Shadow Dragon

by wade coleman

  I notice Kim strutting past the cars and then says something to the bouncer. She walks to the door, but he grabs her bicep. Kim pivots, her knee connecting with his groin, and he collapses. For such a thin girl, she carries a lot of force.

  Five minutes later she comes out, pats the top of his head and then looks around. After standing up, I come out of the shadows. Our eyes meet, and she heads in my direction.

  Crossing the street, she walks up to me. “You don’t look so good.”

  “I have a headache, and my back hurts.”

  “Follow me.”

  After three blocks, the migraine kicks in. Colors shimmering like a waterfall obscure my vision.

  I take Kim’s shoulder. “You’re my eyes. I can’t see.”

  Feeling sick to my stomach, I lean into Kim. Ten minutes later we stop, and I rest against a chain-link fence.

  “We’re going under, you first” Kim lifts the metal mesh.

  I scrape my chest on the wire, my pack following. I am standing up and wait for Kim to wiggle under. She takes my hand, and we walk on the asphalt, my foot kicks a stone, which bounces off something made of metal. Kim lets go of my hand, and I hear a garage door opening. We head inside; she closes the door behind us.

  “Where are we?”

  “Storage lockers. I have one rigged, so it looks like it’s locked. Should be safe for now.”

  Finding the wall, I slide down the corrugated metal and sit. Kim rummages through her pack, and a light stabs my eyes.

  “That hurts.”

  “Let me look you over...Fuck... You’re covered in shit, Hermes.”

  “That’s because I’ve been wading through shit, Kim.”

  My vision returns, but my heartbeat feels like it’s going to shatter my skull. I breathe deeply and retrieve my migraine meds, a syringe in a plastic case. My hand cramps and I drop the container.

  Kim picks it up and looks inside. There is a syringe filled with meds with a cap over the needle. Mom’s home remedy for migraines. Kim takes off the top, “Where’s the alcohol? You need to be cleaned up.”

  “Type A mutants don’t get infections.”

  “Lucky bastard.” She injects the meds and then pulls out the needle. Kim puts the injector in the case and returns it to my pack. “Let me see your hand.” Kim works my thumb pad.

  “Ouch. Your fingers are needles.”

  “Pussy,” Kim replies but there is a hint of concern in her voice.

  Kim finishes the massage and looks at our packs. “Let’s see what we have.”

  The meds kick in, and slowly the pain begins to fade.

  Kim lays the twelve bags in a neat row, “I never saw this much money in my life.”

  She opens a bag of gold and looks in. “Fuck me raw; I wouldn’t make this much if I fucked a thousand men.” Closing the bag, she tosses it between my legs and smiles. “You can keep it all. Just promise you’ll help me find the ones who killed Cindy.”

  “What are you, six foot?” I am feeling kinda lazy and dreamy. “You move like a cat. I bet you’d be awesome on a dance floor. In six-inch heels, you would tower over everyone.”

  “You’re high,” Kim looks amused.

  I smile weakly. The meds soothe my stomach; my back stops throbbing. Looking up, I notice Kim looks like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca.

  “This will be our Paris,” I say.

  “Fuck, you stink.”

  “Ingrid Bergman doesn’t swear, at least not on camera…”

  * * *

  I’m lying naked on concrete when I wake up, my wet legs sticking to the concrete floor. I look at my watch: it’s five AM. Then I remember we’re in the storage unit, and we’re running from the law along with the Sons of Chaos, a roving biker gang.

  Kim wrings out a dirty t-shirt, adds water from a liter bottle and wipes down my feet.

  She puts my clothes in a plastic bag and hands me a pair of shorts from her pack. “They were Cindy’s. Put them on.”

  The shorts sort of fit. Sucking in my gut, I get the top button fastened, but I can’t zip them up. They are not made for a man. I wish I had clean underwear.

  “How did the Sons of Chaos find out about us robbing the Superstore?” I ask.

  “They may have a telepath or one of them has good ears. Put on your shoes.”

  I sit back down and fumble with the laces.

