by Alex Wells
“Sandwich. Now.”
Sandwich and a pot’s worth of coffee later, Hob felt dangerously close to human. All but alone at the base, she took the time to do one more thing she’d been avoiding – sorting through Nick’s things. Most would go to Mag as his last living blood relative, and that was a whole other visit that she wasn’t looking forward to. His files for the Wolves, Hob would be keeping, but there were some diaries that should be passed along. Hob had to resist the urge to crack them open and look them over, but it didn’t feel quite right. Nick had never told her that shit out of his own choice; she knew all she needed to about him. His clothes, she decided to keep. Nick had been skinny as a rail and only a few centimeters taller than her; they actually fit pretty well. There weren’t enough alterations that could be done to let his suits fit Mag’s shorter, plumper frame, even if she’d want to wear men’s clothes. Mag had always been one for skirts. So it wasn’t selfishness that had her keeping those, and his fine array of weapons. Knives and garrotes also weren’t Mag’s style. But a few pieces of jewelry, his books, a chess set – those she packed up to be taken to Ludlow.
Old Nick’s blackened fingerbones still sat in the middle of the scarred desktop, mocking and profane. Hob took the smooth bones up and rolled them between her fingers, taking in the scent of char. For a moment, she imagined there was some beat of fire still left there, a remnant of the old man, but it was too childish. She shook a handkerchief from her pocket and tucked the bones away.
Before heading out, she stuck her head in the kitchen. “Gonna run an errand, Lobo.”
The cook grinned at her, head tilted to point his good ear her way. “More like Nick every day, you are.”
She perked up one eyebrow. “He go off on his own little errands much?”
“All the time, once everyone was out. Just atween you and me.”
“Yeah, just atween you ’n’ me.” Hob touched the brim of her hat, but hesitated before going out the door. “You and Old Nick, you got a lot of stuff just atween the two of you?”
“If I told you, wouldn’t just be atween me and him, would it?”
* * *
Hob parked the motorcycle in the lee of the ruined works at Pictou, sticking to the long shadow. It gave her an odd, ghosty feeling, wondering if Old Nick had done this same thing regular before, come to chat with the Bone Collector and taken these same steps. She wasn’t sure if she liked him haunting her because she wasn’t ready to let him go, or if she wished he’d go away for good.
Hob pricked one finger with a knife, squeezed out a few bright drops onto the low drift of a dune. The sand drank the blood in quick, leaving nothing but a sticky, rusty spot behind. Blood or no, the Bone Collector didn’t rise from the ruined basements like magic. Hob hunkered down in the shade to wait.
Drawn by the barest scent of blood – and thus moisture – a great eagle cut across the sunlight, slowly circling the area, trying to find the source of the smell. It made a hole in the sky, shadow trailing along on the ground, rippling up and down the dunes. Hob drew one of her pistols and watched it warily; if the eagle went into a dive, she’d only have a second or two before it would hit her. But with a cut that small and her a dot in the shade, the eagle couldn’t seem to get a fix on her. It just circled and circled, waiting alone.
Hours passed, the eagle’s circling making her dizzy. She didn’t dare even go for a sip of water, not with the bird close enough to smell it. Blood, he’d said. Blood would call. And it had before, out by Ludlow when she’d punched him one. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to come now. After six hours, she gave up, caught between anger and worry, and headed back to base. Nothing could happen to him, though, right? He turned to stone, indestructible.
She tried not to think of men with sledgehammers.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“You sure you don’t want a different beer, sweetie? You been nursing that one an awful long time,” the waitress said. While the words were outwardly friendly, Coyote could hear the impatience beneath them easily enough.
He smiled. “Please, yes. It’s gone a bit flat. Or do you have a sarsaparilla instead?” A drink was the last thing he wanted. The very last thing. He might start crying yellow tears at any moment.
“Yeah, we do.” She whisked the glass off the table. “Decided what you’re gonna eat yet?”
