Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (41 page)

His throat hurt from crying and screaming. When Zack had broken the news about Samm, he’d wanted to smash his sys and kill all the prisoners and race home to his family. But he couldn’t do any of that.

“Got it!” Zack responded. “I’ve already cut loose a few fighters to help you tie things down there. They should be a few minutes away. I’m on the road right behind a carload of Newties heading for the border. We killed some, took some prisoner. Sending a few of them back toward you, too. They hit Colby— one rape, one murder, that’s all I know.”

Sport.
Newt’s men had joined the defensive army for the sport of it and for whatever they could steal, whoever they could rape along the way.

Zack finished with an order Drew was glad to hear. “As soon as you can, pull a couple dozen people away, leave someone else to deal with the prisoners, and head back to Blackjack.”

A dozen more fighters arrived in two trucks and within forty-five minutes Drew’s hill was secure, with only a few wounds suffered on his side. A half hour after that, a bus pulled up and three more of Zack’s men, waving guns and yelling, tumbled four prisoners out the door. Not khakis. Drew recognized a couple of the scarred, hulking mercs who’d attacked Samm’s soldiers during the war games and invaded Blackjack days before that.

They herded the new arrivals with the survivors of the battle and tied them all together in a small clearing. Growling mercs bound and linked to scared-looking khakis. They now had thirty-three prisoners. What the hell were they going to do with them? Zack didn’t seem to be worrying about that, so maybe he shouldn’t either.

Three cars came, carrying more soldiers. One of them jumped out and ran to Drew. “Zack says we’re to go to Blackjack.” Things were going well, obviously. They must be pretty close to mopping up if Zack could spare so many.

He put in his second call to Jo.

She sounded strong, ready for whatever news he had.

“Jo, we’re heading back to help out there.”

“Already?”

“The main group of Rockies was all clumped together. And Newt’s mercs, quite a lot of them, showed up and they’re causing trouble.” That was putting it mildly. “But we’re doing fine. Still fighting in Colby, lost a few, got some wounded. Zack’s leading a group all the way to the border, chasing some of Newt’s trash and just to be sure nothing else is going on. He’s already got people scavenging for Rockies and Newties in the woods and on the trails. He’s going to round back this way and re-collect his main force as he goes. We’ve got prisoners here. Three dozen. I don’t know if there are more somewhere else. We need to interrogate them, so Zack will be bringing them back to town later. Andy and I’ll be sending our cars back with just a driver to help transport them.”

“The jail won’t hold them!”

“Zack said we’d make do. He said not to worry about it.”

“Okay.” Jo sounded doubtful.

“Expect us within two hours. I’m bringing twenty or thirty or so troops, depending on how many we need to watch the prisoners here and finish up the fighting.”

“Great work, Drew. We’ll watch out for things here in the meantime.”

“Jo—” He held back the tears, wanting to be as strong as she sounded. “You just hang on.”

“You too, Sweetie.”

* * *

Jo thought it was probably good news that so many of Newt’s people had run off for the border, hard as that made it for the forces there. It left fewer of them in town to attack Blackjack. Maybe Newt had only wanted to kill Samm, cut off the Colemans’ strong arms. But maybe he’d planned more and his plans hadn’t worked out.

Judith had gone to lie down. Jo was sitting in her favorite chair, in her own living room. Her sys buzzed again. Frank.

“I’ve got Lizzie. I’m bringing her home.”

Relief. “Lizzie? Where was she?”

“Scorsi’s Luck. She torched it. She yelled ‘fire’ in the front door, people started running out, and then she ran back and lit the fire she’d laid along the rear wall. I found her hiding nearby with a gun in her hand watching the folks at Scorsi’s go nuts.” He chuckled.

Well, at least the kid had warned the patrons.

Frank went on. “Everybody over there has been pretty busy trying to put out that fire.” He laughed. “I still got Billy’s body in the car.”

Gruesome. He was just a kid. A murdering bastard of a kid, but…

If Newt had been planning to attack Blackjack, he must have gone apoplectic when he discovered that not only did he have no troops, he had a fire to deal with. She loved the idea of Lizzie’s fire diverting a raid, even if it was no more than possibility.

