by Alex Wells
It was cool down there, strangely so after the familiar heat of the morning. He let his light play over the smooth walls. “You know where we’re going?” he said. No need to whisper now, either.
“Yeah. I got a map.” Geri closed the trapdoor slowly after his brother. “And Freki, watch–”
Thump
“–your head,” Geri finished. “Low ceilings.”
“Noticed,” his brother growled.
It wasn’t an unpleasant walk to the motorcycles, which Geri had hidden in a vehicle yard. They headed for one of the small gates in the walls, opposite the train station. The gates were always manned, but usually only just for form’s sake. For safety, Coyote decided that he’d go up to talk to the guard alone – this wasn’t a usual day.
“Turn right back around,” the guard, a young man with a peeling nose, said as he rolled up. “Wall’s locked down until the celebration’s done.”
“Celebration?” Coyote cocked his head quizzically. He fell into his best impression of miner talk. “Didn’t get invited to no celebration.”
“At the train station,” the guard said. “Everyone’s to report there.”
“But I ain’t from here. Was just visitin’ my auntie, she took sick.”
“Doesn’t matter. Report to the train station.”
Coyote sighed, pretending defeat. “All right. All right. I’ll just…” He turned his motorcycle around and started away, looking over his shoulder. “It won’t be too much–” He let the motorcycle fall over, apparently pinning him. “Shit! Oh shit, my leg!”
The guard seemed caught between annoyance and alarm. “You’re fine,” he said.
“Oh God, I think – I felt the bone snap,” Coyote wailed.
Concern finally won its battle in the guard, and he came forward to lever the motorcycle off Coyote. Past his shoulder, Coyote saw Freki and Geri rolled silently by to the gate.
“Oh thank you – oh God, is that blood?” Coyote asked.
The guard rolled his eyes. “You’re fine. Now, I can call for the doctor, but you’re still going to have to go to the station. You get me?”
Coyote blinked away the few tears he’d managed to coax to his eyes. “Got no choice, if you’re gonna help me… Hey, how come they get to leave and I didn’t?” He pointed toward the gate.
“What–?” The guard spun, just in time to see Freki’s rear wheel cross the threshold of the now-open gate. “Son of a bitch – you stay right here!”
“Couldn’t go anywhere, not with my poor leg danglin’ by a thread.” Coyote almost sang the words.
The guard raced out the gate, fumbling for his pistol and shouting, “You two – get back here!”
Coyote flipped the motorcycle vertical with only a little grunt of effort and hopped back on. He revved the electric motor and spun out the gate behind the guard, reaching out to slap the man on the back as he passed. “Thanks, buddy!”
The wild shots that rang out after him just made him laugh all the harder.
* * *
Shige couldn’t quite escape the vague feeling of disappointment that this third trip out with the Weatherman hadn’t been nearly so interesting as the first, though none of that thought showed on his face. He should be concerned enough by the new set of people Mr Green sent off to occupy the holding pens in the third train car. He tucked his notepad away, prepared to take his last, formal leave of the town’s security head when a new guard in green came running up, his face pale.
“Sir? There’s been an incident.”
The senior security man cast a wary eye in Shige’s direction, and received only a bland smile in return. “What kind of incident?” he asked.
“We found a body in the Watercourse Hotel.” The guard cast his own nervous look at Shige. “Company man. And… definitely murdered.”
“If you’ll excuse me, Mr Rollins…” the security head started.
“Since I am here, why don’t I come with you,” Shige said smoothly. “I’m certain Vice President Meetchim would be concerned by this. While it’s not necessarily connected to Mr Green’s visit, the timing is a bit suspicious.”
The senior man didn’t look happy, but also knew he didn’t have a choice. “Just stay out of the way,” he growled.
“Of course,” Shige said. “I’m here only to help.”