“My friends will be here soon, I promise.” He gave her his most charming smile. Where were Freki and Geri? He’d expected them over an hour ago – hence the waitress’s not unjustified irritation. It wasn’t as if he’d given them the difficult part of the spying. He’d been trailing their target, while he’d set them on plotting the escape route and giving the town a quick look over. He really shouldn’t have been sitting here, slowly drinking his way through the petty cash they’d been allotted.
The doors to the restaurant opened and at last the dark bulk of the twins came into view. Coyote waved them over, making a point of shooting the waitress a bright smile, to which in answer she only rolled her eyes.
He waited just long enough for them to sit and order drinks before he hurried off to take the mightiest piss he’d ever had in his life. Then, back at the table, fresh drink untouched and two smirking pups in front of him, Coyote drawled, “I do hope you were both having fun.”
He was rewarded by Geri sitting back a little in his chair. Geri at least knew not to cross a man who smiled all the time. “Busted my ass,” he said. “But I got the route plotted out. Three of ’em, just in case you fuck things up. Stashed some chemical lights as well, ’cause one of ’em is completely unlit at night.”
“How good of you.” Coyote glanced at Freki. “And you?”
“Don’t think we should leave in the night,” Freki said. “Not if we don’t have to.”
“Explain your reasoning.” The plan had been simple enough: Coyote found out what hotel their target liked to stay in at night, got them a nearby room, and he’d do the deed with the two younger Wolves acting as lookouts. After, off all three of them would go, toddling off to pick up their motorcycles from wherever Geri had found to stash them, then into the night with no one the wiser.
“Something going on here in the morning,” Freki said. “Some big company frou-fra.”
“All the more reason to be quick about it and out long before daylight.”
“They’re callin’ it a witch hunt. And it’s the reason they built the special platform on the train station.” Freki shrugged. “Sounds like the kind of thing the boss’d want to know about.”
Coyote sucked at his teeth for a moment, thinking. He hadn’t heard of anything like that, not since he’d come to Tanegawa’s World eighteen years ago as a refugee from his own family. But he knew what the so-called witchiness was, or as much as anyone did. It was impossible to not know about it, being friends with Old Nick and then Hob. “How time dependent are the escape routes?” he asked Geri.
Geri held one hand flat, let it see-saw back and forth. “One of ’em is solid. Other two… I could go do a little more leg work.”
It was a calculated risk. If there was some sort of company-wide event, then that was a very likely time for their target’s absence to be noted. On the other hand, with the distraction, it would also probably be relatively simple for them to slip out before the net got too tight. Coyote hadn’t ended up where he was because he tended to caution. The thrill of risk was its own reward. That this one might come with useful information was a bonus. “Do it.” He slid a room key for the hotel across the table. “Head back once you’re done. I’ll keep shadowing our dear friend.” He wiggled a finger, indicating the low TransRift building across the street. Thankfully, in all the time he’d been waiting for the twins, Mr Franklin had followed his reported work schedule and stayed inside.
“Get to sit and drink beer while we sweat,” Geri grumbled.
“You wouldn’t be so envious if you had to piss as badly as I did before you showed up.”
* * *
Coyote trailed Mr
Franklin all over town, huddling in an alley and entertaining himself with a deck of cards while the man had a nice dinner, keeping an eye on him across two bars where he seemed to be having business meetings. Disappointingly, he didn’t come out of either drunk.
When Mr Franklin at last went back to the hotel, Freki and Geri had thankfully gotten there first. They gave him time to settle, and then Geri took position in the hallway near the man’s room. Freki boosted Coyote across the balcony, and he quietly broke the lock and let himself into the room.
If he’d been expecting to interrupt some scene of depravity – possible, considering the crime for which this execution was to be carried out – he’d have been sorely disappointed. Mr Franklin was utterly banal as targets went, which made him a bit creepier in Coyote’s opinion. He stood at the washstand, dressed in crisp boxers and an undershirt, carefully flossing his teeth as he listened to some rather staticky recorded music.
