by Terry Brooks
- 4 -
Neither the speaker nor the machine in which he is riding is like anything Ash has ever seen. They remind him of the covers of old science fiction books he used to secretly pull up on his vidview during some of Faulkner’s more boring lectures.
The machine is huge, a massive iron monster covered with layers of armor. It has the appearance of a weapon, stripped of everything decorative and reduced to a carapace on wheels that looks as if it could break through walls. Huge tires, ladders to doors that open into a cockpit wrapped by an cage with serrated edges and wicked-looking spikes that jut menacingly, crimson flames painted along its slate-gray body from the front wheel wells back—it is a rolling nightmare.
The speaker, who is also the driver, is a perfect match for the machine. A man-boy just on the cusp of changing over, maybe Ash’s age or a little older. Big and leather-clad with metal studs and rings fastened to both his clothing and his face. Head capped slantwise with shiny metal that suggests either some portion of his cranial bone was replaced after an accident or that a metalhead affectation inexplicably captured his fancy and persuaded him to undergo major cosmetic surgery.
Riding in the vehicle with him are three other boys, one of them barely a teen, all of them apparently seeking to emulate the appearance of the speaker. There is a girl as well, Goth and cool as she stares out the other side of the vehicle, ignoring everyone.
“Hey, pussy boy,” the speaker demands, “where do you think you’re going?”
Ash stands his ground. You don’t run in these situations; he knows that much about how the world works. He points up the street. The big kid’s three male companions imitate this gesture and break out in fits of derisive laughter. The girl keeps looking elsewhere.
The big kid shakes his head in dismay. “What, you can’t talk? You a retard? A chemoid? Answer me!”
“I’m meeting someone.”
“Oh, you’re meeting someone,” the big kid repeats, mocking him, showing off for his friends. “That explains everything.”
“Ask him for his hall pass, Ponce,” one of them suggests.
The youngest boy has climbed out on the hood of the machine and is dancing, keeping time to the music in a frenetic kind of shimmy. Ponce takes a swipe at him with one huge arm, and the boy vaults back inside again. The girl elbows the boy sharply as he plops down next to her, and he shrinks away.
“Which club you with?” Ponce snaps. “Tigers? Sheeners? Vapor Hearts? Which? Speak up, pig slop. Let’s hear it. What kind of club uses those crap colors you’re wearing?” He points at Ash’s sheath. “Butt-fuckin’ ugly, you know?” He pauses. “Say something, shit-for-brains. Why am I doing all the talking?”
“I don’t belong to any club,” Ash answers, wondering how he is going to get out of this. “I don’t live here. I’m just looking for someone.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“My father.”
“Your faaather,” he sneers. “Sweet. You lose him or something?”
Big joke. Everyone laughs. “No, I’m meeting him.”
“Yeah? Where?”
“Street Freaks.”
“Street Freaks!” Ponce is suddenly enraged. His companions start yelling and screaming like madmen. “I thought you said you didn’t belong to a club, you lying little bastard!”
“I don’t!” Ash shouts, trying to back him off. “Look, I don’t know anything about this place. I live in the Metro. I just . . . just have this . . .”
He loses his train of thought and his voice along with it as Ponce kicks open the driver’s door, jumps down, and stalks toward him. He would have run if he thought it would do any good, but he knows it won’t. Ponce is not only big; he is cat-quick. He is on top of Ash in seconds, one big hand clutching the front of his sheath and yanking him close enough that he can smell the reek of his breath.
“We don’t like Street Freaks,” he hisses. “We hate fuckin’ Street Freaks. We hate people who have anything to do with Street Freaks. Which means we got a problem with you.”
Ash doesn’t know what to say. So he just stares.
Ponce shakes him like a toy. “Speak up!”
“I don’t know anything . . . about them!” He tries to loosen the other’s grip. “I was just doing what I was told!”
“Big mistake,” Ponce snaps. “This is our part of the strip, not theirs. All the way from Heads & Tails to the beginning of the Scrounge. Ours, twit! You think you can come down here and walk right through our space and not even ask our permission? You think you’re something special? Is that what you think? Hey, I’m talking . . .”