She was feeling calmer now. Less likely to burst into tears, or start trembling, or vomiting, or kill someone. Maybe it was Lizzie’s insane— brave?— act of vengeance that was settling her down. Or Drew’s message of victory on the battlefield.

“Bring Lizzie right to my apartment, Frank.”

“Will do.”

“How long do you think it will take you to investigate Samm’s murder?”

“Investigate?”

“Question Ky. Question Newt, Larry, the whole bunch. Find someone alive and present who was behind it. You don’t think those two boys and Hannah did it on their own, do you? Don’t you think Newt was planning to do something more before the casino went up in flames?”

Was she going to have to write him the whole story?

“Oh, right. Of course.”

“And then there’s that information we got for you about who killed Madera. Roll it all up into a nice ball, Frank. A plot to murder Samm and attack Blackjack. Lizzie, a hero. See what you can do.” Yes, her mind was definitely working again. She would spin this thing all the way out the door and down the street and up Newt Scorsi’s ass.

By the time they’d finished their message, he was bringing Liz in the door of Jo’s apartment. The kid looked defiant.

“Thanks, Frank, now go deliver your body. Lizzie, let’s talk.” Frank left; Lizzie sat down on the edge of the couch.

“They deserved it, Jo. I wanted them gone. No more Scorsis. Just gone!”

“You could have gotten killed. Arrested for arson.”

“Frank wouldn’t hold me. And sometimes you just don’t think about getting killed. All I could think about was Samm.”

True.

“You shouldn’t have done it, Lizzie, but the fact is, you may have kept us from more attacks, more killings.”

Lizzie’s face brightened.

“I said may.”

She smiled.

“What I’d really like you to do now is go to your mother. See how she is. Then go to your room. Some of the troops are coming back to protect Blackjack. You can join them when they get here.”

Lizzie jumped up, ran to Jo, wrapped her arms around her and squeezed so hard Jo thought her ribs would crack. Then she ran out the door.

She’d be all right. Jo walked to the living room window of her corner suite. She watched smoke drifting away from Scorsi’s Luck, looked out on the scattered lights of the strip, dimmed by the first pink light of dawn.

A dark green Electra was rolling slowly into the west driveway. Jo moved back to the bedroom to watch it pull into the parking lot.

Rica stepped out of the car. There, passing under a light. The auburn hair. She was walking so slowly, her head down. Where had she been? But she was back. Jo felt relieved and wasn’t sure why. She needed to ask her about Owen.

I think you’re not there

Well, I’d tried, but Hannah was gone and I couldn’t be sure she would die. Funny, wasn’t it, how thinking “I tried” never made anything better. Not for me, anyway. Samm dead. Was Jo broken? I didn’t think that was possible. Judith? No. They’d recover. They’d all recover and Zack would be the new general.

Lizzie would either be part of the army or running it, some day when she got things a little more under control. Or she’d be a really dangerous merc. And Drew would be running the country and worrying about his sister. A long time from now. What would I be doing then?

Drained, sick, my insides numb, I felt tears starting and stopping and drying and impossible to call up again.

There were employees watching the locked doors of the casino, several with weapons. Pistols. Knives. The janitor who’d been guarding Owen let me in.

“The army’s coming back soon,” he said. “They won. I heard they’re bringing prisoners.”

One battle down, how many to go?

“I saw smoke at Scorsi’s. Do you know what that was about?”

He laughed. “Young Lizzie. She set the place on fire.”

Scary kid. I felt myself smile. I wanted to get to know Lizzie better.

“Owen?”

The man looked at the ground. “He brought the killers to Samm. He was a spy.”

Oh, god. Newt must have planned to use him, kept him as a deadly secret from me.

Leaving one light on like a signal to Samm ascending to a heaven I didn’t believe in, I threw myself down on my bed. Stood. Fumbled in the drawer for my sys. I needed to talk to someone. Not Gran. I wanted to talk to Sylvia.

I began the message, watching the words float in the air.

“I’m surrounded by grief tonight. A good soldier is dead. A killer got away. One of them, anyway. The grief of his family, and I grieve for him too, brings up all the loss I’ve ever had, the deaths and disappearances and the blunders and the cruelties and the defections.

