by E. E. Knight
* * * *
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 mini-telescope. 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 Mississ
ippi 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 blat-ted 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 Chie
f 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.
