Borders, Barters, and Bandits, April: Because the Free Territory and Kurian Zone find their lands subject to change of ownership, and the occasional proposal to sit down and draw up peace plans meets only with ridicule, there are few well-defined borders. Even a widely acknowledged geographic obstacle such as the Mississippi River, serving as the unofficial eastern border of the UFR, is rather porous to penetration by small parties. David Valentine crossed it a number of times in the course of his duties as a Wolf or Cat.
In the flats of the high, dry country around the Oklahoma Panhandle there's no such divider. Only a depopulated strip, perhaps fifty miles wide, where farming settlements emptied over the summer of'2074, once the locals learned that the UFR would advance no farther.
Some say the dry, flat plains unsettled soldiers used to bushwhacking their enemies from hilltop and timber. Others insist that the Kurians of the old USA's Southwest, one of the better-organized and more cooperative collections of the New Order, saw the coming threat and launched a Grogled counterattack that sent the Texas and Ozark natives tumbling back. Still others say Southern Command ran out of plan and logistics, growing fearful at the decidedly mixed results of the revolts between the Platte and Red rivers, which their assault was supposed to support.
Historical bickering aside, the region between the Kurian and UFR watch points is the home of rabbit, coyotes, and hawks, surveyed by high-flying Gargoyles during the day and aura-sensing Reapers at night. Remnants of the cash crops of the region - wheat, soy, sorghum, and barley - can still be found growing wild, sometimes grazed down by small herds of wild sheep and wily, testy goats.
The old interstate, shooting east-west through the flat with a bend here and there placed by engineers to keep motorists from growing hypnotized by the road, still sees a convoy every week or so. The Kurians allow the traffic so that their favored supporters might have luxuries brought in from far away, with the thrilling but harmless taint of black market goods, and the Free Territory needs the gear and medicines the inevitable smuggling compartments contain. The third winner in the arrangement is the road patrols, who inevitably take away a bottle of liquor or a carton of cigarettes as they carry out everything from fugitive searches to safety inspections on the road traffic.
David Valentine waited quietly in the backseat of the Land Rover, watching the checkpoint soldiers inspect the convoy behind.
The convoy had pulled off the road in the vast, empty plains at a watchtower-flanked checkpoint, the first and most important on their ride through the Southwest, according to the driver. A slight ridge, thick with spring prairie flowers, was noticeable only because the rest of the topography was so flat.
His "overwatch car" was the second of the string of nineteen vehicles in the convoy, not counting the motorcycles riding at the head and tail. Road Chief Lautenberg, a good friend of the Hobarth clan, signed on "Max Argent" when his convoy stopped for an overnight at Nancy's. The stolid Lautenberg, so phlegmatic he might be mistaken for one of the uniformed dummies that filled out the real warriors in the big army truck at the center of the convoy, had looked him up and down with his one good eye, and assigned him to one of the combat teams.
It had taken Valentine some weeks to find a ride, spending hours reading and waiting at Nancy's. Though he kept himself clean-shaven, his legworm leathers and their armored plates polished, and his boots beyond even a labor-corps fatigue sergeant's reproach, several smaller convoys weren't willing to take on a stranger.
When a big convoy finally arrived it was bound for Central America, and the second, riding in a series of converted school buses,
gave him the willies. They purported to be musicians and dancers who sold protein powder and water filters during the day and performed for tips at night. Despite their promises of a substantial reward in the payout end of the trip in exchange for light guard work, Valentine wondered if they weren't "headhunters", especially after he heard the quiet rattle of chains beneath the seats of their vehicles. A man could get rich bringing warm bodies to the Kurians, and Valentine guessed that the attractive slatterns who rode in the front minivan served as bait for the unwary. The whole group had a quiet, dangerous air that put him off.
The next had a desperate, last-chance feel to it, and the owner and all the drivers looked hungry. Valentine began to feel like Goldilocks, unable to find a convoy that was just right. Then Lautenberg came in like a thunderstorm of diesel exhaust and rubber.
At first Valentine rode guard with the "back team", a group of drivers in an armored minibus who slept or played cards while they waited to replace others when they came off shift. After he brought down a buck grazing in a field from 250 yards at dawn, Lautenberg transferred him to the overwatch "Rover".
The "Rover" was a high-clearance four-wheel drive, panels long since replaced by welded corrugated aluminum and old bulletproof vests. It had thick off-road tires, spotlights, a winch, and a cupola complete with bullet shield and a venerable heavy machine gun called the poker.
Its sights were made of carved Reaper teeth and wire.
Valentine patted his gun in its bracket on the back of the driver's seat. Styachowski had answered his request for a reliable, accurate, but not threatening-looking carbine with her usual precision. She'd shown up with a Steyr Scout "Viper", a deadly little killer with a forward-mounted 2.5x sight, flash suppressor, and eighteen-round minidrum feeding the oversized bolt action.
Valentine especially admired the scope. Your eye could wander to find the target, and then - as you aimed - your eye glided into the magnified image as if drawn there, with the weapon already lined up.
They'd supplied him with four boxes of ammunition for it, and a special little five-bullet leather holder. A note accompanied them, from a weapons researcher at the Miskatonic. He explained that the five shells were a new, experimental delivery method for Quickwood, suspending a distillate of the sap in a capsule that would be broken as the armor-piercing bullet fragmented, hopefully inside a Reaper. "Write me and let me know results, good or bad", the note ended.
Valentine wondered at that. If the results were bad, he probably wouldn't live to write the note.
New steel-tipped hiking boots, a hard-frame pack, thermal underwear, a bamboo sleeping mat, a thick wool scarf, leather gloves, mittens, a compass, and survival gear filled out the rest of the footlocker she'd brought. She also provided him with a thick nylon laborer's girdle that could be popped open to reveal two dozen gold coins. Resting in sawdust padding were six bottles of bourbon, and a minitelescope. Nothing had any tagging or labeling to identify it as originating with Southern Command. Even his ammunition was in Kansas City's Zeroload boxes, one of the biggest armorers in the Midwest.
Best of all, she'd found his sword. He'd asked for a similar blade to the one he'd carried on his first mission as a Cat, never expecting for his original to show up, sharpened and in a new stiffened black leather sheath.
Who knew what warehouse it had rested in since the day he, Duvalier, and Ahn-Kha left for his long mission into the Kurian Zone in search of a half-legendary weapon to defeat the Reapers that turned out to be Quickwood? Duvalier guessed that Dix Welles had buried it along with the other Cats' left possessions when Solon took over. The cache had evidently been recovered since then, and probably sat in some warehouse with his books and a few other personal items, a curiosity on some long inventory list.
Valentine watched the Quislings bearing road ranger patches on their shoulders conduct their inspection. Ostensibly the convoy carried pumping equipment, high-voltage cable, machine tools, and a dozen other industrial necessities. But behind the heavy equipment that
required a forklift or crane rested cases of sealed black-label bourbon, boxes of chocolate, jewelry, furs, and precision optics.
The Quislings at the checkpoint wore dark khaki uniforms and bandannas. Most had cheap plastic sand-and-sun goggles. High observation towers and earthworks bristling with machine guns and 20mm cannon covered the inspection siding.
An officer with a red pillbox hat, thick with Kurian service pins, stuck his head in the window, examining Valentine's profile.
"I need that man out, please", Pillbox Hat told the driver. He pointed at Valentine. "Cuff him for now".
Valentine's back went clammy. Had a wanted poster made it into the Southwest? He could confuse the issue for a few days with his false IDs, but capture would mean...
"Okay, boss", the driver said as the man in the shotgun seat pressed a button three times on his belt walkie-talkie. "Get out, Max. The girls here want to look into those pretty brown eyes".
