Though the remainder of the trip passed in relative peace, I was still left feeling uneasy. Jennifer asked Dana what inspired her color changing nails, and I wondered how I was going to keep her little helpers from following us any further. Dana asked Jennifer if she enjoyed her trip to the Battlegrounds, while I stared out the front window of the bus, watching for the junkyard to come into view, hoping that at least one problem would soon be solved. I also began to wonder if Cassdan had survived.
Chapter 14
Four miles west of the city center, red-orange morning sunlight peeked between the city’s long shadows and stretched across three hundred acres of junk filled land. Mockingbirds flitted about, annoyed by our approach and plaguing anyone within range with their best imitations of car alarms and cell phone rings. An elderly raccoon ignored us as he rummaged through the latest additions to the wall of bagged refuse barely held in check by the chain link fence surrounding the property. On that fence still hung a faded old sign, reading “Westside Reservoir Park.”
Many years ago, this had been the site of a granite quarry. Most of the city’s buildings and roads had used stone stripped from this pit and, later, their polished granite countertops and bathroom tiles. At some point, mismanaged business deals had forced the owner to file for bankruptcy. The local government bought up the pit to make a reservoir for the city, and the surrounding land to make a public park. Not long after that, the Skyway was built.
The politicians all lived in the upper half of the city, so no one was really surprised when all of the tax funded city beautification contracts started going upstairs. No one really remembers whether or not the park was ever finished, but land in an overcrowded city doesn’t go unused for long. People began throwing their garbage and broken appliances into the quarry. Before long, it had overflowed, spilling out into the surrounding land. Homeless scavengers picked over the discarded remains, using what they could, scrounging components or repairing things to sell. The land still belonged to the city, though, making them all trespassers on government land.
Police were sent in, razor wire was put up, but what does that matter to those who have nothing but time and an empty belly to fill? Eventually, it all became much too much trouble for the city to bother with, and so the whole property was sold at a low price to a private owner, under the promise that the new owner would keep the undesirables out. That owner, my Aunt Louise, agreed to the terms and upheld them, in the sense that tenant-employees are not technically homeless scavengers.
“Hey, Jack,” called out an older man with a bushy gray beard as we exited the bus.
“Morning, Bob,” I called back.
Dana Marrow gave us one last smile before waving goodbye and closing the bus doors. In moments, the engine revved and the beast began to pull away. We made our way to the front gate, trying not to breathe in too much of the gravel dust the oversized vehicle kicked up in the small parking lot.
Bob was wearing the same thing he always did: a navy jumpsuit tucked into leather work boots, a wool knit cap, and a friendly smile. Across his back was strapped a hunting rifle, loaded and always at the ready. He detached a set of keys from a belt loop and clicked open the front gate lock for us.
“You come to see the boss?” he asked as we stepped through.
“That’s right,” I answered, “and we’re in a bit of a hurry, too.”
“Outsiders can be dangerous, Jack.” He wasn’t trying to be rude, but he had good reason to be cautious.
“She’s okay, Bob. I trust her.”
“M’ar?” came the little voice from inside the bag made from my vest.
Nikie had slept through most of the bus ride over, tired from all the stress. She was calm now, but the little cuss was still prone to panicking, and therefore remained a flight risk. I wasn’t going to unbox her until I was certain she was somewhere safe. Thankfully, the bionic arm carrying her never got tired or ached. My back, however, wasn’t so sturdy.
“You forget your usual pet carrier?” he asked, relocking the gate.
“This wasn’t exactly a planned visit,” I responded. “Speaking of which, if you see anyone snooping around outside the fence, give us a call.”
I didn’t have to tell him not to open the gate for strangers. Long term PTSD had made Bob a more cautious security man than I had ever been, but we weren’t dealing with typical threats this time. One man outside could mean ten more had already slipped in.
“She’s up in the stacks, by the way,” he added, relocking the gate behind us. “You know the way.”
I certainly did. In the months that I stayed with my aunt, I learned my way around the place pretty well. Around the outer ring of the property was the garbage, a wide ring of bagged refuse, constantly added to by the populace of the city as they came in on their weekly visits to chuck their rubbish over the fence. On the east side of the property, this outer ring was broken by a large sorting machine, slowly consuming the trash. Workers fed the great maw of the mechanical beast day and night so it could do its work, shredding the plastics and metals for recycling and funneling biological materials into the former quarry to be used for methane harvesting.
A second ring beyond the trash wall was comprised of scrap hills, each one roughly forty feet high and made of small bits of junk. What the sorting machine shredded and spat out was sent there to await recycling. Everyone tried to keep the hills arranged by content, that way it was easier to find the right materials when someone needed a new part printed.
Beyond the hills were the mountains, where larger appliances were sorted for easier scavenging. High peaks of refrigerators, washer/dryer units, and hot water heaters were all carefully arranged to avoid accidents and injuries. A nearby truck with a cherry picker crane was kept handy for pulling out appliances or putting up incoming ones.
“That one looks brand new,” Jennifer said, as we passed Mt. Dishwasher.
