by Faith Hunter
“Yeah. Fine. I’ll get more kibble.”
Tuffs backed away until I could focus on her eyes.
I blew out a breath and realized I was sweating bullets, my clothes stuck to me, my new scratches stinging. Taking my life in my hands, I stroked down Tuffs’s back. Tuffs stiffened, then dropped her belly to the overheated dash and lifted her snout in the air in pleasure.
Cupcake appeared at the passenger window, leaning in, her head nearly touching mine. On her shoulder was Spy, who looked at me, one eye blue, one eye green. “Odd eyed,” in Tuffs’s vernacular.
I heard a chuffing sound and saw Tuffs staring at her many-times great granddaughter. “Hhhhah mmm,” Tuffs said. She sent us a vision of Spy on the dash, riding away.
Spy received the thought-vision, and if a cat could smile, Spy did, satisfied and a little mean, as if she had won a dominance fight.
Tuffs hissed, jerked away from me, and stared daggers at Spy. Her ears were flat, and her green eyes were vicious. She said, “Mrow. Siss.”
Spy ducked her head and crawled off Cupcake’s shoulder, inside the cab. She placed a paw on my arm and sent me a vision. I nearly jerked away in surprise. Spy’s vision was colder, sharper like pine needles, tinted with a hint of icy green light. A pile of freshly killed rats. She blinked her odd eyes at me. I glanced at Tuffs, who was watching the exchange, quivering with emotion.
Spy stepped up and leaned in, our foreheads touching. The world skittered sideways as a memory slid into my mind, glass sharp. Intense. I wanted to hurl. A toxic rat. A hunting cat stalking it. The bloody fight.
“You want to hunt?” I asked her. “Waterfront rats are huge. You’ll need to hunt in groups.” I tried sending her a vision of hunting parties fighting with a single huge rat. Teeth like razors. Claws.
Spy hissed with excitement and hunched her shoulders, her whiskers grazing my face, her odd eyes staring at me. She whirled and leaped out the window. I hoped the communication we had just shared would allow me to talk to Spy without touch, the way Tuffs and I did.
In the truck bed, I heard Mateo shake the cargo, looking for scrap that might shift. Nothing substantial moved. Cupcake brought more dirt for cat litter and more kibble.
I finished securing the weapons, adding water and snacks. One-armed, I swung out of the cab and into the bed, where I checked Mateo’s work, as he bent and checked my work in the cab. It was already hot, the temps at thirty-two degrees Celsius. I stank. Mateo’s warbot suit was air-conditioned. Not that I’d want to change places with him.
Once we were satisfied, I made a last stop at the office to use the body wand, change clothes, toss my toiletries into their small satchel, gather the laundry, and grab 2-Gen sunglasses to hide my weird orange irises. I hadn’t been born this way. When I was transitioned the second time, by mech-nanos from a PRC Mama-Bot, the eyes were the result. To the bag I added a tube of orange lip gloss and a wide-brimmed hat that had belonged to Little Mama. For an Old Lady, my mother had been a fashionista.
I inserted the earbuds for the brand new long-distance EntNu comms system. In a worst-case scenario, where we survived an attack and needed a rescue, and where I was willing to risk the scrapyard, we could call for warbot reinforcement.
“Comms check?” I asked.
“Check,” Mateo said.
“Check,” Cupcake said.
“Check,” said Gomez, the office’s AI.
“Check, Sweet Thang,” Jolene said.
I shook my head at Jolene’s endearment. It was totally out of character for a spaceship-worthy AI, but she had chosen the name, the accent, and the Southern personality based on an old song. I wasn’t going to quibble about her life choices.
“Okay,” I said. “Cooler with food and extra water is in the truck’s sleeping compartment with the stash of jewelry, extra ammo, cat litter, cat bowls, and the portable composting toilet. The bed is folded up out of the way to keep the cats off it.”
“This place is going to reek,” Cupcake said. She slid her eyes sideways to the cats sitting on the hood, watching. “No offense or anything.”
She had a point. The cab would stink. Tuffs’s reconnaissance clowder was Spy plus six cats: one solid gray, two gray tabbies, one orange tabby, one tortoiseshell, one pure black. Seven cats on a trip. At least two of the cats were intact males. Which reminded me to pick up med-bay supplies. Tuffs brought me several dozen cats every few months to neuter, and that used up supplies fast. It was a loss I accepted since it was far more humane than her previous method of claws and teeth that left the young males dragging themselves off to live or die. I stared at Spy. “No spraying. No marking territory. No using anything or anyone in the cab as a scratching post. Any cat who disobeys rides with the gear.”
Spy made a little chuffing sound and looked at her squad. I had a feeling she was sharing the warning. Cats with ESP. Bloody hell.
Mateo’s suit whirred at an almost inaudible level, and one of his shorter limbs came forward. Grasped in three of his fingers was a small black electronics box about ten-by-five-by-two centimeters. There were male and female ports on both sides with cords hanging from each. It looked like an amalgam of SunStar tech and old-fashioned tech, and I had never seen anything like it.