“Is there really nothing missing from your life, as you once said? Such an odd, cold way to say it. As if it were some facile lesson you learned from him, from The Simpleton. The Guy of Glib and Brainless Words. The Cock of Conventional Wisdom. He said it, didn’t he? And I’ll bet he also said, ‘Don’t answer her. It’s better that way.’ Or maybe you said it all by yourself. It’s better that way. Better than what? How can there be nothing missing from your life when you’re missing from mine? Is that just my lunatic ego talking or is there some natural balance you’re defying?

“Are you lying or do you actually discard bleeding pieces of your life? Are you lying? Or are you really just not there?

“I go to you, sometimes, at night, when I look at the sky and imagine East. I can see you lying in your bed and I touch you. Do you feel it? I think you do.

“So are you lying? Or am I making it all up and you’re just not there?

“Why am I sending messages to a woman who isn’t there?

“I think you’re lying.

“I think you’re not there.”

I stopped, staring at the last words, “not there,” as they formed and hung in the air, bright against the one-lamp dimness of the room.

I opened my mouth again and said “send to…”

And stopped.

Why am I sending a message to a woman who isn’t there?

I think you’re lying.

I think you’re not there.

“Send to…

“Delete.”

I must have fallen asleep. When I looked at the clock three hours had passed. What woke me?

Sounds in the street below. I went to the window. Soldiers returning from the front. Cars dropping people off in the lot, then driving away again. I thought I saw Drew. Doc. Someone being taken out of a car on a litter, a bloody bandage wrapped around his middle. Two men in khaki being marched off with a pistol pointed at them. Prisoners. Rockies. Where were they taking them? Jo was there, talking to Drew. Andy, my piano man. Jo nodded, turned and walked back to the casino. Her body stiff, held upright by strength alone, I guessed.

I watched for a while. This wasn’t everyone, not yet. But things looked under control.

A sound behind me. The door. Someone was at the door. Did they want me to do something, help the soldiers somehow?

Irrational wisps— it was Hannah, coming back to kill me. Newt, enraged because he’d lost his Gullwing. My elbow hurt. My eyes felt crusty, the lids sore. I grabbed my pistol.

“Who’s there?”

Another knock, a light rap. Had there been an answer? I hadn’t heard one.

“Just a minute.”

Would the chain on the door hold? I slid it into the slot and opened the door a crack, feeling like some paranoid old woman from a Twentieth Century movie.

Jo. She stood straight, shoulders back, but the posture was strained. It was an effort for her not to slump. I unhooked the chain, opened the door wide.

She marched in, standing just inside the door, glaring at me. “Owen,” she said.

“I heard.”

“Did you know?”

I felt heat crawl up my neck, acid and ice in my stomach. “Of course I didn’t know! What the hell are you talking about? I told you Newt wasn’t telling me everything. Do you honestly think I’d— he kept the important one, the one he was using to— he kept that from me!” I began to cry. I hadn’t dried up, after all.

“You should have found out!”

“Yes, I should have.”

She watched me for a minute, then she nodded, tears in her own eyes.

“I needed to— I don’t know.” She didn’t hate me, didn’t blame me. I felt the ice in my gut melt. She walked the rest of the way in, her body still rigid. I raised my good arm, touching her shoulder. There was no give to it. I stroked it, ran my fingers down her arm. She leaned forward and touched my lips with a tentative kiss. I pulled her closer, she rested her forehead on my shoulder. I rubbed her back for a second and kissed the top of her head. I think I moved toward the bed first.

Splashed down, they say, and floated for a little while

The sys on the nightstand next to my head was buzzing. How? I hadn’t left mine out. It was still in the pocket of my pants. On the floor. Bright sunlight was coming in the window. Something else was buzzing, too, humming really. Outside somewhere far away.

Next to me, Jo shot upright and reached across me.

The voice coming from her sys was Zack’s. The static behind his voice was a much louder and more distinct version of the muffled hum I was hearing through my window. Angry voices. Shouts.

“…They want more blood.” Now I could make out a word, a chant, really, loud and close to Zack.

“Samm! Samm! Samm!”

“I’m going to give the order. I might as well. They’ll do it without one…”

His voice stopped.

Jo was out of bed, searching for her clothes.

“I have to go, Rica.”

We took Jo’s floater for the sake of speed, even though Newt’s casino was no more than half a mile away. The closer we got the more the sounds took shape: “Samm! Samm! Samm!” We were two blocks away when we saw the smoke. Again?