“Uppers,” I said. “They send down a lot of stuff that’s only a couple of years old. Most of it’s in decent condition, just needs a quick check up and shine before it gets carried out to the resale shops.” I pointed toward a flattened food printer sitting next to its better looking brothers. “Other times, they just throw it out the window, not giving a damn who it hits.”
Lending support to the backsides of the mountains were the stacks, great pillars of flattened automobiles used like bricks. Each stack was roughly four crushed cars wide, with each layer stacked at right angles to the one below it. The stacks often reminded me of Jenga towers, though no one played games with these.
Approaching a gap between two stacks, the sounds of shattering glass and wrenching steel interrupted our quiet walk. Thirty feet in front of us, on the other side of the gap, a flattened SUV landed on its roof kicking up a cloud of dust around it. I felt the vibration of it in the cartilage of my bones, the organic ones, followed by the smaller thumps, the footsteps of the lumbering beast that had tossed it.
Standing eight feet tall, it stomped out into the gap. Its scrap steel exterior hid mounds of plastic muscles attached to a jointed polyethylene frame, roughly in the shape of a human. Battery powered heating elements controlled the immense artificial muscles, but heated the inside to a point that the pilot had to wear a liquid cooled bodysuit to avoid heat stroke. The interior bodysuit had been modeled after the old Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment invented for keeping astronauts comfortable during extra-vehicular activity in the bulky space suits of bygone years, but for its use in power armor one small addition had to be made. Since the cooling garment was already skin tight, it made sense to just build myoelectric bands right into it, so electrical signals from the wearer’s muscles could be directly sent to the power armor, effectively allowing the large, bulky frame to move naturally with the wearer, or at least that was my thinking when I built it. Information on how military power armor was designed and built was top secret, so I had to improvise a few aspects of the suit.
Aunt Lou was already ripping the second tire off of th
e vehicle when she noticed us. “Hey, Jackie,” she called out, waving the tire and crushed wheel in a three fingered steel hand. “Y'all go on to the house. I’ll be right there.”
Hidden beyond the stacks were groupings of small houses, each one only about a hundred and fifty square feet of space, but all uniquely built out of salvaged materials. One of the first residents here had been an unemployed carpenter who spent his days constructing these small homes and teaching others to do it, and it looked like more had been added since the last time I was here, bringing the total up to about sixty. It also looked like they were trying to start up a garden, growing fresh fruits and vegetables on an acre of topsoil. From the smell of it, they had enriched it with compost from the quarry.
Right next to the garden, at the center of the property, stood my aunt’s house, a simple ranch style construction with an oversized garage, the door of which was already standing open. Stepping in through the garage, we entered the unlocked door of the house and located the guest bedroom, a room that I had temporarily called home.
Unzipping the vest and opening the carrier, I set Nikie on the bed. “Now, you be a good girl. I promise I won’t stay gone for long.”
“Mer’er?”
I asked Jennifer to retrieve two plastic bowls from under the kitchen sink and fill one with water. When she returned, I poured food into the second bowl and pulled the top off of the disposable litter box, setting it in the corner of the room. I scratched Nikie under the chin and nuzzled her head one last time before stepping out of the room, shutting the door gently behind me and double checking that it had latched properly. I hoped there might be enough of my scent left on the bed for her to get back to sleep easily. With any luck, she’d barely know I was ever gone.
Back in the garage, my box of hand parts was still sitting on the shelf where I had left it. I pulled a packet of small tools from my back pocket and sat down on the floor to work, Jennifer moving to stand in front of me, out of my light. Rarely did I need to make adjustments to my arm on the fly, but accidents still happened. None before had been quite like this.
“All of this is not exactly what I was expecting,” Jennifer spoke up as I removed what was left of my pinky. “Exactly what kind of community is this?”
“The barely legal kind,” I responded, separating the joints of the ring finger. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to anyone.”
“Oh, of course. I just, I didn’t realize people live like this.”
I stripped the connections from the middle finger. “Like what? They have decent pay, roofs over their heads, and frankly they provide a valuable service for the city.”
“No, I just mean, aren’t there programs to help people who can’t take care of themselves?”
I removed the index finger and started to work on the thumb. “Ms. Nadee, no, there are no programs to help the homeless, or the elderly, or wounded veterans, or hungry animals. The people who run this city are all upstairs, and we…” I paused to pop the thumb out of its socket. “We are out of sight and out of mind. No one is voting to help out lower level scum like me and these people. The last time we had our taxes raised, you got a new UV coating on your Skyway. Public money, all funnelled into private companies.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“Yeah, it does sound terrible,” I said, removing the plastic bones of my wrist, “but being left alone is better than being arrested for being homeless, or shot because you walked through the rich neighborhood.” I started slotting in the new bones forming the back of my hand. “My point is, most people are pretty decent if you give them the opportunity to be.”
“You don’t seem to feel that way about Uppers.”