  Kim ties my shoes, and it feels like a dream. I hum a Bob Dylan song, Tangled Up In Blue.

  “How did you rip your shirt?”

  I look at my scratched arm. “On the cruiser.”

  Kim inspects it. “You left blood, which complicates things.”

  “He was going to die.”

  “‘No good deed goes unpunished,’” Kim replies.

  Putting on my vest, I check my pack. All the money is there. “Better help me carry this.” I divide the silver between us but keep the bag of gold in my pack.

  Kim loads the Beretta and slaps in the clip. “What’s the plan?”

  My head clears, jagged edges of pain sweeping into a corner. “I need you to get my bike and bring it to me. You know how to drive?”

  “Yeah, but we have the cops and the Sons of Chaos on our ass. We can lose them in rush hour. That’s two hours from now. We gotta get closer to the hotel. Can you walk?”

  I stand up slowly. “Yeah.”

  “I know a place next to the hotel, but we have to pass through an unlicensed camp to avoid the cops. Stay close and keep your mouth shut.”

  She opens the door, and we wiggle under the fence, then head downhill to an office complex. There are tents pitched on the lawn in neat rows.

  An earthquake near San Diego sent a tidal wave that wiped out thousands of homes. Refugees have been heading our way for the last few months.

  We keep moving. Kim makes her way to a central fire pit for cooking and tosses my dirty clothes into it.

  Three women sit close together, their eyes following us.

  It’s a warm night. Mutants on sleeping pads line the trail. Ahead is a small creek with an asphalt path. Low growls follow us as we walk down the trail. There’s a creek on our left, a two-story building to the right. The windows are gone, replaced by cloth. From one of the windows, someone peeks out from behind a sheet-covered opening.

  Kim lets go of my hand, removing the pistol from her pocket.

  Three mutants armed with clubs block the path. A mutant with long arms is in the center, and the two on each side are shorter than he is. The one on the right flashes a light in our eyes.

  “Empty your pockets,” the long arm mutant asks.

  The meds in my system are slowing me down. I don’t realize what Kim is doing until it’s almost too late.

  Leveling her pistol, Kim keeps closer to the men.

  She’s going to shoot them, so I shove her.

  Her shot goes wide, and instantly the mutants scatter.

  She levels the Beretta at the building entrance and then at me.

  “You didn’t need to kill them, they brought clubs to a gunfight, for crying out loud!”

  She puts her pistol away, clutches my hand, and we walk. “Don’t do that again.”

  We continue, the dogs barking furiously from the camp behind us.

  Thirty minutes later, we find an abandoned house. The garage is burned to the ground, broken glass on the sidewalk leading to the steps. On the front door is a warning sign with a biohazard symbol. The house reeks of ammonia.

  The sky gets brighter, twenty minutes to sunrise. I sit down, and I look out the broken window. A few blocks away is our hotel. I give Kim my bike key. “Try to keep a low profile.”

  * * *

  The sounds of traffic get louder as I doze and gradually the sun begins to warm me; a waft of sewage finds my nose, the comforting whine of my bike’s electric motor sounds as Kim pulls up.

  After loading the bags in my extended bike rack, I get on, wrap my arms around her, and lean my head against her back.

  “Keep it below twenty-five.”<
br />
  Kim twists the throttle, and we jerk forward. After a few blocks, she gets a better feel for my bike, and we head west.

  “I know a way out of the city so the cops won't see us.”

  Kim stops at a light, letting a shoeless boy cross, who is carrying a sack of aluminum cans on his back. Once the boy crosses, we continue, two and three-wheel vehicles zipping around us. The smell of burritos wafts from a roadside stand.

  To avoid the last checkpoint, she drives the bike through abandoned backyards and railroad tracks.

  Once out of the city, we take the new 101 highway that runs along the west edge of the estuary. It’s June, and all the rivers are running full of snowmelt, so water is creeping closer to the road. Ten miles later and there is a green sign with black letters that says “Ceres.” Soon we come to a gate with a small concrete bunker to the right.

  The gate is open, and Kim drives through cautiously.