Ash is struggling hard to break free when a voice says, “Let him go, Ponce.”
Everyone turns. A tall raven-haired girl is standing near the rear of the big machine. Not doing anything, just watching. She looks to be about the same age as Ash, but the resemblance ends there. She is much bigger than he is and does not look the least bit intimidated by Ponce. Her sleeveless leather one-piece reveals a sculpted body. Her short-cropped hair frames a face so chiseled and otherworldly it is arresting.
Ponce and his companions go still, their raucous talk reduced to mutterings and whispers. Ash catches a few of their words—“bird” or “bitch” maybe, “freak” and “robo-slut”—but he is not sure. The only one who seems unbothered by her appearance is the girl sitting in the machine—although, even she has turned around to watch.
“Let him go,” the newcomer repeats.
Ponce shakes his head. “This isn’t your mix, Holly.”
Holly saunters forward, glancing up into the cab of the vehicle. “You reach for that chopdown, Penny-Bird,” she says to the other girl, “and you won’t be celebrating turning sixteen.”
Penny-Bird finally glances over and holds up both hands, showing they are empty. For an instant, they lock gazes. Then Holly’s eyes shift back to Ponce. “He says he is meeting someone at Street Freaks. Happens to be me. That makes it my business. Tell him, Jack.”
She says this last to Ash. Recognizing an escape hatch when he sees one, he immediately nods. “That’s right.”
“He said he was meeting his father!” Ponce snaps.
Holly shrugs. “Not your business, is it? Let him go.”
“He’s in our space,” Ponce insists, tightening his grip further. His face is dangerous, angry. A flush creeps up his neck, and the studs and rings glitter. “He don’t have an invite; he can’t just walk in.”
Holly looks at him like he is an idiot. “He’s a civilian, dodo. He doesn’t need an invite. We don’t mess with civilians—remember? That’s a major-type rule in the Zone. You’re so big on rules, try obeying a few once in a while!”
Ponce shakes his head stubbornly, the sunlight glinting off his metal plate in quick flashes. “No, you can’t just . . . He didn’t say nothing about . . .”
Holly comes right up against him now. As quick as Ponce is, she’s even quicker. “You want to let him go, please? If I have to ask again, I might decide to take your ride apart and sell off the pieces for scrap.” She pauses, her eyes suddenly as hard as stones. “Ponce? You hear me?”
The big guy releases Ash with a hard shove that sends him careening into Holly’s arms. She barely moves as she catches him, straightens him up, and moves him aside like a cardboard cutout.
Immensely strong.
Ponce starts back toward his machine and then turns. “I ain’t afraid of you,” he hisses at Holly. “Don’t think for a minute I am. One day soon, you’ll find out.”
Holly watches him climb back into his machine, standing motionless as the engines roar and the music cranks.
“Penny-Bird!” she calls out. “Why don’t you ditch these losers?”
The other girl looks away, staring off into the distance. Ponce engages the engine on his machine, and the group tears down the strip a short distance, swings around sharply, and roars back again. As they pass, Ponce thrusts his arm skyward in a universally recognizable gesture. Holly waves genially in response.
But when they are out of sight, she wheels on Ash. “What do you think you’re doing, coming into the Zone without protection? Who are you, anyway?”
“Ash Collins,” he answers her at once. “This wasn’t my choice. I had to come . . .”
“You had to show some common sense, is what you had to do!” she interrupts. “What happened to that? They would have dismantled you if I hadn’t come along. Those are Razor Boys! Cripes sake, you idiot! This is the Red Zone!”
Ash is thoroughly chastened. But he is also tired of being treated like a child. “Look. If I made a mistake, I’m sorry. But this hasn’t been a very good day for me. It’s taken everything I have just to get this far.”
She snorts. “Everything, huh? Which is what exactly, big guy?”
Big guy? Ash can’t help himself; he leans right into her. “Which is escaping a gang of Hazmats that broke into my home and tried to kill me! Which is watching them deliberately blow up the entire bot staff! Which is then only barely avoiding Achilles Pod by hopping a robo-taxi to get here, and now this!”