“This is an AI Interface Portal—the uplink for the Simba,” he said. “When you dig down to a hatch, you’ll see a port on the outside. Insert whichever end fits. The hatch will open. Remove the port and drop inside. You’ll see a keypad, a schematic for a handprint, and a slot that looks like this.” On Mateo’s limb, a screen appeared, and it showed a tiny port, like a computer port from the mid-twenty-first century. “You’ll have to manually hardwire the interface portal to the Simba by inserting this line into the slot. Input my command codes for the SunStar, verbally and manually, along with your handprint.”
“Handprint? What about—?”
“You’ll have to decontam. I’ve overwritten my handprint for yours in the IP. Jolene will do everything else and take over the Simba. Then you can activate the Grabber to power the WIMP engines, and I can drive it home.”
“Really,” I breathed. This little thingy, if it worked, would make my job much easier. “How did you figure it out?”
“I figured it out, darlin’,” Jolene said over the earbuds. “And I created it in my very own lab. It’s built according to the Simba specs in my memory banks.”
I cupped my gloved hands and accepted the device, which was way heavier than it looked. “It’s EntNu-based, isn’t it?” I asked softly. Civilian Entangled Dark Neutrino tech had been taken away or disabled by the alien Bugs, along with the military’s spaceships, at the end of the war. Now, EntNu-based devices were illegal for civilians. The SunStar’s military weapons were illegal for anyone. I could keep such devices safely in the scrapyard because they were well hidden by the SunStar’s background shielding. But if the military discovered this interface portal or the comms system, maybe at an official roadblock while I traveled, Cupcake and I would die in a Class Five Disciplinary Barracks.
“Yes,” Mateo said. “But like the comms system on the truck, Jolene made certain it looks like prewar civilian hardware. I will be monitoring everything. You will not be alone, Shining,” he said, his voice sounding almost human.
He knew. Mateo, more than anyone else alive, knew that I was always alone. Or I used to be. Now I had him and Cupcake. And the cats. And Jagger. I squared my shoulders. “What else?” When no one said anything, I slapped the side of the diesel and said to Mateo, Jolene, and Gomez, “You three have fun.”
The clowder of cats bounded into the truck cab.
Cupcake, who continued to surprise me with her skill sets, climbed into the driver’s seat and slid the nine-millimeter once carried by her husband into a wall mount that hadn’t been there last time I checked. “I got this,” she said and started the big engine.
“Oh. Well. Good then.” I hated driving the diesel. My Berger chip wasn’t programed for the gears, and it was always hit or miss for me. I
shoved the IP uplink onto the floor of the cab and against the front wall. The uplink instantly changed color to match the filth and for all intents and purposes, it disappeared. I grinned up at Mateo. “It’s got Chameleon skin!”
“Of course. Did you think I’d put you in danger?”
“I think you want the Simba and keeping me safe is the best way to accomplish that,” I said, sounding sour.
Mateo chuckled, a noise like rusty crowbars grinding together. I settled in to ride shotgun. Literally. A cat sprang to the dash. Spy. In charge.
Cupcake pulled out of Smith’s Junk and Scrap, bouncing onto the old mining road. In the side mirror I watched as Mateo reset the alarms, the tire and track shredders, and other auto-defense measures. The rest of the cats were sitting in lines on the driveway, watching the warriors set off on an adventure. Or maybe it was a cat funeral, in case the travelers didn’t make it back.
The old maps said Charleston, West Virginia was only sixty-seven miles from Smith’s, but the condition of the roads (bad) and the condition of the bridges (worse) always made it a perilous three- to five-hour drive on roads infested with bandits and unprotected by lawmen on the take. I’d had to fight my way out before.
We made it to Naoma and turned up the rutted remains of West Virginia 3—Coal River Road, which followed the Big Coal River. Not so big since the damage to the atmosphere, but also not so well contained. Over the years, seasonal floods had washed out the asphalt in places, and the state had never repaired it; trees and bushes had intruded, narrowing the old road. It was slow going, but the big tires and the powerful engine pulled us through gullies, across small creeks, and over piles of brush.
As we crossed one particularly harrowing section of washed-out road, Cupcake asked, “Is it gonna be this way the whole trip? I can drive this rig through most anything, but this is nuts.”
“Once we reach I-64 the road surface will be fine, because the state keeps the main transport system in good repair,” I replied. “But, yeah, there’s a lot of bad road and postwar crazy country in between.”
She shrugged and steered the big truck into the brush to allow another vehicle to pass us. The road opened up after the next curve, and she worked through the gears, getting us up to speed, the windows down, cooler air blowing our hair, saving the air conditioning for later in the day. Cupcake started to sing, bellowing out an old R&B song, the melody, key, and beat, all questionable. Cupcake couldn’t sing worth a lick, but she got high points for enthusiasm and volume.
We made it through what was left of Sundial, Stickney, and Montcoal without mishap, but just outside of Sylvester we rounded a bend to see a massive dead tree across the road. Three armed men on the other side. A car in the brush.