  Our farm community is called Ceres. It sits between the old cities of Fairfield and Vacaville. That was before the glaciers melted and the sea level rose forty feet.

  Ceres runs along the west edge of the estuary. Here we grow genetically engineered rice with deep roots. It comes up every year without being replanted. For miles along the Sacramento wetlands, all you can see is rice.

  The main road into Ceres is lined with identical cinderblock houses that sit back fifty feet from the road on two-acre lots. My town is surrounded on three sides by a ten-foot fence. The war veterans, my parents’ generation, are a stickler for security. When the rice got established and started to produce, Ceres became a tempting target for gangs.

  Ceres is technically a US Army reserve base so that mutants can carry weapons inside the city limits. This makes Ceres kind of its own gang. Colonel James figured out all the legal stuff when the town incorporated.

  It’s mid-morning when we drive on a dirt driveway to my house, a two-story cinderblock construction with photovoltaic panels on the white metal roof. My dad’s shop door is open. Kim drives in and parks next to my mom’s Suzuki.

  Dad gets up, wipes the grease off his hands and looks at Kim, frowning.

  Removing our packs from the bike rack, I hand them to Daniel.

  He looks me over. I’m wearing shoes with no socks, a black vest and white shorts with blue flowers embroidered on the pockets.

  His eyes go back to Kim. He opens his mouth to say something when mom walks in.

  Mom’s wearing scrubs and holding two cups of coffee. She puts the mugs on the table and looks me over. “Take your meds for a migraine?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sit down.”

  She takes my pulse and checks my eyes. “Take a shower and get some sleep.”

  She looks down at my pants. “Hermes?”

  “Yes, Mom?”

  “If you can’t zip your fly without hurting yourself, then your pants are too tight.”

  “Yes, Mom. I’ll remember that the next time I’m without pants. By the way, this is Kim, my friend.”

  Kim stands there awkwardly, and I leave them alone to get acquainted.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There’s no stabbing pain. The migraine is gone. The alarm clock says 1 PM. I dress and head for the garage. Dad’s shop is a three-car garage with pegboards for every tool.

  He’s talking to a customer and nods when he sees me.

  Dad and I have been partners in crime since I graduated high school. I wanted to be a photojournalist, but that didn’t work out. Now, I steal, and Dad moves the merchandise.

  I head to the kitchen, open the fridge and pull out lab-grown beef hotdogs and cheese. Lab-grown meat is a quarter the cost of regular meat. Mom says it’s more humane because there are no feedlots.

  I stuff half a dog into my mouth, and I turn the kettle on after cutting up some cheese. When I finish eating, the water is hot, and I make a cup of instant coffee with three heaping teaspoons. The bitter taste helps wake me up which helps get rid of the last of the sewage that got splashed in my mouth last night.

  Since I was old enough to Shadow Walk, I have a problem with daylight. It makes me feel like a cat, and all I want to do is sleep in the sunbeams. The cure is a strong cup of coffee every two hours while the sun is up.

  The garage door closes, and Daniel walks into the kitchen, pacing, with his hands behind his back, looking at the floor. He stops and looks up at me. “What in the hell did you bring home?”

  “Her name is, Kim, Dad, and I wouldn’t be here without her.”

  Daniel shakes his head.

  “Where are they?”

  “She and your mom are getting dinner,” he growls and returns to pacing. “Do we have a security problem?”

  “We know each other’s secrets. Kim’s an unregistered telepath.”

  My father nods and raises his eyebrows, impressed. “Okay, that’s good, I can use that.”

  Now that he’s okay with my new friend, he goes to the fridge, gets a beer, and sits on a bar stool.

  “Report,” he commands, like an officer to a subordinate.

  I bristle at his bark, but I let it go.

  “And I want to know everything from the moment you left.”

  “The drive to Frisco was nice on my new electric bike. I like the suspension in-”

  “Hermes, stop being an ass and tell me what happened.”

  “Moving along, I got through the North Frisco checkpoint and made my way to the Oxford Arms Hotel. It’s eight blocks from the Super Store.”

  “I know all that,” he’s irritated.

  “I paid for my room in cash and headed to it.”