“What?” I hooked the muscle bundle of the palm into position. “No, that’s not what I’m saying.” I connected the new thumb. “I just mean that no one is doing themselves any favors by living up there. They think they’re buying safety and comfort, but they’re really just disconnected, closed off, separated from the real world. How is a person supposed to learn empathy or generosity if they’re never exposed to someone who really needs it.” I chuckled to myself as I began fixing my fingers in place. “An act of kindness is a bit like a murder. You have to have means, motive, and opportunity.” I started sliding the final muscle attachments into place. “Or maybe I’m just rambling.”
“No,” she responded, “I get it. That’s pretty much why I work for Mr. Wright. It’s important to give yourself opportunities to grow, to do some good.”
I stood and flexed my rebuilt hand, testing its range of motion. “It’s true. You never really know what you can do until you have the opportunity, or no other choice.”
“No kidding,” came my Aunt Lou’s voice, as a shadow blocked the light from the open garage door.
Though the suit was large and powerful, it was made of fairly light plastics, giving it a soft step when the operator chose to work it that way. Louise popped the seals and lifted off the shoulders and head of the suit, placing it on a high shelf behind Jennifer.
“Jackie doesn’t like to brag,” she continued, climbing out of the top of the suit, “but I wouldn’t have been able to build this community without him.” She peeled off the hood of the coolant suit, extracting a ponytail of curly red hair. “I bought this place with the intention of turning it into something useful, but without that power suit I couldn’t have built the pillars, and without them, I couldn’t hide the houses.”
“I don’t get it,” Jennifer said. “Why would anyone care what you build on your own property?”
“Oh, they shouldn’t care, but they always seem to find an excuse to deny permits to anything that isn’t a billion dollar high-rise.” Aunt Lou looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You finally bring a girl around and you don’t even introduce her?”
“Sorry,” I said, suddenly remembering my manners. “Ms. Nadee, please meet my aunt, Louise. Aunt Lou, this is my client, Jennifer Nadee.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jennifer,” my aunt said, removing her gloves and extending a hand.
“And you, Ms. Louise,” Jennifer responded, taking her hand.
“Oh please, call me Aunt Lou. I need to go get changed, but you two make yourselves at home.”
“We’re actually on a pretty tight schedule. I just came by to get parts and drop off Nikie, if you don’t mind taking care of her for a day or two.”
“Did you happen to bring cat food or litter?”
“‘I did, actually, despite being a bit busy being shot at.”
“Shot at?” she asked, crossing her arms and frowning at me. “Exactly who was shooting at you?”
“We don’t know that, yet. We’re trying to recover a stolen item, but it seems our inquiries ruffled some feathers. I promise, Aunt Lou, we were just trying to set up a peaceful negotiation.”
“Jackie, does this have anything to do with the armored truck that came in yesterday?”
I felt my left eyebrow rise. “Show me.”
As quick as she could, Louise changed into work boots and overalls and led us back out to the columns. Between two of the western stacks sat the armored transport, mostly intact. The tires were all flat and the cab was riddled with bullet holes, but the only major structural damage was where the back doors had been pried apart.
“The battery’s fried,” my aunt said, as I examined the back compartment, “but I figured the outer shell might be good for something.”
“What are you looking for?” Jennifer asked. “We’re a bit short on time, here.”
“I’m just trying to assess what we’re up against,” I responded. “Most of our plans have gone out the window, so I think in this case it’s worth the investment.”
“You think you see something the cops didn’t?”
“More like I’m just checking their work.”
It all looked consistent with the report. Bullet holes only on the driver’s side suggested there was a single shooter with armor piercing rounds. Square edges where the doors
had been wedged and forced open suggested a pneumatic spreader, rather than a guy with fancy bionics. There would have been guards in the back of the truck as well, meaning the fellow with the spreader probably had another man with a gun next to him, which all added up to one tech man and two bodyguards.
I opened the driver’s side door. The seats were still covered in blood, dried and crusted, and the bullet holes remained, maybe two dozen of them. I stuck a finger down inside a couple of them, fishing around to see if the police had removed the bullets. They hadn’t.
“Find something?” Jennifer asked.
“A bullet,” I said, holding it up to the light. “Looks like there’s no striations on it. The gun this was fired from has no rifling in the barrel.”
“What kind of gun has no rifling?”
“A ghost gun. The Combine likes to make its own weapons on industrial printers. They’re completely unregistered, with no serial numbers, ghosts outside the system. Doing it themselves, they can make as many as they want, but the cheap machines they use leave the barrels un-rifled.”
“Does the Combine hire a lot of cop-looking muscle?”
“Not typically, but their agents are generally allowed to manage their own affairs.”
“Let’s hope so. I’d rather not be up against the entire Z.A.C.”
“Well, right now that’s still all too possible. Assuming the same three men who hit the transport are the same three who hired Cassdan, that still doesn’t quite cover all of the people that came after us and Cassdan at the same time.”
“It could have been the buyer, the one that isn’t us, trying to eliminate the competition.”
“And after Cassdan?” I asked.
“He knew about the buy. If they found out he was snooping for us, they’d have reason to keep him quiet. The prototype is unregistered. For the buyer to patent it, they’ll have to make sure there’s no evidence that it’s stolen tech.”
Under the Skyway (Skyway Series Book 1) Page 11