Valentine complied, leaving his weapons in their brackets, and as they snapped the cuffs on and patted him down, more Quislings gathered to watch.
"You ever go by the name David Valentine, chief?" Pillbox Hat asked.
Valentine just breathed, centering himself, pulling in lifesign. It kept the Reapers away, but it was also calming. "No, sir, don't know him".
"I didn't say if you knew him".
"Sorry, sir".
Lautenberg walked up, moving at a pace just short of a trot, his lead rig driver just behind. He approached the officer in the pillbox hat. "What now, Hopgood?"
"We're detaining one of your men so we can run some prints. He fits a description. Indianish, black hair, scarred, 'bout the right height and weight".
"Detain? How long's that going to take?"
"A day or two at most. You can move on".
"Argent, you wanted for something?" Lautenberg said.
"Some guy named Valentine", Valentine said, hoping he could still brazen it out. "All red man heap look alike, Road Chief".
Lautenberg planted his feet and crossed his arms. "This convoy isn't leaving a man behind".
A sergeant passed Valentine's papers over to Hopgood with a shrug.
"Up to you", Hopgood said. "Bring the wagon", he yelled across the gravel to his idling men. "We'll take him to Blackwater Holing".
"The hell you are", Lautenberg said. "Hopgood, I've been easy on you because you're new, and I don't like making enemies. But wouldn't it be kinda dumb for some fugitive to pass right through one spot he's sure to be looked at?"
"This guy's clever. He took out a whole regiment of TMCC and blew that big Mississippi Grog cannon into orbit".
"Be news to his mother", Lautenberg said. "Until she passed, Max here was taking care of her every day of his life. Kansas militia trusted him with a gun, I know that. My Ingrid's married to Tom Stormcloud over in Topeka. He's Stormcloud's cousin".
Valentine had no idea what spring this torrent of bullshit was coming from, but it fitted his faked papers like a jigsaw piece. Lautenberg had just glanced at them briefly back at Nancy's.
"Now, you can detain this kid", Lautenberg said. "I can wait here, getting madder and madder every hour. And when General Cox in Albuquerque runs out of black-label bourbon and has to listen to those three coochies of his bitch about how they're all outta lipstick and undies, well, I might just call you a bad name or two when he asks what was keeping me. You ever talked to Cox when he's bone-dry on whiskey?"
Hopgood looked from his thick sheaf of wanted posters at Valentine, then at Lautenberg, and back again.
Lautenberg patted his hip pocket. "Lord, Corporal Guadalco, you smoked three cigarettes with Max here last October. You showed him a picture of your kids".
"Oh yes, I remember, remember very well", a corporal in a non-regulation straw hat spoke up.
Hopgood wilted. "I'll cut him loose this time, Lautenberg. But your reputation's riding on this".
"My reputation's riding on about three hundred tires", Lautenberg said. "I just want them spinning again".
Valentine felt the cuffs come off, and showed his relief.
"Thank you, sir", he said to Hopgood.
"Smile, Hoppy, and have a cigar", Lautenberg said, extracting a gleaming silver case. "You road rangers know I'm just trying to get from A to B and back to A. Smuggling fugitives doesn't come between A and B. Or A and Z for that matter - it's a whole 'nother alphabet".
As the groups parted, Lautenberg offered Valentine a wink, and slipped something into Guadalco's hand as they shook.
And with that, the convoy got moving again. The scout cycles blatted out first, then the combat craft; the big tow trucks, capable of pulling a disabled truck or moving an unexpected obstacle with their thick cable winches; Lautenberg's Winnebago office on wheels; the "money trucks" with the tanker and "chuck wagon" RV guarded by a truck full of dummy soldiers; a few "gypsy" vans traveling with the convoy for protection like pilot fish hovering close to a shark; more cargo trucks; then the rear guard: the "remount" truck and more cycles.
"The Spikes must really have it in for that Valentine fella", the heavyset commander of the overwatch car said. By "Spikes" he meant the Kurians; their towers did look a little like spikes, glimpsed from a distance.
He had thoughtful eyes and a patchy beard. The rest of the car, Zuniga at the wheel and Swell at the ring gun, called their commander "Salsa". He spread hot sauce from an endless supply of tiny red bottles he kept in a machine-gun belt case on everything he ate, save fruit.
"Nice of the road chief to stand up for me. I was in a cell once before. Thought I'd cashed out".
"What were you in for?"
"Fighting and public drunkenness".
"That where you got your face rearranged?" Zuniga asked.
"Yes", Valentine said, which was almost true.
"What you guys talking about?" Swell called down from the ring gun. Swell loved riding in the wind, leaning on the canvas-covered poker, but always wanted details of in-cab conversations shouted up to him.
"We're talkin' about how your mother undercuts all the other whores", Salsa shouted up. Then to the others: "I swear to God, I should make him drive so he doesn't miss nuthin'".
"Except he bitches about how he feels cooped up in here", Zuniga said, leaning over to pass gas at a volume that rivaled that of the motorcycle sixty meters ahead.
"Phew, Max, I think this kid could drop a Hood with that", Salsa said.
"What's that?" Swell shouted.
Valentine winked at Salsa as he tied Swell's shoelaces together.
And with that, David Valentine passed out of Oklahoma.
Brief thunderstorms drenched the convoy.
"If you make this a habit, you'll learn that this is the best time of year Southwest", Salsa said.
Valentine had to agree. The forests, whose trees felt spaced out and airy compared with the thickets of the Ozarks, were cool and breezy and the dry grasses of the range country were bright with flowers, yellows and pinks and blues that attracted butterflies. Sadly, many of the latter ended up in gooey, colorful pieces on the windshield and grille of the 4x4.
Valentine, with little to do except watch the terrain roll under their wheels, enjoyed the trip. Except for train travel, this was the fastest he'd ever eaten miles.
There were stops, of course, for meals and refueling, and long detours around Kurian Zones or demolished bridges and culverts. He trotted around the vehicles, exercising his unused legs, marveling at the distance they'd come in a few short days.
At the overnights the convoy pulled off into lonely road stops, throwing a wide circle around Albuquerque, where Kurians who were at odds with the rest of the Aztlan Confederation were famous for letting strangers enter, but not leave. The road chief avoided towns as they crossed New Mexico. Towns brought local police to the vehicles like thirsty ticks looking for blood. New Universal Church missions and monastis provided safety of another sort, but the churchmen in their tube-steel clerical collars (grades of metal differentiated just what the ascetics had given up to more fully devote themselves to the betterment of mankind) were a more hygienic and annoying version of the lawmen. At least the lawmen didn't subject one to lectures about reproductive responsibilities as they took their graft.
"A tree must be rooted to grow strong in safety!" one wild-haired monk intoned as the maintenance teams replaced lost tires in the Cibola foothills. He climbed a light pole to be better heard. His monastery had a patchwork look to it; this station was probably an exile for the head cases of the church. "Wandering seed is lost in the wind".
"Or lost in the joy girls in Los Angeles", a truck driver muttered to Valentine. He spit a mouthful of tobacco in the direction of the Easter Island - like Reaper-face set looking down on the monastery's wash well. "Ever hear about the Honeypot, pickup?" the driver asked.
"We have to get there first", Salsa said, interrupting. "Scouts are reporting some burned rigs in Holloweye Valley".
"We're too big for the Jaguars to try".
"I hope they know it as well as you", Salsa said. He turned and Valentine followed.
"Jaguars?"
"They wear bits of fur", Salsa said. "The big medicine guys wear spots. A successful warrior gets mountain lion skin, or wolf. The low-lifes have to make do with coyote. They're half-wild, worship those Reaper monoliths you see in this part of the country. They ain't after our gear or cargo, just our giblets. They think if they take lives, drink blood, they become as strong as the Reapers. Or turn into them".