She stares. “Bullshit. You’re making this stuff up. Achilles is after your skinny ass?”
“I just said so, didn’t I?”
“Well, you’re lying. What would they want with you?”
“Long story.” He is only barely holding it together. Even though she has rescued him, he doesn’t feel saved. But he takes a chance. “Can you help me?”
“Already have, in case you missed it.” She sticks out her hand. “I’m Holly Priest.”
“Ash Collins.”
They shake, and he is acutely aware of how careful she is to let him do the squeezing. It’s like gripping a piece of smooth steel. She studies him. “Why are you here? Civilians don’t come to Street Freaks unless they get a special invitation or want to do business. Which is it with you?”
“Neither. The people I’m running from are after my father. He sent me here. To find Street Freaks.”
She nods slowly. “Huh. Okay, let’s walk while we discuss this some more.”
She sets off down the sidewalk at a pace that forces Ash to work hard at keeping up. After a hundred yards, she notices this and slows. “How did you get away from Achilles Pod?”
She keeps looking straight ahead, waiting on his answer. “I was trying to catch a train out of substem #23. Then my face flashed up on the reader board like I was a criminal or something, and the next thing I know Achilles Pod comes in. I ran down into the tunnels, then back up to the street and caught a robo-taxi to the Zone’s perimeter.”
He looks down, watching the progress of his feet. “It all happened pretty quick. I really don’t know how I got away.”
Holly laughs, a huge guffaw. “Sounds like balls and brass to me, baby boy!” She shouts it out as if he were maybe half a mile ahead. “I love it!”
“Well, I don’t. I just want to find my father.”
“So you don’t know how he’s connected with Street Freaks?”
“I don’t even know what Street Freaks is.”
“Well, I can help you with that. It’s a specialty shop. Puts cars together in new and exciting ways. Makes them into street machines. Big powerful engines, stripped-down chassis, racing tires, turbo thrusters, the whole lot.”
“Really?” He frowns, confused. “I thought cars like that were gone except for professional racers, and those are all regulated. You can’t do anything that doesn’t conform to the racetrack rules.”
Holly bursts into a fresh gale of laughter. “That’s funny!” She stops, grabs his arm, and turns him toward her. “We don’t build our machines for racetracks, dodo. That’s racing for candy-asses! We build cars for street racing and sometimes for people who just want to go faster than whatever kind of law enforcement is chasing them. You get it? All legal on our end, not always so legal on theirs.”
They start walking again, Holly still chuckling to herself, past buildings fenced off by chain-link topped with razor wire, down sidewalks mostly empty of people. Ash thinks through what she has told him. “So they race right here? Right on this street? That’s why it looks like a legal racetrack?”
“Now you’re getting the picture. It’s called the Straightaway. It’s where we race the way racing should be done. In the streets.”
“But don’t the Preventatives try to stop you? If it’s illegal, don’t they come in and . . .?”
“Why would they do that? Think about it. Street racing is pretty far down the list of things the public worries about. Just the opposite, in fact. They support it. Besides, we don’t take our machines outside the Zone. We keep them in our backyard. You think the Preventatives want to come in here and mess around with that? In the Red Zone? Not a chance. They’re content to leave us alone as long as we leave them alone. No trouble from us, no trouble from them. You see?”
“I guess.”
“Keep working on it.” She pauses. “You know where Street Freaks gets its name? From the machines. That’s what they call our racers—Street Freaks.”
The boy nods. “Street Freaks, huh?”
“You think your father was buying himself a street machine? You think that’s his connection with the shop? Is he that kind of guy—an outlaw? What does he do for a living?”
Ash hesitates before shrugging away caution. “He’s a biogenetics researcher.”
Holly laughs. “Not much of an outlaw, then.” She looks off into the distance, a thousand-yard stare. “Biogenetics. I know a little about that stuff. Yeah, I know some things.” She pauses. “Wait a minute. What’s your father’s name?”
“Brantlin Collins.”
“The Sparx guy?”
