Peace in an Age of Metal and Men

by Anthony Eichenlaub

What was I doing there? The question nagged me as I passed the man and strolled into town. What was going on had to stop, and a clever man could solve problems without violence. Words were his bullets and truth was his fist. There was a man killing children in Swallow Hill. All I needed to do was figure out who that murderer was and it would be easy enough to hand the evidence over to the town’s law.

  Zane had somehow known about the murder, but how much did he know about the town? Closer up, the buildings looked broken. Old. Some even seemed structurally unsafe. The tavern leaned right up against the polished stone bank. Dry earth had blown up against that side of the street, causing the place to have an abandoned look. Other buildings were in much worse shape: even the old church at the head of the square seemed ready to topple. Tables had been set up outside to form an open market, and the theme seemed to continue tentatively into the building. All of the town was worn down: drab and ragged cloth decorating time-scoured wood and stone.

  There were people, but they didn’t look much better than the town in which they lived. A sad couple passed me in threadbare clothes. The man’s skin had yellow, unhealthy patches and his fingernails were broken and cracked. The woman at his side was pretty in her way, but sallow cheeks and thinning hair told of a hard life. Her eyes flashed blue as I met them, revealing the tech hidden behind them. I tipped my hat and wondered what they thought of a stranger wandering into their secluded town. Their expressions were filled with worry as they pulled each other close and hurried away. How might they have acted if I’d moseyed into town fully armed? Would their worried caution be replaced with open hostility?

  There were others, all of them looking my way as I strolled casually through the center of town. An ancient woman scowled at me from under a flowered hat. Two teenage boys watched me from the shadows of an alley. Across the street, a man in a light-tan duster and a star saw me and approached.

  “Long way from home, mister,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  The man looked me up and down. His fingers touched the pistol at his side.

  I didn’t give any ground. “I’m not looking for trouble, Deputy…”

  “Sheriff Flores.”

  “J.D. Crow,” I said, sticking my hand out for a shake. He didn’t take it. “I’m not here for trouble, son. All I want is a few answers.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Folks here don’t see many outsiders, stranger.”

  “No, I don’t suppose they do.”

  “If you’re looking for trouble—”

  “I’m not.” Thought that had been established.

  “If you are, there’s plenty to find.” He glanced down at his sidearm. “More than you might like.”

  “How many people live here?”

  “Last fella come through here looked a whole lot like you. We ran him out of town real quick.”

  “What do you folks do out here? Ranching? Manufacturing? Not much trade or you’d have more visitors.”

  Flores grabbed my arm. “Listen here, fella.” His eyes flashed brightly enough that their internal glow was visible even in the sun. “This here’s a quiet town. We ain’t rich, but we got our place and all these nice buildings and fancy clothes don’t mean we got anything worth stealing. You so much as look funny at any my people, you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of dead.”

  I pulled my arm free. Sheriff Flores wasn’t going to give me anything, so there didn’t seem to be a point in pressing matters.

  Nothing was going to happen outside of talking, so I went where talking was best. The tavern was a crooked, smoke-filled mess of oak and steel. Blue lights hung from the ceiling, piercing the cigar haze with razor-sharp rays. A more diffuse glow came from somewhere above, reflecting from the smoke and doing more to obscure than illuminate. Paint on the inside walls was caked on in layers, chipped down to the wood in places. The bar was solid mahogany with tarnished metal stools. There were only two tables in the entire place; one was circled by four men playing poker.

  The bartender, a white-haired man with big belly and a finely articulated artificial right hand, frowned at me as I moseyed slowly up to the bar.

  I held up two fingers. “Whiskeys.”

  He nodded, filled two shot glasses with a golden liquid. The aroma calmed me and brought me back. There was a time when I’d have had trouble with the alcohol. Drinking one whiskey would lead to another, then another, then another. That was years ago. I hadn’t had a drink in so long.

  “I’ll have another,” I said. My first two shots were down. “Make it two.”

  The barkeep’s frown deepened. “Eight stars,” he said. “Coin. No credit.”