He’d seen far more violent death scenes than the one in the hotel room, though he made a good act of blanching and pretending to be shocked at the sight of such violence. It was convincing enough that it earned him a few covertly contemptuous looks from the security men; all the better. But the state of the body was definitely of interest, neatly arranged on the bed though the man had plainly been murdered elsewhere in the room, and his eyes covered with coins. Blood had dried dark and tacky in a ring around his neck – he’d been killed with some sort of thin wire, a garrote, Shige read it to be. Not the most common murder weapon around here.
“Have you identified this man?” he asked.
“Company ID was left in his wallet. Emmett Franklin, conductor for the regular passenger runs to the outer towns. Though he stopped into Segundo regular enough, and was pulling extra shifts here to help us get ready for you.”
Shige lifted one of the silver coins and inspected the wolf’s head stamped on both sides. “Not company issued,” he said, to state the obvious. It was a hook thrown out, inviting information.
“Illegal scrip,” the security head said. “Some of the towns get cute about this stuff. We stamp it out wherever we find it.”
“And some of the bandit outfits,” the more junior guard murmured. His superior shot him a withering look.
Shige concluded it was probably one of those “bandit” outfits, then. “I wonder why someone would want so badly to kill one of our model employees.”
“Mine rats have filed some spurious complaints,” the security head growled. “We’ll be checking them first.”
Shige set the coin back down with care over the dead man’s half-open eye, fixing the lines of it in his mind. He’d never been one to believe in coincidence in the middle of an operation – his mother had seen to that.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Coyote’s party was well past due, and Hob didn’t like it one bit. She kept an eye on the front gates out the window of Nick’s – her – well-placed office. She’d never realized what a good window it was into observing the rest of the base. Let her feel downright godlike – probably how the old bastard had seemed to know everything that was going on.
She saw the minute the gate opened and the three motorcycles rolled in. A knot of tension she hadn’t even consciously felt eased off her shoulders. The day would come, probably soon, when someone wouldn’t come back and she’d have to face that it was in part her doing. But today wasn’t going to be that day. She waited until she saw them emerge from the garage, then headed into the exercise yard to meet them halfway.
“You’re late,” she greeted Coyote.
“And we have a story to tell.” Coyote glanced at Freki and Geri. “You mind if we tell it while these two bottomless pits are feeding their faces? I’ve been hearing their stomachs growl for the last six hours, and it’s about driven me spare.”
Hob waved them toward the kitchen. “Could use a bite to eat, myself.”
Lobo greeted the small crowd of people in his kitchen with no more than a grumble. He threw some sandwiches together for them to start, and got some tortillas cooking on the grill for the next round as Freki, Geri, and Coyote tore in.
“The job went fine,” Coyote said. “Message left, and it ought to be spreading through the town rumor mill like fire by now.”
“Then why so late?” Hob asked.
“Freki noticed unusual activity at the train station, so we decided to stay the night and observe. They had a special train come in from Newcastle at first light.”
“Go ahead, you got my attention.” She pulled Nick’s cigarette case – now hers – from her pocket and pulled one out, lit it with a sn
ap of her fingers.
“They brought the Weatherman to Segundo and had him work the crowd like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
She almost dropped her cigarette. “Can’t be. I killed him.”
Coyote shrugged. “Either it’s the same one – and from how you described him he sure fits the bill – or they brought one in on a special ship.”
“You sure?”
He ripped a bite off his sandwich and gave her one of the stinkiest looks she’d ever been hit with, Old Nick’s included. “Do you think you could ever mistake a Weatherman for a normal person?”
Hob grimaced. “No.”
“So we’ll assume that the impossible has happened.” Coyote continued on, describing what he’d seen in Segundo as Hob listened grimly. He finished with: “It gets even better. I think he was looking for you.”
Her blood felt fit to freeze in her veins. “The hell you mean?”
“He was pulling every woman with brown hair in braids out of the crowd.”
“Fuck,” she breathed.
“So yes, I think it’s the same one. And I think he hasn’t forgotten you.” Coyote said, and shook his head. “I’ve been here almost as long as the three of you have been alive, and I’ve never heard of anything like this happening.”