Sparx. The energy supplement invented by his father. Ubiquitous in the United Territories, they were everywhere.
“Yeah, that’s him.”
She goes silent again. Ash waits for something more, but it doesn’t come. He senses she knows something about his father, but he hesitates to ask what. He feels dwarfed by her. Not quite insignificant, but close. She just seems like such a large presence. She dominates his space.
“Maybe he’s thinking about buying you a racer,” she says finally. “Maybe it was going to be a surprise.”
Ash grins at the idea of his father giving him a street machine. Or even letting him drive on the streets. “You don’t know my father.”
“Wouldn’t do that, huh?”
“I’m barely allowed out of our home. We used to travel a lot, but not anymore. Now there’s always someone with me, wherever I go. I’ve never been to the Zone—alone or with anyone else—in my whole life.”
“Your life must be boring.”
Ash nods, thinking maybe it used to be but not so much now. Where before, the Straightaway and flanking walkways were relatively empty, they are now busy. He glances up and down the street and at the storefronts and parking lots. People are coming and going from vehicles to stores and back again, busy shopping here just like in the Metro. Only these people are driving their cars through razor wire and chain-link fencing. These people are driving machines that look like they have been built to withstand a collision with a brick wall. These people, even in the momentary glimpses he catches of them, look tough and capable.
“How did you find your way this far into the Zone?” Holly asks after a minute or two.
He shrugs. “I walked. Then I asked this old guy, who wanted to know if I was a ’tweener. He told me . . .”
“Wait a minute,” she interrupts. “Back up. What did he ask you?”
“If I was a ’tweener. But I didn’t know what he . . .”
“Okay, stop right there and listen to me. You don’t use that word.” She speaks quietly, but her face is suddenly dark and dangerous. “Don’t ever use that word. It’s an ugly word. We don’t call anybody that down here.”
Ash stares at her in surprise. “Okay, I won’t. I didn’t mean anything. I never heard it before.”
“Yeah, I get it. I’m just letting you know.”
; Ash doesn’t say anything after that, and neither does she. They walk along in silence, glancing at the vehicles that pass them (he out of genuine interest, she in a more watchful way). Some of the cars are exotic and colorful, some only a little tricked out, and some so customized they scream for attention. These are all in addition to the ones that are layered in armor. Ash has never seen so many strange and different types. You almost never saw machines like this in the Metro, where all transportation was homogenized and almost entirely public transport. Even the racing machines he’s seen on the entertainment monitors aren’t as exciting and imaginative as what he is seeing here.
“’Tweeners are what they call people who aren’t considered human,” she says suddenly. “It’s meant to indicate you’re defective. Mostly, it refers to people who have been genetically altered. That old man was using it like that. He’s one of those who think you’re either all of one thing or you’re nothing much of any. A lot of those kinds of people out in the world.” She glances over. “I wouldn’t like it if I thought you were one of them.”
She says it calmly enough, but Ash can sense the underlying tension. “I’m not,” he replies.
She nods. “I didn’t think so.” She points. “We’re here.”
Ahead, the mirrored surfaces of a blocky two-story steel and glass building glitter in the sunlight. The lower floor is a garage with half a dozen work bays, but the interior of the upper floor is concealed behind heavily tinted windows. The building occupies a fraction of its huge lot, the space much larger than required for its size. Vehicles are parked all over the back portion of the lot, most of them in various stages of cannibalization. A scattering are parked directly out front, utilitarian in appearance and showing nothing of the exotic look of so many of the machines Ash saw on his way coming up the strip. A couple of the doors to the bays are open, and he can see figures moving around inside.
The building itself is set well back from the street, as if to discourage passersby from trying to peer inside. The fence surrounding the building is ordinary—chain-link topped with razor wire just like almost every other building on the Straightaway. But the entrance is a different story. A mesh steel gate has been rolled aside, and a cluster of huge spikes juts out of the driveway in its place, looking as if they will not only shred your tires if you try to drive through but will likely take out the underside of your chassis and maybe your legs in the bargain. Rows of laser beams crisscross the entrance in case the spikes aren’t warning enough.