  I fished the coins out of a pocket and dropped them on the bar. The barkeep nodded and poured two more glasses. Then he turned around to a stove where he was frying up something that smelled like fat and spices. Thick sausages rolled around in the pan. He looked back at me questioningly.

  Bile bubbled up in the back of my throat. The image of the slaughtered boy flashed in front of me. Sausages. He had been next to a sausage-making machine. There was no way to know if that boy had made it into the sausage machine, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to take the risk. The two shots of whiskey looked up at me like the yellow eyes of death. There was peace in them. An answer. Get lost. Let it all go. Be at peace.

  Be dead.

  It was good whiskey. The best. Those first two shots still lingered in the back of my throat, calling out to their friends. The alcohol had little effect. The nannies in my blood burned it off almost as fast as I could drink, but alcohol slowly killed the bastards. All that tech inside of me would die if I drank hard enough. Eventually, I’d overload the nannies and they’d stop repairing my body from the damage done by my metal arm.

  They’d recover, though. They always did. It always hurt.

  Behind me, one of the poker players won a hand, hauling in hundreds of stars in a single bet. I glanced sideways at him. Of all the men there, he was the only one who looked like he made some money. He was a man in his thirties, smooth-skinned and bright-eyed. He grinned at winning, but he didn’t look down at his money. Instead, his gaze flickered from one opponent to the next, as if sizing them up. As if expecting trouble.

  “Mighty nice town you have here,” I said to the barkeep.

  The barkeep turned to me, bent down so our eyes were level, and said, “Mister, we plan to keep it that way.”

  Our scowls locked, his face twisted into a mask of disgust that didn’t seem to fit his rosy cheeks and soft jowls. The poker players stopped, filling the room with a heavy silence. The barkeep’s hand moved slowly under the bar out of sight, but he kept his eyes right on me. Muscles in his neck tensed, like he was some great bear ready to rear up and maul someone for waking him up. His eyes flashed with an inner light.

  I spoke through gritted teeth. “Barkeep, best take your hand off of that weapon.” For a second, I didn’t know if he would back down. A man protecting his place of business could be a fierce thing. “I’m unarmed.”

  His scowl turned to a mirthful grin and he stood back from the bar. He laughed from his belly. “Just giving you a hard time.”

  I grunted.

  The poker players anted up.

  “Why are you in town?” The barkeep pulled out a rag and started wiping down the already clean bar. “Swallow Hill ain’t on the way to anywhere, and it ain’t on the way from anywhere.”

  “Well,” I said. “Heard the whiskey was good and the people friendly.” I downed another shot.

  “You’re half right.”

  “That’s good whiskey.”

  He polished the bar with a scrap of filthy cloth. “We’re not so bad. Just don’t like rough-looking strangers walking into town, especially after all that’s been going on.”

  “Trouble?”

  He bit his lip and leaned closer. “Don’t think it’s a bad town, but we have our issues.”

  I met the man’s gaze and gave him a questioning look.

  “Kids gone missing
. Three of them now. Just gone.”

  “Seems like a lot of folks have gone missing. It’s mighty sparse out there considering the size of the town.”

  His face was hard to read. “Lots of folks working long hours.”

  I nodded. “The way of the world.”

  He was peering at me and I could see the lights flashing in his corneas. “When we find the fella responsible for them kids, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

  “No.” My voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t imagine.”

  “Another whiskey?”

  “Nope.” The taste of bile still hung in the back of my throat. No amount of whiskey was going to chase it away. “Tell me, though, is there a pig farm nearby?”

  Chapter 9

  A man named Keith Woeberg ran a pig farm about a kilometer north of town. Hard to miss. It didn’t take me long to find it. There were pens and the stink of pigs. There was even a sign declaring the place as Woeberg’s Farm on the walkway. Seemed like the right place. Only, something was very wrong with that pig farm.

  There were no pigs.