Lobo cleared his throat. “Might know a thing, myself.”
“Well, spit it out,” Hob said.
“’Bout thirty years ago, they sent a Weatherman through to find everyone with witchiness and take ’em out. Called it a witch hunt, even. They only picked up a few people in Primero and Segundo before it had folks so scared that they plain murdered the witchy ones in their towns themselves.”
“Why the hell they doin’ this now?” Hob asked.
“Back then, they said there was a madman in the desert who tore a train in half with his bare hands and witchiness, if you believe that kind of bullshit story.” Lobo shrugged. “Oldsters said there was a witch hunt years afore that too. Happened right around when Pictou got tore down.”
Hob opened her mouth to protest, to say nothing big and flashy had happened recently –only it had. And it’d been them. She glanced at Coyote, who had his head tilted, eyebrows up as if to say, no shit. “If they’re at Segundo, they gonna keep movin’ further out?”
“Went through to all the towns before, though they weren’t in no hurry. By the time they got to the farm towns like Harmony and Blessid, weren’t no one left for them to take.”
Hob pinched off her half-finished cigarette. All she could think about now was Mag, and whatever had happened to her while TransRift had her locked in that damn lab, whatever that “war in her blood” was the Bone Collector had mentioned. What if someone in Ludlow decided she was a bit strange and put a bullet in her brain? “Fuck this. I’m goin’ to Ludlow. Any of you boys want to come?”
* * *
Hob rode to Ludlow like she expected a massacre, hunkered down over her motorcycle at full throttle, Freki and Geri behind her. It almost felt like an insult that the town was humming along, busy as could be, without even the smallest sign of trouble. The guard at the gate even waved to them when he let them in.
They parked their motorcycles out behind a warehouse, and then hurried over to Clarence Vigil’s home. Mag answered the door. She still looked strange to Hob’s eyes with her hair short and black.
“Hob? What are–” Mag peered around her, eyes going wide as she saw Freki and Geri. “There some trouble with the job I sent you?” Hob had nearly forgotten about it.
“That’s well and done,” Geri said, from behind her.
“Invite us in for lemonade, Mag,” Hob said. “We got other bad news aplenty.”
It was iced tea instead of lemonade, but Mag saw them to the parlor and gave them each a glass properly before sitting down herself in a threadbare armchair. No one seemed interested in drinking. Hob stayed perched on the edge of her seat and waved Geri on to give Mag the brief report on the task in Segundo.
Mag nodded grimly as Geri spoke, though her eyes were fixed on Hob. When he finished, she said: “You’re wearin’ my uncle’s pistols, Hob. I saw ’em at the door. He’s dead, ain’t he.”
“That’s the first bad news,” Hob said. She nudged the saddlebag she’d brought with her. “Figured you’d want some of his things. You can go through ’em later, toss what doesn’t suit.”
Mag nodded, swallowing hard, but there were no tears, just a pinched, tired look on her face. “I had a feeling, last week. Like he was standing over my shoulder. Thought it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but I guess not.”
Part of her was relieved that Mag seemed disinclined to cry, but there was something far more disturbing about those dry, tired eyes. “Bad news don’t stop there, though.”
“Just out with it. I’ve had so much bad lately, bit more ain’t gonna add to the load.”
Geri recounted what his team had seen in Segundo, and Hob repeated what Lobo had said about the witch hunts. “So we come for you. I don’t know when the Weatherman’s gonna get here, but you don’t want to be here when he does. So we come to take you back to the base.”
Mag pushed away her untouched glass of tea with care. “No, thank you, I’m gonna stay right here. But I thank you for lettin’ me know you got my job done.”
“Were you not listenin’?” Hob surged to her feet and started pacing. “They’re gonna come here, and soon. And when they do, you know for damn sure they’re gonna take you. They sure wanted you before. And before that, for all we fuckin’ know, folks are gonna go crazy around here and might just do the job themselves.”