As intent as Mr Franklin was on his dental hygiene, it was trivially easy for Coyote to slip the garrote over his head and cut off protest and struggle with a practiced twist of the hands and a knee to the back. It was a move he’d learned and perfected by grace of being one of the shortest men on base, so of course Old Nick had thought it was hilarious to send him after the biggest fellows that could be found. He shoved the man hard against the edge of the counter and let him flail uselessly, scrabble at the mirror, and knock over the soap and other toiletries. The mix of mint and floral scents that brought up was an odd one, but it could have been a lot worse. Then it was all over but for the gurgling, flopping, and twitching, which had never been Coyote’s favorite part.
Dead, Mr Franklin drooled crimson blood and white toothpaste foam onto the hotel carpet. Coyote dragged him over to the bed and lay him out neatly – the boss had wanted theatrical – and covered his sightless eyes with the two coins. He’d initially offered to scrawl the man’s crime across his chest with ink – or blood, if they wanted to get really theatrical – but had that idea vetoed because it too closely fingered his victims. Fair enough. They’d know the justice was for them, or they’d just be relieved that Mr Franklin was dead, and it didn’t really matter either way to Coyote.
And then, because no one had told him not to and he’d wasted a lot of company money on drinks and food, he carefully relieved the man of every bit of spare cash, though after a moment of consideration, he left the jewelry alone. He cleaned up all the traces of himself, rinsed his garrote in the sink, pocketed it, and let himself into the hallway. After he shut the door behind himself, he stripped his gloves and gave Geri a nod. They paused just long enough to collect Freki, then ghosted down the short stairwell, into the service hallways, and out the kitchen.
“Your show now,” Coyote told Geri.
Geri led them along a quiet route through back streets and the occasional warehouse. Rather than head for the gates, however, they came to rest by the train station.
“Close as we’re gonna get,” Geri said, letting them through the side door of a machine shop. The air was heavy with the smell of oil and metal. “But I checked the sightings, we got a good, straight line to the platform.”
“We’re spying, not blowing off heads.”
Geri shrugged. “Good view either way.”
Coyote broke out his deck of cards and proceeded to clean the boys out of all their pocket money. At some point, he thought idly, he really ought to teach them how to spot when someone was cheating at cards.
Activity at the station started up before dawn, a security sweep going over the immediate area. Coyote watched it all through a scope. “Don’t think they’ll be coming out this far,” he commented. “But you got the route out, just in case?”
“Yeah, it’s good,” Geri growled.
“I’ll keep an eye on it,” Freki said, moving off.
Coyote hummed an acknowledgment, eyes fixed on the show. Green-uniformed guards put out crowd control barriers, and– “Hah. Actual red carpet. How fancy.”
“Must be some VIP.”
As the sun rose, townspeople and miners still black with pit dust filled up the space around the concrete platform, spilling out into the streets beyond. It wasn’t a large enough area for all of them, but they seemed determined to try to fit. Or rather, the Mariposa men seemed dedicated to making them all get in.
“Looks like they got guards going through the buildings,” Geri said from his windows.
“Is our position compromised?” Coyote asked, still watching the platform.
“Not yet,” Freki said, after a moment of hesitation. “I’ll keep watch.”
At the station, the smooth, bullet-like shape of a train slid in. It wasn’t one of the massive long-distance freight engines with its unending line of cars, but rather a sleek, low-slung model obviously built for speed, only pulling three passenger cars. “Think it’s about to get interesting,” Coyote murmured.
Not nearly as quickly as he would have liked, more guards coming out of the rear two cars. His patience was rewarded when the door of the first opened and a man in a blue suit followed the inevitable wave of green-uniformed security.
Coyote frowned, squinting down the scope like that would somehow give him a better look. The man looked really familiar, but that was impossible – right? Not the face, so much, but the way he walked… nah, it had been years. Things changed too much in eighteen years.