Valentine searched the copper-dusted mountains of the Mogollon Rim ahead. The dry air gave the horizon a clarity that seemed to expand his personal patch of earth as it reduced his place in it. He felt rather like one of the valley butterflies, perhaps determinedly unaware of an approaching windshield.
"Will they keep off us?" Valentine asked.
"Depends. Some of the young men might be feeling their oats. Wish I could tell you more. All we got to go on is rumor. No one's lived in Holloweye Valley long enough to do any social studies".
"I didn't see that on the road map".
"It's unofficial, like Checkpoint Circlejerk back there. The valley's not a problem. It's the passes you have to watch. They'll roll a wreck down and try to cause an accident".
"Why Holloweye?"
Salsa probed an ear. "Let's hope we don't find out".
The bikers, skin almost as dark as their faded leathers, reported back as the convoy paused on a long turn looking down into the valley. While they refueled stomachs and tanks from chuck wagon and bowser, Road Chief Lautenberg held a meeting.
Salsa returned and put his crew back in the overwatch vehicle. "We're going to go clear the road while we still have daylight", he told his crew. Swell wiped his palm on his jeans as Salsa described their operation.
"The Jaguars have the road blocked good with wrecks. They ain't manning the barricade, but somebody launched off slingstones at the bikers while they checked for survivors. We're going to go in and cover the wreckers while they clear the road".
"Could they tell how they took out the wrecks?" Zuniga asked.
Salsa shrugged. "Looked like a big road accident, they said. No question, one vehicle blew up. I had dynamite lobbed at me a couple runs back when I was driving the tanker. Maybe they got lucky with a toss. Any more questions?"
"How many dead?" Valentine asked.
"They said it was a dozen at least. They're not even dried out yet.
Zuniga shook his head slowly. Salsa continued: "Yeah. They were about to cut the bodies down when the slingstones hit".
With two motorcycles riding scout, flanking the operation like prowling dogs under the perfect yellow of an Arizona sun, the two wreckers and Salsa's armed 4x4 approached the blockade at a creep. Valentine hung out one door by a safety strap, searching the road for signs of mining. Salsa did the same, from a slightly more conventional position in the passenger window.
The expedition stopped fifty yards from the blockade. Valentine smelled burning tire.
Vultures rose from the wrecks when Zuniga blasted the Rover's horn.
"Okay, Argent, go earn your coin", Salsa said as the vehicles halted.
"Seen-yority", Swell said, swinging the now-uncovered gun to cover the wrecks. "It's got its privileges".
Valentine trotted up the median of the highway with carbine held ready against his shoulder - there was precious little cover on the road itself, and if he had to go to ground, he at least wanted the dry-looking brush in between him and the Jaguars.
The eight bodies were laid out between the wrecks in a pattern that might have been trying to be a flower, or a boat propeller. All were hollow-socketed and opened at the rib cage. Valentine guessed that the heart and liver were missing at least, along with more obvious extractions of eyes, noses, and tongues. Taking a deep breath, he knelt beside one sandy-haired corpse and looked in the nose.
They'd spooned out a good deal of brain as well.
Valentine heard a flutter and whirled, but it was just a crow. The black bird opened its mouth, an angry "Kaww!" contesting the bodies.
Valentine paid it no attention and did a fast search of the trucks
and vans. He found three more bodies, similarly picked at but not arranged in any fashion save what was needed for a quick extraction of organ meat.
He heard a chatter of machine-gun fire and the sudden gunning of a motorcycle. He hopped up in a pickup bed - the contents had been stripped as hastily and messily as the bodies - and saw one of the bikers taking off against a running, sun-browned figure. The runner had a bad limp, with blood and dirt caked on his leg.
The biker stopped his bike, lifted an oddly thick rifle, pumped its action three times, and fired. Valentine saw a thick dart blossom in the back of the runner, who flopped over again.
The biker answered a hoot from one of the wreckers with a wave of his leather cap, and turned his bike back for the road.
Somehow the Jaguar rose again, a thin spear lodged in a grooved thrower. Valentine brought up the Steyr and sighted on the dark blotch of armpit hair under the Jaguar's raised right arm. The gun boomed, startling more crows.
Valentine didn't watch the effect of his shot. Instead he scanned for more threats.
Valentine watched the misthrown spear change trajectory, from straight up to straight down. The biker glanced over his shoulder, turned his bike again, and made for the spot where the Jaguar fell. He raised himself in the saddle and bumped over the body in a figure-eight pattern, making sure this time. Valentine scanned the countryside, wondering if the wounded warrior had been sacrificed to draw the biker into a trap, but no other threats emerged from the brush and cacti.
With the killing that couldn't quite be labeled a skirmish over, Valentine waved the Rover forward, and Salsa gave the okay for the wreckers to come up.
Valentine grabbed a bungee cord and a shovel off a bracket on the back hatch of the Rover. Using the bungee around the ankles, he pulled the bodies one by one off the road, lining them up in the median. When the corpses were lined up, he loosened some soil with the
pick end of his worm hook and threw loose dirt over the butchered collection.
Swell rinsed his mouth out with a canteen and spit onto the front windscreen. Zuniga activated the wipers. "You don't mean to bury all those bodies?"
"I do", Valentine said.
The bikers roared up, curious. "Hell, man, the birds and coyotes will take care of them with a lot less sweat", the fat one with the beard said.
Valentine ignored him.
The one who had chased after the Jaguar, a lean, greasy-haired man who looked as though he'd crossed New Mexico dragged by the bike rather than in the saddle, put his bike on its stand. "Coot, be a mensch for once", he growled. "Have a little respect".
The biker slid into the median and took up the pick. "Name's Loring", he said. "Zeb Loring".
"Max Argent", Valentine said. "Mucho gusto".
"Aye-yup", Loring said.
"Never met a Zeb before", Valentine said. "That short for Zebulon?"
Loring had his share of scars. His leathers were carefully stitched up, his face much less so. "My father never made it much past Genesis in the Bible. Mom was a rabbi outta New York. It was a compromise".
They moved on to another body. Valentine rolled a rock using his shovel as a lever. "You're a long way from the East".
"Aye-yup. You too, looks like. Those are Kentucky legworm leathers".
"That they are".
"Always thought those beasties were grand. You don't have to feed them gas and oil".
"Ever rode one?" Valentine asked.
"Naw. Too slow. I like to be on something that can outrun those damn golems".
Valentine grunted agreement. "Hey, lookit that", Loring said. He leaned the pickax against his knee and pointed up.
Valentine saw aircraft, in three groups, flying high toward the southwest.
"I bet Denver got hit again. That's the Flying Circus. They range all over the Southwest, set up temporary airfields on old roads".
"Pyp's Flying Circus?" Valentine asked, shading his eyes to take a look at the craft. He guessed they were at above ten thousand feet.
"That's what they're called. I saw a couple of them in their fancy leathers in a bar in Nogales once. Aye-yup. They're not ones for staying put either".
"What are you going to do when we hit LA?" Valentine asked.
"Celebrate. Then we might head up the valley to wine country. They do a few runs a year over the mountains to the Missouri and Arkansas riverheads. Good money guarding wine, and a flask out of the supply cask really makes dinner an experience". He mumbled a few words as Valentine covered a corpse with a thin layer of dirt. Valentine stood silent.
"I like the old words, don't you?" Loring said.
"Yes. Thanks for the help".
"Mucho gusto", Loring said.