“I heard you just fine.” Mag’s face was pale and set, an angle to her chin that reminded Hob of Nick when he had his back up. She’d always thought it was because he was a stubborn old goat, but maybe it ran in the family. “I’m done running. I got things to do here. And I don’t think they’ll turn on me. I’m in deep.”
“Fear does funny things to folk.”
Mag continued calmly as if she hadn’t even heard Hob. “And if the Weatherman does come here and I can’t find a way to hide, I’ll put a bullet in my own brain first.”
“You lost your fuckin’ mind, Mag?”
Mag’s jaw set in an all-too-familiar way. Her expression had been reminiscent before, but now it was damned eerie, down to the way her lips thinned out. “You ain’t leavin’ me to twist this time, Hob. I just don’t want to be rescued.”
“Fine,” Hob snarled. “Guess if I ever needed proof crazy runs in your fuckin’ family, this here is it. But if you change your mind, you know where our drop boxes are around here. We’ll come for you.”
“I know that.” Mag smiled. “And it means a lot to me.”
Freki and Geri followed Hob out of the house, moving out to one at each shoulder as they walked into the street. “Didn’t much like that,” Freki said.
Hob snorted. “I didn’t much like it either.”
“We gonna just let it go?” Geri asked.
“Hell no.” Hob waited until they were around the corner, then turned to them. “I want a good listen around the town. See if we can find out when the Weatherman might be comin’. Then we plan for when we’re gonna snatch Mag. She might not like it, but we’re all a hell of a lot bigger’n her. I don’t mind addin’ kidnapping to our list of crimes one bit if it’s her.”
Geri laughed. “Take her back to the base like that, she’ll like as kill you in your bed.”
Hob grinned at him. “Good thing I got some strong arms at my back.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The death of Mr Franklin – whom Shige confirmed to his own satisfaction had soundly earned such an ignominious end once he had a chance to do a deep dive into the personnel files – became quite the opportunity. Ms Meetchim, it turned out, also did not believe in coincidences. And for that reason she chose to delay the witch hunt schedule by a week, to give security a chance to find solid leads on the man’s death and make certain it wouldn’t prove a threat to the continued ev
ents. Shige adroitly parlayed that into an opportunity to take a spa weekend, which was to say, a personal weekend for him to do a bit of spying for his own pet project.
He hadn’t found any solid answers about the wolf’s head coin, but he had found several mentions of a particularly annoying group of bandits that called themselves Ghost Wolves – how melodramatic – and frequented the outer mining towns, particularly Rouse, Shimera, and Ludlow. That alone caught his interest, considering the recent events in Rouse. With judicious use of a fake ID, he booked himself a cheap passenger ticket out to Rouse, then to Ludlow. He could ape the local accent well enough to pass muster and do a bit of nosing around.
The first day in Ludlow, he managed to get a drunk man in one of the saloons talking about the Ghost Wolves without too much prompting, though what he said didn’t sound at all like bandits – more like a mercenary company. Not surprising, in Shige’s opinion. Everything the company recorded was through the lens of their continued desire for control. Just as everything through the Federal Union had its own flavor, with conflicts labeled as insurgencies when outlying worlds didn’t understand the wisdom of sheltering under the protective umbrella of the interstellar government. And these days they did love labeling TransRift as a government partner rather than a troublesome corporation that thought itself above all regulation.
From what his drinking companion said, it also sounded as if the Ghost Wolves were connected to the mess in Rouse – unless there were a lot of one-eyed mercenaries running around. Possible, but not likely.
The next day, as he headed to do another round through the public houses in search of a gossip eager to talk, Shige caught sight of a shockingly familiar face. The synthetic taste of strawberries flooded his mouth, another sense-memory reminder: the one-eyed woman who had been involved in the near death of Mr Green and the infiltration of the labs. He paused nearby for a moment as she talked to a large, dark man, likely some flavor of fighter from the way he carried himself. Then he continued on, not wanting to draw attention. He could circle back and try to pick up a tail on her again, now that he knew she was there.