  I pulled a piece of grass and stuck it in my teeth to help me think. The farm was huge and mechanized. A tall, metal barn loomed to the right of the path, with soil around it so grease-stained nothing grew. The other side of the barn was a series of fenced-off pens—some outdoors, some partially shaded. The nearest ones were empty. Buzzards circled lazily above.

  The farm made up for its lack of pigs with an excess of stink.

  If this was where the video came from, then a quick scan of the room with my glow cube would be evidence enough. There was no need to find the scruffy farmer. Once the evidence was in hand, Sheriff Flores would handle the problem. Probably. Flores would handle this locally, not bothering to bring in Trish. Zane wouldn’t have a problem with that, would he? It made me wonder why Zane thought my particular set of skills was needed.

  There was nobody in sight, so I left the path and circled around the barn. The close end was a concrete loading dock, its metal doors wide open to the world. The scorching wind of the late Texas afternoon gently swayed the doors, rhythmically serenading the putrid homestead with a wailing metal-on-metal screech. The dry grass between my teeth tasted like dust.

  The shadow behind the barn was deep and cool. It wasn’t cold in any real sense of the word, but it was certainly cooler than the blazing heat of the sun.

  That’s when I heard the farmer.

  “Here, piggy, piggy.”

  The land outside of the barn was a flat stretch of dead earth. Running was an option, but talking might get me the information I needed. It just had to be done without confrontation or violence, since I was still unarmed. “Howdy,” I hollered. “Reckon you and I have some business.”

  “Here, piggy, piggy,” called the farmer. “You done volunteered to be next.”

  “Howdy!” There was no way he couldn’t hear me. He was calling to the pig at half my volume, so unless the man was completely deaf, he’d heard me just fine.

  But he didn’t react to my voice.

  The farmer, Keith, rounded the corner. His plain white shirt was crusted with black, dried blood. His untrimmed beard stuck out at angles from his chin. In one hand he held a wicked knife; in the other he held something that appeared to be a bolt gun. When he saw me, his eyes flashed bright and his face twisted into a mask of rage.

  “You!” he snarled.

  He swung his heavy bolt gun up.

  Too slow. I took two long steps forward and backhanded the gun aside. A shot rang out, a slug of metal launched high into the air. The farmer twisted backwards and ducked down. He held hard onto the gun. With a tinny thunk he reloaded and brought his weapon straight back up.

  But I wasn’t there.

  Bolt guns are short-range weapons. Heavy equipment used to slaughter pigs, longhorns, or any animal that proved itself more useful dead than alive. Bolts will easily scramble a brain from two meters, and at five they could crack a skull. Any farther and it’d leave a person with a bruise and a good story to tell.

  I ran hard. Who the hell did he think I was? I sure as hell didn’t know him. My muscles—my whole body was sore, but it felt good to stretch my legs. By the time Keith was back up and around the corner I was halfway down the length of the barn, where I skidded to a halt. There was a painted metal door, pockmarked with rust. I grabbed the doorknob with my three metal fingers and pulled, ripping the door from its hinges.

  A wave of rotten stench rolled out of the gaping door. Bile welled up in my belly again, but I bit it back and plunged into the darkness. The buzz of flies welcomed me, enveloping everything in white noise. They landed, crawled across my face and arm. It was all I could do to ignore them.

  Light trickled in from a window set high in the far wall, one that likely looked out over the slaughterhouse. A polished steel table dominated the center of the room. Behind it was another door. All of the corners of the room were inky blackness, made more so by the harsh light at my back.

  I leapt up and slid across the table, meaning to head straight for the door. Soon as I hit the surface, though, I understood my mistake.

  The table was slippery as snot on a glass doorknob. My butt slid fast, throwing off my balance and landing me hard on my back.

  Keith was at the door. “You think you can come back here?” There was an edge of pain in the farmer’s voice. “You took my Suzie and now you think you can take my pigs?”

  “Do I know you?” I didn’t. Who did he think I was? I spun, kicked the table hard, and made for the door. The table tipped and I heard a grunt from the farmer. My shoulder hit the door, and I was through before he was able to fire another shot.