With the wrecks out of the way, and their remaining fuel safely stowed in the tanks and drums of the bikes and wreckers, the vehicles reassembled in the formation they'd used as they approached the blockade. Valentine, sweaty from his exertions and moody because of the bodies, ate a salted hard-boiled egg after carefully washing his hands.
"You feel better?" Salsa asked.
"Pardon?"
Salsa threw his arm over the seat. "You feel better now that those bodies are buried? 'Cause it sure makes no difference to them".
"Nothing in my contract about leaving bodies in the sun", Valentine said.
"Coyotes will probably have them dug up by midnight", Zuniga said.
"What's that?" Swell shouted from the gun.
"Oh, for Kur's dark asshole", Salsa said. He poked his head out the window. "You're at the wheel next... hey!"
Valentine heard it too. A sputtering engine sounded overhead and Valentine marked a twin-engine plane, a dirty-clay color with a red stripe going up the tail like a hockey stick; it spewed white vapor from one engine and faint black puffs from the other as it passed overhead. The engine sounded stronger for a moment and the plane gained altitude, trying for the mountains to the west. Valentine watched as it shrank to a cross in the distance. Then it plunged, leveled off, and disappeared into the valley floor.
"That poor dumb bastard", Salsa said. "He should have set it down in the road by us".
Valentine, meanwhile, searched his map of the Southwest.
"He was trying to make it to his home airfield", Zuniga said.
"Are those the guys with the reward message on the backs of their jackets?" Valentine asked.
"Tempting, isn't it?" Salsa said. "But forget it, the Jaguars will have him by dark".
"How long would it take us to get to where he landed?" Valentine asked.
"I ain't even guesstimating. We're not risking the Rover".
"Then stop, please", Valentine said, feeling light-headed. "I'll go on foot".
"You're nuts", Swell shouted down from the gun.
"Now he can hear", Salsa said. "What about your contract, Argent?"
"I've got the option of breaking it. Please, stop the car".
Zuniga honked and the vehicles slowed, then stopped.
"You don't get paid, then", Salsa said.
"I'd appreciate an extra canteen and some of the freeze-dry", Valentine said.
"Hey, if this is about those bodies, I didn't mean to step on any religious practices. Running my mouth is just how I get to know a man. Nothing to kill yourself over".
Valentine got his gun, sword, and pack and tucked a few extra odds and ends in from the Rover's supplies: freeze-dried veggie packs - about as appetizing as a bathroom mat but full of vitamins - beef sticks, dried fruit...
"Guy's nuts", Swell called to a grizzled mechanic leaning out of a tow truck window to watch. "He's going to go rescue that cloud jumper. Wants the ten grand in gold".
"Big money isn't worth getting dead over, kid", the mechanic advised.
Been a long time since anyone's called me kid, Valentine thought. But the strange clarity that came over him sometimes, the one that infected him when he went into Chicago after Molly, or struck off into the Nebraska sandhills to warn the trekkers against the general, or pushed him to save a wounded Grog who would become his best friend - Valentine felt his eyes go wet at the memory of Ahn-Kha - told him he was doing the right thing.
Sergeant Patel used to talk about a third eye capable of perceiving the invisible. Valentine wondered if there was a third ear, hearing the whispers of guardian angels.
A motorcycle engine blatted and Loring sat his bike next to him as Valentine marked a reference point for the fallen aircraft. The bike growled like a threatening watchdog.
"You're not", Loring said.
"I am. Interested in making a Troy?"
"I'm not parking three butts on my bike for an off-road trip to Neverland".
"I just want you to get me to that airplane".
Loring looked at the sun. "Let's see the color of your gold".
Valentine reached into his belt and palmed one of his coins. He passed it over.
"That thing with the bodies wasn't an act, I hope. If this is some fancy plan to get me out so you can debit my bike..."
Valentine checked the buckles on his pack and the strap fixing his legworm pickax. "I arranged for the plane to go down just so I could get your ride?"
"Right. Sorry. Paranoid is the best way to stay alive when you road it for a living".
"No offense".
"Give my regards to Lautenberg", Valentine told Salsa. "I'll either meet you guys tomorrow when you run the valley or dog southwest".
"You a crusader, Argent, or just greedy?"
"A little of both", Valentine said.
Loring exchanged knuckles with his fellow biker, and edged forward on his seat. "Hang your pack there", he said, indicating a little backrest just above the taillight. "You can put the gun and the giblet prodder on the front rack, if you like".
Quick-release plastic snaps secured the gear there. With that, Valentine climbed on and they were off, back into the once-fertile valley.
Loring gave him a quick lesson on how and when to lean in turns, where to put his feet when they stopped the bike, and what to do in case of attack: "Hug me like an ass bandit. You come off, I'm not turning round".
They stopped once while still on the highway to reconnoiter from a slight hill, and Valentine pointed to where he marked the crash site.
"If you want to take a leak, do it now. It's going to be bumpy for a while", Loring advised.
After a companionable release - Loring loosed a long, satisfied " Aye-yup" along with his bladder - they bumped off into the Arizona dirt, crossing through stands of cacti and waxy succulents.
Loring negotiated the big, woolly bushes and dry washes with a good deal of skill. All they disturbed were rabbit, whose Ping-Pong ball tails bounced away from the bike's noisy exhaust, and roadrunners.
"Practically ringing the dinner bell for the Jaguars, you know", Loring said, at a stop where Valentine mounted a rock to recheck their bearings.
They reached the crash site perhaps two hours after the pilot had set down. Judging from the tire tracks, he'd made a good job of the landing, snapping off a few taller cacti, until the right under-engine landing gear hit a rock. The gear hadn't broken, but it bounced the
plane up, and the right wingtip caught and spun it, and once the nose struck it was all over. The rugged frame of the aircraft, though thick with patched bullet holes, had stood up to even the pancake. Wings and tail were still intact.
They made a slow circle of the wreck. Valentine cocked his head to admire the nose art: A girl in an abbreviated red uniform, fighting to keep the front of her skirt down, rode a rocket pointed toward the nose gear. Valentine retrieved his weapons and gear from the bike.
"Wonder if they got him already", Loring said.
"I don't see any tracks". Valentine looked at the upside-down craft. "Anyone in there?"
Loring switched off his motor so Valentine could listen. He saw a pair of bloody fingerprints below one of the windows, upside-down letters reading
MILKMAN
He stuck his head in and looked at the field of gauges and controls. He smelled blood, strong now.
Cargo netting filled the rear of the plane, mostly empty save for a couple of battered crates and strewn duffel bags. He smelled a sweet odor, and traced it to a broken jar of preserved plums in syrup resting against a big water bottle and a mouth tube. An open camera case with a body and a long lens inside rested on the roof. "There are some bags of cargo here. And a camera. You want to check for salvage?"
"Rocket rails", Loring said, still firmly in his saddle, bike pointed for a quick exit.
"Hmmm?" Valentine asked. He pulled the camera case out and inspected the prize. It looked quite valuable.
"On the bottom of the wings. This thing's built to carry rockets, and they've been fired a lot. Let's get out of here. Let the colab choke out here".
Valentine made a slow circuit of the plane. The ground was rocky and...
Blood on the air.
The pilot's keeping close to his ship, but hiding. Sensible, if his friends come looking for him.
Valentine approached the bike. "He's still in the area", he said quietly.
Loring watched the sun, now touching the mountains. "If you say so. I'm dusting off. You coming?"
"I want to meet this guy", Valentine said.
"Shit. You said there were bags of stuff?"
"Yes".
"Gimme one". Loring unwrapped a bungee cord from his handlebar.
Valentine retrieved an ordinary-looking service duffel. It contained a rolled-up sleeping mat and spare blankets. He watched while Loring took off his leather jacket, zipped it on the upright duffel, then placed it in the saddle behind him. He whipped the bungee around it and fixed it at his belly button.
