make the world a better place.

             
That brought his thoughts to the other two, the children that had been ignored so completely by his ego.  He never caught Viona engaging in such self-importance, a quality she’d instilled in Leone and one she’d caught from her mother most likely.  He didn’t know them as well as he did the older boys but he liked them better, which was why he hated them.  It was a shame what had happened five years ago.  Though it did get him out of the house.

             
Sticklan found himself, on those long stretches of road between places, as the landscape passed and changed beyond the windows of his car, daydreaming of shattering Richter’s self-image and filling his eyes with realization.  He wanted to see it click in the man’s mind, wanted to see the disbelief give way and suddenly he’d understand that he was nothing more than a body and thoughts.  Everyone is muscle spasms and electrical discharges coursing with bio-chemical fluids, nothing important and nothing all that different from an insect.  Men like him don’t know that about themselves.  Men like him were the most fun to kill.

             
The road forked ahead and Sticklan took the wheel and pumped the break.

             
“Auto drive disabled,” a breathy female voice informed him as he rolled to a stop.  He’d chosen the voice because it reminded him of a woman he’d known once back when he was Butcher Baker—man how long ago that seemed now.  Years, more than he could count and more than enough to make him question whether or not he’d dreamed that entire part of his life.  Only the occasional special about, ‘the cereal killer called Butcher Baker who has to this day not yet been identified,’ assured him it was real.  He heard they were going to make a movie about it, the uncatchable one that suddenly stopped.

He came closer to the split in the road and slowed, looking down one stretch of highway and up another.  “Now where did you go?” he sighed to the empty car.  His eyes looked this way then that again and finally fell upon and lingered on a place not far down the road.  It looked to be a shitty diner.  The sign read Roaders Dine Out.

A few hundred kilometers back he’d stopped and shown the picture of the girl, Rain she called herself, to some people at a place similar to this and someone had said they’d seen her heading this way, though they couldn’t be sure where exactly she was going.  The next stop he’d made was a bust, apparently she hadn’t felt the need to stretch out in a while, but this place might just prove lucky again.  He could feel the fourteen hours in the car in his joints and as a tight discomfort in his back.  The girl certainly couldn’t have gone much longer without a stop.  If he was this uncomfortable in his luxury car she had to feel like the victim of a torture device in that shitty van.

             
Pressing the accelerator he turned left toward the Dine Out and started another daydream.  This one involved the girl, Rain.  Stupid cunt thought she was smart, probably deemed herself brave too.  Everyone’s always so smart and brave until they see their own blood.  Then it’s amazing how little they know and how fast they discover the virtue of cowardess.  Weeping and begging they discover bravery isn’t for those who don’t want to suffer in their final hours.  They turn their backs on the causes they felt so passionately about only minutes ago and forsake their life’s works and ambitions for the sweet comfortable release he can provide with a single slice of his blade.

             
The Dine Out was what he expected, a good place to come for a heart attack but little else.  He pulled into a space close to the building.  He noticed only two other cars and a rig parked on the gravel surrounding the place as he stepped out into the cool breeze.

He inspected the Dine Out’s patrons.  The first was a young family in sweats and pajamas trying to stay comfortable on their long haul to wherever.  The mother and father seemed to be in their early thirties and the two kids had yet to hit puberty.  The other car belonged to a single guy who sat on the chipped paint of his hood eating a burger in scruffy jeans and a tee shirt.  He threw a few fries in his mouth as he mulled the burger and swallowed once before sipping a dark beer from a plastic cup.  The car looked like it’d seen its share of kilometers and then some.  He didn’t see whomever the rig belonged to but figured he was in the sleeper catching a nap.  Whatever the case, no one here looked dangerous so he started for the window.

              “Help ya?” a fat balding man asked from the other side of the counter.

             
“Depends on how sharp your memory is,” Sticklan told him.  He held up his sheet and showed the cook a picture of the girl he was after.  “Seen her?”

             
The cook took a long look at the picture, squinting his eyes and thinking.  “Not a very good picture,” he complained.

             
“Goes by Rain,” Sticklan added.

             
The man looked at the girl with short dark hair and a simple, slightly blurred face again.  Suddenly he snapped his finger and looked over his shoulder.  “Billy!  Billy,” he shouted.

             
“What?” someone hollered from the back.

             
“Come look at this.”

             
There was a commotion, metal clanking and dishware crashing together.  A moment later what Sticklan assumed was Billy came walking from the back wiping his hands on a white apron with grease stains.  “What?” the young man asked annoyed.

             
“Wasn’t this girl here last night?”

             
Billy took a look at the picture on the screen and started nodding almost immediately, “Yeah, I believe she was.”

             
Sticklan smirked.

             
“Think she was called Rain, or something,” Billy shrugged.

             
“Yeah,” the pudgy bald man smiled.  “That’s right, I thought I recognized her.  She was here.”

             
Sticklan looked up and down the empty road.  He could hear something, the rumbling of thunder but it was clear skies as far as he could see.  “She here with anyone?” Sticklan asked, not looking at them.

             
The cooks’ looked at each other and started shaking their heads.  “Don’t think so,” the fat one said.

             
“Though she did spend some time with the moonshiner,” Billy added.

             
“Moonshiner?” Sticklan asked, his attention returned to them.

             
“Yeah, Pickens and Zaul,” Billy said.  “Just the best damn moon whiskey you can get.” 

             
When Sticklan didn’t react the pudgy one added, “That’s right, the two of them had dinner and then he just opened a pair of barrels and let the roaders have at it.  Seemed crazy to me, that Pickens and Zaul shine fetches a high price.  Highest outside genuine distillery whisky on this rock, but then who can get that?” he asked with a huff and a chuckle.

             
The thunder was growing closer and Sticklan noticed there was no break in it.  He looked up the road and saw it wasn’t thunder at all but a caravan of some sort rolling in from the east.  “When did they leave?” Sticklan asked.

             
“She left about three hours ago.  He must have stayed a half hour more.”

             
“They didn’t leave together?” Sticklan asked, looking back at them.

             
They shook their heads in unison.

             
“Naw,” Billy said.  “She headed north, I think.  He musta pressed west.”

             
Sticklan looked back to the road and saw motorcycles riding two by two toward the diner with a pair of cars and a rig behind them.

             
“Don’t pay them any mind,” the bald man assured him.  “Brood knows we got nothing worth their time here, and we keep quiet about their travels.  In exchange they pay for what they get and keep the killing away from our place.”

             
Sticklan looked at the man then asked him, “No one else was with her, you’re sure?”

             
The bald man shook his head, “Not that I saw.”

             
Sticklan looked at Billy who shook his head.  “Guess someone coulda been in the back of that van but if they were they stayed put the whole night.”

             
Sticklan nodded slowly, thoughtfully.  Bitch was playing games, trying to be smart.  It was annoying.  He was going to catch up to her eventually.

             
He stood watching the Angels of the Brood roll in for a few moments before the bald man asked, “Interest you in a bite?”             

“No,” Sticklan replied without a glance back.  He smiled as the Brood pulled into the parking lot and thought that maybe he wouldn’t have to catch up to her at all.

              The brood stopped in the spaces around his car and let their vehicles sputter into silence.  “Gunna need a lot of food,” the one in the middle with a thick beard yelled as he stepped off his bike.  His voice sounded a little like his motorcycle, beat to shit from years of wear.  “Road got us a mighty hunger.”