  I think back. I was heading for the stairs; a young woman blocks my path, thin, a little taller than me, head elongated in the back. She has a large jaw and yellow eyes and hair--a Type Two mutant.

  “You want a girlfriend for the night?”

  “Aren’t you a little young?”

  “I’m eighteen, got ID and license.” She opens her wallet.

  I look her ID over, then at her.

  Too thin, I think. I like my girls with a little meat and shape to their bodies. “No thanks,” I walk by her.

  She grabs my arm, turns me around with a strength I didn’t expect, her eyes both scared and angry. “Please!”

  Her eyes soften my mood, and it’s been months since I felt a woman against me. I plan on leaving the room at 2 am. So…I’ll get a bottle of vodka, and she’ll sleep through the night.

  “Okay, stop there,” Daniel says. “What I understand is that you picked up a telepathic hooker before you went out on a job. Are you… do you have some mental condition I don’t know about?”

  I shrug. “You wanna lecture, or hear the rest of the story?”

  He waves his hand, and I continue.

  “Anyway, she turns out to be a bitch, and I ask her to leave.”

  “What happened?”

  “She took off her clothes, and she has these stripes that go all the way down-”

  “Hermes, you can skip this part.”

  “Afterwards, we go have dinner. Then mutants from the Inner-City Gang show up and start chasing us.”

  “Why were they chasing you?”

  I shrug. “I went along for the ride.”

  “So now you’re being hunted by the Inner-City Gang?”

  “No…Kim killed three of them, and the troll was taken down by a meat wagon.”

  “Good…no witnesses…continue.”

  “We go back to the hotel, get cleaned up, grab some rest and head out to the Superstore around 1 AM.” I take a sip of my bitter coffee and make a face. “I got inside, cut through the cabinet safe and was loading the bags when Kim lets me know we have company. An armored pickup truck with a fifty-caliber machine gun pulled up and parked under the windows. A troll jumps out and heads up the steps. It took me an hour to cut the hole in the cabinet safe. He took thirty seconds. And another thirty seconds to rip the Vory safe from its mounts and throw it out the window.”

  “With weight
training and the gene therapy, a troll is a juggernaut,” Daniel says.

  “Yeah, this guy liked to smash things. A pro. He was in and out in less than three minutes.”

  I finish the coffee and pour myself some iced tea. Dad is still nursing his beer. “After the troll left, we got the hell out. That’s when the police cruiser showed up, and the Sons of Chaos ripped it apart with their fifty calibers,” My voice is angry.

  “And that’s when you stopped to help.”

  “Yeah…about that, I tore my shirt on a piece of metal and left blood at the scene.”

  He shakes his head. “Boy, how many times have told you, ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’”

  I look Daniel in the eye. “I’m not going to leave a man down.”

  Dad gives me a sad smile, “I know, son, it’s commendable but stupid.”

  “Anyway…I used the sewers to get away and meet up with Kim at Alexander’s. I get a migraine, and Kim takes care of me, we head back to my bike, and she drives us home.”

  He twirls his empty beer bottle on the counter. “Why can’t you stick to the plan?” Daniel doesn’t wait for me to answer. This is an old argument. “That blood you left on the cruiser, the police will have a DNA match in forty-eight hours.”

  He gets up, pacing again. At the rate he’s going, there will be a groove in the floor in about an hour or so. “They will question you in front of a telepath, find you guilty, and you’ll get at least twenty years. Testify against the Sons of Chaos, and you’ll be out in five if you live that long.”

  I finish the mug, rinse the cup out and put it back. “I could lie, say that I saw the whole thing from the alley, didn’t see faces. I could pull it off if I had a mesh.”

  Corporations use telepaths to spy on one another, so they developed the mesh to protect their secrets. A mesh is a bioengineered life form that fits under the scalp. It’s like a spider. The conductive fibers spread out along the skull, like nerves. They feed on nutrients in the blood and send random nerve impulses that disrupt telepathic communication.

  My father rubs his chin. “Yes. You’re a good liar. I’ll make some calls. You can stay the night, but tomorrow you’re on the move.”