"From a distance it'll look like we're still riding together. Maybe the Jaguars will chase me instead of hunt you up. Pyp's gold isn't worth your life, Max".
"No", Valentine agreed.
"Hope you make it back to the road, then, Samaritan".
"Ride free", Valentine said, summoning his one piece of biker slang. He handed over the camera case. "Give this to Lautenberg. Maybe you and he can split the proceeds of the sale. A thank-you from me.
"Aye-yup", Loring agreed. "Keep on God's good side". He winked and started up his bike.
Valentine ducked back into the shadow of the plane and watched Loring bump off. He dropped into a crouch, and began to hunt.
Valentine followed his nose uphill, found a telltale drop of blood or two, and finally heard rather wheezy breathing from a thick stand
of barrel-shaped cacti. Wild sheep dotted the mountain slopes above, feeding on the grasses in the wind-sheltered washes.
The flier had chosen his vantage well. It offered a good view of the wreck and the mountainside.
Valentine sat down on a flat-topped rock about ten feet away from the cactus and opened a bag of dried fruit, listened to the breathing. He rinsed his mouth out, then extracted a couple of apple chips and crunched them down. "You want some?"
The cactus stand didn't say anything. Whoever was within held his breath.
"This is a nasty patch of ground, flyboy. You're not going to like the natives".
Valentine took a swallow of water.
"On the other hand", Valentine said, "they're going to be happy as hell to meet you. What I can't figure out is what they do with the eyes. Eyes don't keep. Do they eat them as soon as they pull them out, maybe with a little salt like a hard-boiled egg, or do they carry around a jug of brine..."
The cactus stand let out a cough and went silent.
"Option three is me", Valentine said. "I'm just interested in that reward on the back of your jacket. I'm sure you know the wording by heart. It's a win for both of us: You get to be alive, and I get my money".
"Ya-hey", the cactus stand said. A man stood up, a bloody bandage on his hand and a good-sized swelling on his head. He had the blond good looks of an old magazine cover model. Powerful shoulders tested the limits of his jumpsuit, and a brown leather jacket of the type Valentine had last seen outside Dallas was tied around his waist. "You could have said so to begin. Navajo or Apache?"
"Neither", Valentine said. "Max Argent".
"Equality Hornbreed".
Valentine wasn't sure he'd heard correctly.
"First name was good politics", Hornbreed said. He blew his nose into a silk handkerchief, coughed again. "My genitors were all about good politics".
"Your ribs intact?" Valentine asked.
"It's the pollen. Spring allergies. I can walk all night if I have to. Got a headache that about has me cross-eyed is all".
"I think I've got some aspirin..."
"Took a couple, thanks. Grabbed the medical kit first thing".
"Your friends know you went down?"
He took a handful of dried fruit. "They do. Everyone was low on fuel - end of the leg. Guess no one had the guts to try a setdown to pick me up - strict rules about that, we lose too many ships. The strip we're heading for is just a temp, though, no pickup helicopter. There's a couple parked at Yuma, so I might be on my own until tomorrow".
"Hurt the hand on landing?"
"No. Planted it on some broken glass, otherwise I'd offer you a candied plum. Didn't look when I unhooked. I smelled smoke and was worried I was on fire".
"You armed?"
"Pistol and my flare gun. Want me to turn them over to you?"
He was oddly accommodating.
"Can I look at the offer on the jacket again?"
The wording hadn't changed, nor had the logo of a rattlesnake with dragon wings flying openmouthed toward the viewer. Colorful mission patches and squadron insignia - a hairy pirate face with a classic skull-and-bones cap appealed - decorated the sleeves and pockets.
Valentine joined him in the cacti, saw a blanket spread out with a big water jug, a signaling mirror with a hole in the center, and a fire starter. He uncased his binoculars and made a slow survey of the valley below them from cover. Nothing. Of course, that didn't mean the Jaguars weren't approaching. There was ample cover in the dry washes and brush.
"You picked a good spot". Valentine broke out the preserved chow.
"I've had to set down before. Never flipped my bird, though. I'm sure the squadron's having a good laugh. That's a nice rifle".
"Steyr Scout", Valentine said.
Hornbreed checked his wounded hand. "Hope I don't have to see it in action".
"We've got two options, Equality", Valentine said. "Wait for your friends to show, or try to make it to the interstate you passed over. There's a convoy that'll be passing through at first light tomorrow. We can hitch up with them and drop off at the next crossroads and make for Yuma".
"We'll be easier to pick out if we move. I'm supposed to stay with my ship unless I have to evade".
"The Jaguars..."
"There are Jaguars in this valley? I thought they'd cleared out".
"Change your mind?" Valentine asked.
Hornbreed searched the skies. "No. Generally it's best to wait for help to arrive".
Valentine moved to the other side of the cactus-shrouded enclosure. "I'm not one for waiting. But you know your fliers".
"There are more pilots than there are operational ships. But I'm a wing leader. My pilots will come".
Valentine scanned the ground around the overturned plane again. Was there a new shadow next to the brush in front of the engine?
"I like your confidence", Valentine said.
"Stay put and wait", Hornbreed said. "I was a Youth Vanguard leader up Provo way. Worked my way up from larva to scout ant to warrior-guard. We'd go out on squat clearance, burning old homes and buildings outside of town, finding hidden livestock and fields. One time we came on... sheesh, I don't know what to call it. I guess a pilgrimage. Thousand people or more on foot heading for California, hauling stuff on bicycles and handcarts. Our leader decided to follow 'em, see what they were up to. We just walked up and asked where they were going. They got rounded up, of course, and boy, did we hear it from the Churchmen when they found us dogging the column. They kicked the leader right out of the Vanguard. Worked out for me, though, I was the one who argued that we'd been told to burn down
houses and we shouldn't go mixing with deadfeets. Were you in the Vanguard?"
"I grew up off the grid, more or less", Valentine said, still scanning. "I did help teach in a Churchman's one-room schoolhouse". His eyes caught a brief flurry of bouncing brown balls. By the time he got his glasses up and located, the might-bes had vanished into an arroyo.
But the heads were on course for the wreck.
Hornbreed let out a little gasp. "Huff. I always fell asleep somewhere between collective rights and mankind's atrocity catechism".
Definite movement at the wreck now. Through field glasses Valentine watched a scout explore.
"Well, the Jaguars are at your wreck", Valentine said.
Hornbreed shrugged.
The scout entered the overturned craft, which tipped a little as his weight changed its center of balance. A minute later he emerged again, eating from the broken jar of plums. With the sun now fully behind the mountains the desert flats turned blue. The clouds above warmed into reds, golds, and pinks and purples.
Valentine decided he could get used to desert-country sunsets, but he kept his attention on the wreck. More Jaguars had shown up and were now tearing the little ship apart, salvaging everything from bits of wire to the seat covers. Hornbreed took one brief look and handed the glasses back. "Savages. I can't watch any more".
A Jaguar in much longer furs, cut about his shoulders like a cape made of animal tails, with a spotted headband around his forehead and furry-trimmed sandals, began a rampage. With a good deal of gesturing toward the mountains behind Valentine he gave his tribesmen a dressing-down, put them in a staggered line like a top sergeant with well-trained recruits, and hustled them away with a glance or two behind.
Valentine couldn't help but turn and look at the darkening peaks behind.
"What do you know about these mountains?" Valentine asked Hornbreed.
"Some farms and ranches on the other side. Pretty well organized,
typical Aztlan stuff. There are collar towers below the ridgeline - they're easy to spot from the air".
"Collar towers?"