Those thoughts were swept away by the next man out, tall and thin and walking like all his limbs weren’t quite jointed the right way. “Oh fuck,” Coyote breathed.
“What?” Geri demanded.
“They’ve brought their fucking Weatherman out here.” May it not occur to them to ask how he knew what a Weatherman looked like.
“Didn’t the boss say she shot him?” Geri said. Coyote felt him try to grab the scope, and slapped his hands away.
“Either they brought a new one in record time, or he wasn’t as dead as she thought.” He focused on the Weatherman, scanning over the crowd, then indicating someone. A plump young woman was brought forward, her hair in two plaits. As soon as the Weatherman got a better look at her, he waved her away. He grabbed a man, hand over his face, and swayed almost like they were dancing. Then the unfortunate bastard collapsed, and guards moved forward to drag him off to be stowed in one of the cars. His family followed, chivvied along. Coyote’s stomach twisted. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t good.
He liked it even less when the Weatherman had a second woman dragged out of the crowd, one with mousy brown hair in two braids. Coyote had never really believed in coincidence, not when it was in the middle of some job; he’d learned that one on his mother’s knee.
“You seen enough?” Freki asked from the other side of the room.
“Why?”
“Our window’s getting pretty narrow.”
Coyote grimaced as the Weatherman returned to moving through the crowd. “Then we’d better go.” There might be more to the spectacle to see, but it wouldn’t do them much good if they were pinched while witnessing it. He stuffed the scope in his pocket.
Freki took them into a narrow alley between the machine shop and a warehouse. He stopped at the corner and frantically waved Coyote and Geri back into the shop, following a moment later himself.
“What’s the situation?” Coyote asked.
“Whole crowd of greenbellies out in the street. Hanging out in the shadow of our building, that’s why I couldn’t see ’em from the window.”
Elsewhere in the building a metal door banged open. “Guess they’re getting around to this shop,” Geri muttered.
Coyote held up one hand, trying to think. The warehouse next door was doubtless for storing parts used in the shop. There had to be some way rigged to transport the parts more efficiently than walking them back and forth on a dolly, particularly on the second floor of the shop. He’d never gone wrong counting on the habit of engineers and mechanics to spend a lot of effort building their way out of a minor annoyance. “Upstairs. There should b
e some kind of conveyer to the warehouse next door. Find it.”
Below them, a voice called, “Attendance for the celebration is mandatory. Come out now, and you will not be fined.”
Geri shot Coyote a look, but he only shrugged. “If they knew we were in here, they’d be coming directly for us,” he whispered.
The three of them spread out across the second floor with quick efficiency, searching the outer walls. Coyote had just broken the lock to get himself into the office space – stupid place for a conveyor, but you never knew – when Freki caught his sleeve. The big man jerked his chin back the way he’d come.
Feet clanged on the stairs coming toward them.
Geri had a plastic flap over a rubber conveyer belt pulled aside. Hot air flowed from the darkness within. Coyote grimaced as he stepped onto the belt and kept going, bent almost double.
“Really fuckin’ small in there,” Geri muttered.
“Your shoulders will fit. The rest of you can make it.” Coyote kept going. It was hot in the metal tube, bad enough that sweat immediately started rolling off his nose even though it was only seven meters long at most. He slid out the other side and held the matching plastic curtain for the two younger men, who’d had to crawl through on their hands and knees. Freki dealt with it stoically enough, but Geri swore a blue streak under his breath as he tumbled to the synthcrete floor on the other side.
They hurried down to the street. “Access panel to the maintenance tunnels should be one building over from here,” Geri said. The old settlers had taken to digging tunnels to get away from the dust storms, a habit the company hadn’t quite managed to break when it built its first few towns.
They had to slide into the next alley as a bored guard standing nearby turned his head, but no one else stood between them and the square trapdoor. Geri grunted as he hauled it up. Coyote grabbed the flashlight out of his pocket and twisted it on, clamping it between his teeth before he headed down the ladder bolted to the side of the tunnel.