  My eyes hadn’t adjusted to the gloom of the building any more than my nose had adjusted to the stench. Fat flies crawled over my skin and I had to shake them free before moving again.

  The floor was a metal grate, slick with blood and filth. The door to my left opened easily, so I took it. This door had a solid feel, so I slammed it behind me and braced myself against it. The flies were thicker there, buzzing so loud it sounded like a band saw cutting oak.

  Nobody ever wants to see the inside of a slaughterhouse. They think of a pig farm as a magical place where cute piggies go in and ham steaks come out. Hooks, knives, pliers, hammers, bone saws, and bolt guns hung on pegs. Chains—filthy chains—dangled from a dark ceiling. The whole place reeked of death and pig shit. There was blood everywhere: dried blood, fresh blood, slick blood, and hardened blood all across the table, all over the floor. Even the metal grate of the floor was caked with ichor. Like before, I had to force back the urge to vomit. Unlike before, I failed.

  I turned and emptied my gut onto the ichor-covered floor. The sharp burn of whiskey and stomach acid coated my mouth and overwhelmed my nose.

  “Shouldn’t a come back here, Tom,” called the farmer. “You know what I got for you.” There was a click and a low hum, presumably the bolt gun powering up.

  The farmer thought I was someone else, an enemy of his. Why? He was going to shoot me on sight, which put a kink in my plans to talk things out. Could he even hear me? I pressed my palm to my forehead. There had to be a better plan.

  Of course, there was. Violence.

  No. It was a matter of principle. I’d die right there if it meant proving that I could go without violence. I’d meet a horrible, violent end just to prove it to myself. Shit. That didn’t prove anything, did it?

  “C’mon out. Get what’s coming, Tom,” said the farmer on the other side of the door. His heavy footsteps started again, clomping past my door and farther down the hall. He must not have known where I was. He was trying to draw me out.

  Then I saw the hook. It hung from the ceiling right where I’d seen it in the video. Dirty, black, and wicked, it had held the body of a boy less than a day ago. The sausage machine was there too, jammed up in the corner. This was where I needed to scan. A sample from the floor and a scan of the area was all I needed.

  My cube l
it the room with a flickering green glow. The scan started, lights taking everything in. With a scrap of cloth from my shirt, I sopped up some of the muddy blood on the floor as the cube worked through its array of scans.

  A few more moments were all I needed. Then I could run.

  The footsteps had stopped.

  Where was he? He’d been clomping down the hall, past the room I’d gone into. How far had he gotten? I held my breath and pressed an ear up against the steel door. It was cold against my face. Cold and silent.

  Thoomp! Something hit me hard in the ribs, sending waves of fire through my left side. I dropped to my knees and spun to see Keith at the opposite end of the room. His boots were off and his face was a mix of triumph and rage.

  “When you ran off with Suzie, I thought of coming after you, you know.” The bolt gun clicked and hummed as another bolt locked into place.

  I gasped for air, but each breath was a fresh kick of pain in my ribs.

  He stepped closer, leveling the bolt gun at my head. Behind him, the glow cube flickered through the cloud of flies, finishing its scan.

  “A farmer can’t leave his pigs, can he? Not when he’s got no kids and no wife. Never had kids, but you”—he kicked me hard right where the bolt had tenderized my ribs—“took my damn wife!”

  The floor hit my face. I felt bad for the guy. He’d had a tough life. He was a victim of this as much as anyone, maybe even as much as those kids he killed. It’s hard to hate a guy who’s had it so tough.

  But I managed it, anyway.

  The farmer shook his head. “Tom,” he said, leveling the bolt gun at my head. “You got no idea how good this is gonna make me feel.”

  I sucked in breath through my teeth, reached up with my metal hand, and gripped the business end of the bolt gun so that it was aimed straight at my palm. He’d have to be a damn fool to fire with the barrel blocked like that.

  An explosion of light and noise ripped the two of us apart. My arm thrown backwards, twisting me and sending a fresh batch of pain through my ribs. Everything went silent, replaced by the ring of damaged eardrums.