"Keeps the peons on their ranchos. The collars tighten if they start to stray. Top-quality Korean electronics".
"What about this side?"
"Sheep. Mud pueblos".
Had these mountains turned into a choking, deathly place according to local legend? Then why did the medicine man have to remind his tribesmen?
Hornbreed stretched out, pulled his reflective survival blanket up. "Long, bad day. I'm going to try to sleep off this headache".
"Should we set a watch?"
"You're my rescuer. If anything's going to happen, it'll happen whether we set a watch or not. They outnumber us twenty to two". He blew his nose again. "You wouldn't know it to hear me, but I am a healthy specimen. Just spring air".
Valentine watched the valley until darkness made it impossible, then admired the stars and planets. He hadn't seen them so bright since he'd been at sea in the Caribbean.
The memories that evoked turned him sour and gloomy. He slipped out of the cactus thatch - his old Wolf habit of changing positions after darkness was so deeply ingrained he did it even if it was only a shift of twenty feet or so - and listened. A distant coyote howled in the valley. Others took up the chorus, but none called from the mountains he and Hornbreed rested against.
Too uneasy to really sleep, he dozed, sitting cross-legged with his rifle against his lap, small of his back pressed up against a sun-heated rock. The air had turned cold with astonishing speed, a desert feature he was still getting used to... The moon came up, so bright it looked as though an artist had painted it on the sky with radium.
He heard Hornbreed come out of the cacti, mumble something about pinching a deuce. Valentine saw him move off into the bushes, heard him stumble, curse, right himself.
Seemingly moments later, Valentine came fully awake, though he couldn't say why. How long had it been since Hornbreed had stepped behind the bushes?
"Hornbreed?" he said quietly. He raised the gun to his shoulder and came up to one knee.
"Hornbreed?" Louder this time.
The bushes didn't answer.
Valentine touched the sword at his back, tested the slide of the blade in its sheath.
"Hornbreed!" Valentine said, coming up to a crouch.
He advanced, well clear of the bushes.
No sign of the pilot. A white packet shone in the moonlight. Hornbreed had picked a sandy spot for easier burial. Valentine studied Hornbreed's footprints, placed in the expected position to either side of his - well, with a mule deer it would be called "spoor". The white packet was a little cardboard-banded issue of "field hygiene paper" courtesy of High Sierra Paper Products.
No body. No sign of the Jaguars. And no Reaper.
Strange divots stood out in the sand here and there, like little craters. Near-perfect circles. If they were tracks, only an unusually hard-stepping big cat like a mountain lion would make them. But there were no drag marks away from the bootheels and TP.
Ten thousand dollars in gold - and more importantly, a key to the mercenary pilots of Pyp's Flying Circus - had been spirited away without a sound or a cry of distress.
Valentine felt a cold sweat that had nothing to do with the Arizona night. It occurred to him that he'd been meaning to ask Hornbreed why they called him milkman.
Something glittered in the night a few feet away. Valentine knelt, saw loose coins scattered in the rocks and sand. Valentine picked one up, a "five-dollar" piece marked AZT-CON. He'd seen them before, in plastic Baggies holding Texas Quisling prisoners' possessions. He'd been told the coin was good over much of the Southwest and northern Mexico.
Valentine guessed that Hornbreed, literally taken with his pants down, had lost whatever change was rattling around in his pants. At least now he could guess in which direction the mysterious tracks went.
The lack of blood gave him some hope.
As he followed the tracks there were other signs - the creature must have been of some size, at least that of a small tractor. It had snapped off cactus stems in several spots over two meters apart.
It also left an odor, vaguely musty and yet ammoniacal. He traced the source of the smell, an object that looked a little like a hollow-reed thorn, in a vaguely green brown polished-turtle-shell color. Some sticky material coated one end, and Valentine hazarded a guess that it was a quill or spine.
Had a giant Arizona porcupine made off with Hornbreed?
The trail led up into the mountains. The mystery of the Jaguar leader's imprecations against hanging about the wreck had been explained. Anything big enough to approach and then make off with a sizable man in silence was a foe to be feared.
The musty-ammonia smell grew stronger, and Valentine realized that the dark of the mountainside had a darker spot. A cave opening, shaped like one of the little lateen sails he'd seen on fishing boats in the Caribbean. Valentine looked around, got his bearings, and listened to the cave mouth. A bat fluttered somewhere above.
A metallic clang sounded from the cave mouth and Valentine went flat, his senses sparking like a downed line. Valentine heard low snorts and growls and watched three Grogs emerge from the cave, heavy sacks across their shoulders. They waited, standing back-to-back, and Valentine felt a fresh chill. A Reaper emerged from the shadows, carrying a long staff that made the robed figure a scarecrow caricature of a desert prophet. It hissed at the Grogs and followed them on a westward-leading path.
The sensible thing to do would be to hotfoot it back to the convoy, leave these mountains crawling with assorted enemies, and let fate have its way with the fatalistic Hornbreed. Duvalier, had she been
with him this trip, would no doubt be resting in some hidey-hole with a good view of the interstate, waiting for the roar of truck engines and the rumble of tires.
But dammit, he needed Hornbreed - and the promised reward, provided Flying Circus would be willing to negotiate, not amount, but kind. He slipped off his backpack, extracting a small, tough flashlight with a clip that allowed him to hang it on a pocket or attach it to the underside of his gun. Something in him had to know. He fixed the light to his carbine, coaxing himself into making the attempt by getting his gear ready. If he squatted here much longer, he'd freeze up and come up with more reasons not to try it...
Valentine stepped into the ammonia smell.
A big metal locker, whose door was the source of the clanging sound, he guessed, stood just inside the cave. Electrical cable ran down the top of the cave and into it. The locker was fixed by a simple bolt. Valentine drew it back and opened the locker, smelling Grog sweat.
Long objects like fishing poles rested there, six of them, thick handles fitted into sockets and a battery case where the reel normally stood. Valentine read the pictograms on the poles, saw the electrical insulation. They were like overlong cattle prods. Valentine lifted one up and blue LED bulbs lit up at the end. They offered just enough light for him to see a few feet into the cave, which sloped down precipitously. Someone had tacked down rubber mats to improve the footing.
Valentine guessed what the big red plastic switch at the "reel" end was. He turned it on and touched the end to a rock. A spark like a photo strobe jumped and Valentine smelled ozone. Capacitors whined faintly as they recharged.
Cattle prod.
Valentine slung his rifle and took two from the green-lit sockets, wondered if the Miskatonic had tested electricity on a live Reaper. Of course, had someone suggested they try it on Blake ...
Movement behind and Valentine whirled.
An arachnophobe's nightmare stood framed by the desert stars,
brighter than ever when contrasted with the cave mouth. Shock turned it into a Picasso sketch of limbs and stingers and spines, and Valentine found himself backpedaling, throwing the steel bulk of the locker between himself and the creature, his illuminated prods waving in front of him like drunken fireflies...
It paid him no more attention than it did the locker next to him and clattered down the hole. It had six spiny legs, three to a side, and two "arms" - though perhaps they were vestigial wings, as they swept up and out, folded, and were tipped with a sharp curved point. Its head - Valentine didn't know what else to call the front end - resembled a big tongue more than anything, and held a limp, white-eyed sheep in thousands of mushroomlike organs coating its underside, a carpet of organic Velcro.
Whatever it was, it didn't have a strong "defend the nest" instinct. Valentine wondered if the result would have been different if it weren't already carrying a sheep. Were these some big version of the sand bugs the Kurians used to kill the trekkers' cattle in Nebraska?
Valentine said the kind of prayer typically uttered in atheist-free foxholes and followed it down. It didn't have much of an abdomen - usually the largest segment in a terrestrial insect - just a rutted organ that reminded him a little of an oversized, rotting cucumber. The motion of its legs fascinated him as it negotiated the slope with ease, using the tiniest of projections from the cave wall as steps.
The tricky down shaft lasted only fifteen meters or so. Valentine found himself on an easier-to-negotiate downslope. He wondered where he would hide in the narrow space if another bug showed up, and smelled the bat feces littered about. Maybe the ammonia smell came from bat droppings accidentally picked up here. The cave ceiling came down low enough that Valentine had to crouch.
Red glinted in the dim light of the LEDs on the cattle prods. What Valentine's brain identified as a big rat turned into a little six-legged creeper, shooting out of a crack toward him, wing limbs telegraphing a code he couldn't begin to understand. Valentine put his prod between himself and the explorer and it scurried off.
The cavern opened up, and there was dim electrical lighting ahead, or perhaps an opening to the moon and stars. Valentine found himself crouching in a much larger cavern, curving off into darkness and other chambers like a cow's stomach, lit here and there by panels that gave off a faint yellow glow from behind thick screens.
He scooted out of the low passage, not wanting to block access for the hunter-gatherers. A small horde of the little ratlike creepy-era wlies were massed under a sheep, holding it in their collected top arms, bringing it to the ceiling of the cavern.
Valentine heard - worse yet, felt - a presence overhead. He saw dozens of sacks hanging there, reminding him of a laundry he'd patronized in New Orleans with its rows of canvas bags hanging from the conveyors. Valentine saw a sheep hoof sticking out of one, an emaciated human hand hanging from another. Some of the bags hung from long stems, others shorter, and the scientific bit of Valentine's mind observed that the shape of the sacks turned into a more regular teardrop the closer they got to the floor. Fat, white wormlike creatures fixed their mouths to the lowest-hanging bags and suckled there.
Something vast, glistening, and dark moved among the bags at the ceiling.
Valentine took three cautious steps, careful of where he placed his feet, and found a shriveled teardrop of a bag. It was next to another empty stem, cut neatly off. A faint, sweet corruptive odor came from the bag, but it wasn't the smell that fascinated him - it was the curious, shiny weave of the bag.
He touched it to make sure. Reaper cloth! These creatures produced - wove, even - a rough version of the fabric.
Valentine was tempted to chop off the nearly empty teardrop. But he had to find Hornbreed.
Valentine searched the walls and ceiling, waving the LEDs at the end of his prods, probing corners. He explored deeper into the cave, felt one of the worm things nudge his foot.
He jumped, and came face-to-face with Hornbreed's upturned face. Dozens of the smaller creepy-crawlies were passing the pilot up a
living conveyor belt to the ceiling, where the shadowed mass rubbed its limbs against one another expectantly. Sightless eyes looked past him into darkness, but Valentine heard the faint wheeze of Hornbreed's lungs, and drool ran out of the corner of his mouth.
"Sorry, Equality", Valentine said. He reached and struck Hornbreed in the buttock with the cattle prod.
Flash-tzzap! The body convulsed, broke away, and fell as its handlers broke contact, or had their pincers torn loose by the muscle spasms. The thud of Hornbreed hitting the cavern floor sent the white larvae humping away.
A rattling like dry bones falling from a crypt creche, and Valentine looked insectoid death in the not-face. Eyes like gemstones glittered in the reflections of the LEDs on his prods.
"Noogh... enoogh... havin' a heart attack", Hornbreed bubbled.
The two upper front limbs on the hunter-gatherer struck down and forward. Barbed stingers missed as Valentine dived out of the way, lunging with his prods, but the hunter-gatherer matched him in their dance, keeping the eye clusters toward him. The red tip of the tongue-carrier retreated farther into its forebody.
Valentine lunged for the red mark like a dueling Musketeer, scored a palpable hit. Flash-tzzap!
The hunter-gatherer collapsed, legs twitching. Valentine's world whirled as he was jerked off his feet by jointed arms that enfolded him in a firm, irresistible, yet gentle embrace. Twin stingers pinched him at his chest, but couldn't penetrate, emptying themselves uselessly on his leathers. The prod he'd just used fell where his feet had been a second before.
Valentine struck wildly behind with his other prod, convulsed as the current traveled up the hunter-gatherer's limbs and across his chest. Heart stalled, then pounding in shock, he fell to the ground, suddenly at war with his body. None of his limbs seemed to remember how to function.
The hunter-gatherer who'd got him from behind batted at him
with one of its legs, but it was just a reaction to the charge. Valentine managed a roll toward Hornbreed.
"What the Kur's this?" Hornbreed gasped, batting weakly at the smaller, rat-sized bugs. Every move brought a wince.
Some of the Christmas tree ornaments above rocked as the roof creature shifted.
Valentine managed to slow his heart, retrieve his rifle. "Can you walk?"
"Lookit my back. It feels like there's about two kilos of flesh ripped out". Hornbreed came to one knee, turning.
Valentine saw a purpurant swelling at Hornbreed's right shoulder blade. He guessed that the welt was the size of a dinner plate.
"You got stung by one of these bastards". Valentine's body was back under control and he felt strangely calm and placid. The bugs weren't so bad, just little machines doing their jobs.
Or very big machines, like the one above... ...and coming down.
Christ, it's as big as a whale.
Valentine flicked on the gun light, saw ring after ring of arms around a lipless, spiny orifice, a zeppelin of a body behind, long thin arms that couldn't possibly support that mass, froze up until his eye and trigger finger, acting perhaps for their individual preservation against an overwhelmed brain, fired up into it.
It accepted the bullets in silence. A few of the arms around the central orifice stiffened...
Before the cartridge casings even finished their tinny bounces Valentine grabbed Hornbreed by the shoulder, pulled him up and along, when he wasn't moving right got under the pilot's armpit, and half carried him in a stumble toward the exit, carbine in its sling bouncing against his plated leathers. Hornbreed screamed out his agony like a police siren.
Another hunter-gatherer entered, a coyote borne in its tonguelike front appendage, ignoring them and the chaos within. Valentine regretted the dropped prods, grabbed Hornbreed by the collar, and
dragged him, shrieking in pain, like a resisting dog, through the low entrance aperture.
A hunter-gatherer's captured limbs darted into the crack, and closed on Hornbreed's leg. Valentine found the carbine's trigger and sent four bullets to the source of the limbs with the serene, observant corner of his mind trying to remember just how many rounds the little minidrum at the bottom of the carbine carried. But the legs let go.
Hornbreed was crying, blubbering to be left in peace, but Valentine got him up the shaft of near-vertical stairs, pushing from behind the whole way. He made it to the locker and retrieved another prod and was tempted to use it on Hornbreed to calm the pilot down. Instead he half carried him out of the cave and to his pack.
The cold night air and open sky acted on Valentine like a refreshing dip in a pool. His limbs tingled and his skin felt delightfully alive.
"My whole friggin' body's throbbing", Hornbreed gasped. "Sears like a hot frying pan. Put a bullet through my head, for Kur's sake".
Valentine retrieved his little razor-edged kidney puncher of a knife from his boot sheath and opened Hornbreed's bulging flight suit, a splotch of red marking the center of the bulge like a misplaced nipple. He tore open the cloth and took a breath at the blister the hunter-gatherer's venom had raised.
"You could be worse. Those things have two stingers. Hold on now".
A lot of liquid was trying to get out. Valentine held the sagging Hornbreed down with his knee and nicked the blister, eliciting a gasp from Hornbreed. Valentine squeezed hot, clear fluid from the wound, then dusted with antibiotic powder.
He gave Hornbreed two pain pills from the first-aid kit. Valentine recognized the odd little hexagonal shapes from his wisdom-teeth extraction courtesy of a Southern Command dentist, and wished he'd gotten morphine instead.
"Doesn't burn so bad", Hornbreed said, catching his breath as Valentine applied butterfly bandages.
They exchanged Valentine's canteen a couple of times. Valentine kept an eye on the cave mouth, wondering when the next hunter-gatherer was due to appear.
"I think we should get going", Valentine said. "Still want to be left to your fate?"
"I want a long, cool drink at the Mezcal", Hornbreed said. "Ice. A whole bagful".
"Better get back to the cactus stand".
About halfway down the mountain it occurred to Valentine that there'd been a yellow rubberized box or two in the locker at the cave mouth that he hadn't investigated. For all he knew, they contained electrical tools, but if the Kurians had some kind of antivenom, that would be the place to store it. But then it might be dosed for those big mountain Grogs...
Bug prod ready against another appearance of a hunter-gatherer, Valentine traced a route that carried them well away from stands of bush and sandy washes (in Nebraska's cattle country he'd once been stung by a smaller creature that could dig, and he still wasn't sure exactly how the beasties hunted).
When they reached the cactus stand Hornbreed collapsed atop his survival blanket. "Enough ... enough ... I'm done", he said.
"I want to get farther away from that cave", Valentine said. He stomped hard next to a wandering scorpion, sent it scurrying back into the thorns. "Fifteen minutes, then we'll pick up and move on".
Hornbreed's breath left a moist wing on the reflective surface of the blanket. Valentine decided it was safe to reload, opened a box of shells, and fed them into the magazine. He decided to give Hornbreed a few more minutes and cleaned the barrel.
"C'mon, bud. Up", Valentine said.
Hornbreed moaned. He looked like a deboned fish, sweating and gasping. "Can't. Muscles won't work". He managed to drag an arm under himself.
Valentine sorted through Hornbreed's gear, took medical supplies and water, the flare pistol and signaling mirror. The rest he buried.
lOO
Hornbreed was a big man. Valentine could carry him, but he would have to stop and rest frequently, and a few hours would exhaust him utterly. His bad leg started up a preemptive ache at the thought. They'd never make the highway.
A drag might be possible, if...
The wreck!
Valentine felt the flier's pulse, which was regular but fast, picked Hornbreed up in a fireman's carry, and thanked creation that they'd be going downhill. He placed Hornbreed inside the rear cabin of the plane, closed the door, and went back for his pack.
With that done, he looked around the wreck site.
The fuselage was intact - if only one of the rear wings had come off, it would make a good sled.
Doors! The hinges were designed to come apart easily; all you had to do was pull a pin. Even better, a broken piece of landing gear could be used in an improvised wheelbarrow.
He tore up some cargo netting, clipped his light to the higher of the two wings, and went to work, careful to keep the Steyr within reach.
It was in the deep night of predawn by the time he finished. He dragged Hornbreed back out of the aircraft and tried him on the improvised wheelbarrow.
"It works!" Valentine said, though the balance left a lot to be desired. Hornbreed, wheezing and whimpering, managed a nod. Valentine lowered him gently and put the canteen to his lips. "We're out of here, Hornbreed".
It would be a race against the sun.
Valentine never got to test his contraption any further. He caught a whiff of the telltale ammonia smell on the clean night breeze and reached for the Steyr.
The hunter-gatherer rushed out of the night, grasping arms up and ready. Valentine had no idea where the vital spots were, so he settled for sending shot after shot straight down its centerline, trusting that the big-game 7.62mm shells would find something important.
lOl
The bug collapsed, flipped forward in a weird imitation of the downed aircraft, continued to twitch with the three legs and the pinioned arm on one side of its body. Valentine reached for the bug prod, held the rifle at his hip in his right hand and the prod with his left.
The shots roused Hornbreed, though he grasped the flare gun rather than his pistol.
"Most-heeeeee!" a voice shrieked from the darkness.
Others took up the chorus. "Most-heeeee!"
A fast metallic rattle, either an imitation of a snare drum on some piece of aluminum or an attempt to re-create a rattlesnake's warning, broke out in the desert predawn.
"That can't be good", Hornbreed said, and managed to rise to his feet using the fuselage for support.
"I think I just committed blasphemy", Valentine said.
Something whizzed nearby and the fuselage popped near his ear. Stones!
"Inside", Valentine said, shoving the pilot toward the rear door.
Stones didn't leave a telltale muzzle flash to shoot back at. Valentine fired twice more into the darkness. He helped Hornbreed in, felt a sudden pain as a stone struck him in the leathers just below the shoulder blade. Valentine dived inside.
Stones and thrown spears rattled against the fuselage like a dying hailstorm. More yips and coyote howls broke out around the aircraft, along with a deeper drumming.
The banging grew louder. Voices just outside the fuselage shouted, and the clattering redoubled as the Jaguars banged on the overturned plane with hand weapons.
Valentine checked the lock on the rear cargo door, crept to the missing front door. A shadow loomed outside; Valentine marked a tangle of dirty hair held in place by a broad headband. He fired and the head disappeared.
"Fhway! Fhway! Fhway!" a voice shouted outside from just beneath the pilot's seat.
Valentine smelled woodsmoke. He went to the copilot window,
saw a figure with a flaming torch, and opened the window, but a hand grabbed the muzzle of his gun. Valentine jerked it back violently, shot through the fuselage at where the grabber must have been standing, then found his torch target was gone.
Hornbreed said something, but his words were lost in the hammering on the fuselage. They might as well have tried to converse on the inside of a giant drum. Valentine smelled more smoke, unsheathed his sword; there was nothing to do but go out the missing door. Otherwise they'd cook.
Hornbreed suddenly opened the door, stuck his flare gun up.
"No", Valentine shouted.
A knife blade stabbed in, glinting on the sudden illumination of the flare. Hornbreed fell back from it. Valentine brought the handy little carbine around and fired through the fuselage again. A hand appeared as one of the Jaguars tried to hoist himself in. Valentine discouraged it by severing a couple of fingers with the sword. He shouldered his gun again.
Thunderous pounding outside - How the hell are they making that noise? Then Valentine realized he was hearing the beating rotors of a helicopter.
Tracer lit up the pinkening dawn, bright shards of yellow rain from the sky. The hammering on the fuselage let off and Valentine saw the warriors scatter.
"It's the pickup chopper!" Hornbreed almost shouted. Hope had given him new strength.
Valentine looked outside, saw a big bulbous desert-tan fuselage, a greenhouse of glass at the front, red and green running lights, a uniformed gunner at an oversized door at the side. Valentine grabbed his clip light and used the signaling switch to blink three times at the craft. Three times again, three times again. They might not know the old Quisling Coastal Marine distress code, but the gunner swerved his crosshairs away from the flipped aircraft.
The faint popping of small-arms fire sounded. Hornbreed crawled to the rear cabin door and waved. Men tumbled out of the helicopter.
Valentine saw another prop plane roar overhead, turning tight circles around the crash site.
Hornbreed waved Valentine out the door. Valentine surrendered his gun, sword, and pack to a corporal. Another soldier, a businesslike submachine gun in his grasp, eyed Valentine. Three soldiers and a medic assisted the noncom, one of them openly gaping at the hunter-gatherer, still twitching at the extremities. Valentine heard one of the soldiers shouting something about a "salvage bird" into a headset.
"Rough night", Hornbreed wheezed at the medic, who helped him out the door and toward a litter. "Forget that. I want to get in the chopper with him".
He held out an arm to Valentine, and accepted a lift. "Max, help me on the bird of paradise. We'll be in Yuma in time for cocktails".