Cupcake reacted, too fast to be human. Slammed hard on the brakes. Opened the exhaust valves at the top of the compression stroke. The jake brake barked, like firing a gun. The flatbed started to slide, but she maneuvered it into a rocking stop in a cloud of dust and exhaust.
As the truck slid and bounced, Spy dove onto the dash, her mouth wide, showing her fangs through the windshield. She hissed at the armed men on the far side of the barricade, their weapons in full view. Two other cats joined her, leaning into the silk-plaz, quivering.
Dust billowed around us and into the cab.
I took in everything.
Three more men stepped from the brush, five yards away. Shotguns positioned, ready to fire. Not the Law. No uniforms. Dirty, sweat-stained clothes. Ancient sneakers or boots. Six against two. This looked bad.
The silk-plaz windows were down. We needed them up. But we needed to be able to fire. Mateo had said we have defense or offense. Not both. Bloody hell.
Cupcake said, “Let me handle this one.”
“Go for it.” I slapped open the overhead panel, and the refurbished M249 Para Gen II Belt-Fed, AI Integrated Machine Gun rotated up from below the window and into place.
Cupcake rolled her eyes. An honest-to-God eye roll. I hadn’t seen one of those since before the war started. “Good God. You never heard of the delicate art of negotiation?” she asked.
“I’ve heard of it. I never saw it work against armed men.” There wasn’t time for me to put on protective equipment. This was going to hurt if I had to fire. I set the auto-target for the man in the middle. He froze as the targeting sights lit him up like a Christmas tree.
I jutted my chin toward the brush where the car was parked. Tied to a tree were two crying women who looked the worse for wear.
“That’s what we’re facing.”
Cupcake looked at the women and back at the men. She gave a cat-worthy snarl. “Over my dead body.” She leaned out the window. “Hey. Move the frickin’ downed tree or my partner will shoot you boys to hell and back!”
They repositioned their weapons, ready to fire.
Cupcake leaned back in and said, “What’re you waiting for? Fire that damn thing.”
I fired.
The man in the center died instantly, a splash of red across the asphalt. Moving faster than anything human, I swiped off the auto-target. Swung the big gun right. Took out two more men. Hot brass bounced and scorched my bare skin. My eyes burned from nitrocellulose and gunpowder.
Cupcake leaned out. Fired three times. A fourth man fell. The two others vanished into the brush.
The cats on the dash soared out the windows. The rest of the cats followed, yellow, gray, and black smears of speed.
Cupcake said something, her mouth moving, any sound lost beneath the concussive barrage. Opening her door, she jumped out. I deduced she had said, “Cover me.” Cupcake landed as light as one of the cats.
“Roger that.” I slid through and sat on the window ledge, engaging the sensors, swinging the Para Gen slowly from side to side. Watching for anything that moved.
Cupcake carried her weapon low, a two-hand grip, near her thigh. She crab-walked fast to the protection of the car. Cleared it. Cleared the far side of the rusted vehicle. Behind the car, she studied the underbrush. I had never asked, but it seemed Cupcake had weapons training. Or she had Berger-chipped the info and training, which meant she had some understanding and skill sets, but no muscle memory and no experience. I was going with the Berger.
Spy tried to get my attention. It was an intense spiraling sensation, part vertigo, part layers of green. Spy was in a tree, looking down on two men. The men who had run when Cupcake and I killed their pals. They were talking on old-fashioned walkie-talkies. The talkies had a limited but unknown range. My Berger implant supplied: The range of coverage for long-range walkie-talkies increases with power. A two-watt radio can cover fourteen kilometers. A four-watt radio can reach up to forty-eight kilometers. All on flat terrain.
Spy heard when the man spoke, and oddly, I heard too. “ETA twenty.” Then, “Copy that. We’ll be ready.”
They had backup coming.
“Area is clear,” I shouted to Cupcake, not caring if the men heard. “We have twenty minutes before reinforcements arrive.”
Cupcake looked at me like I was nuts, scowled, and her face cleared, her mouth moving. “The cats. Right.”
Through the earbud I barely heard Mateo, back at the junkyard, say, “Get off me you damn cats.”
Cupcake placed her weapon on the hood of the car and pulled a knife I hadn’t noticed. Deftly she cut the women free. They were Caucasian, a little older than me, and they were babbling. From body language and hand gestures, I deduced that they had been stopped and their bodyguard killed. They had been robbed and were about to be raped when our diesel approached. They babbled while Cupcake raided the dead men’s pockets and found their keys, some cash, and several flasks of what was probably homemade hooch. She gave each woman a handgun taken from the dead men, ammo, and half of the cash, before helping them load their guard’s body into the back seat of their car. The women took off, the fifty-year-old Ford spitting black exhaust. Even over my deafness, which would take several minutes to go away completely, it sounded as if it had consump
tion. It dog-tracked down the road on slick tires, but it was still running.
I checked my weapon, popped my ears, and draped ear protectors and goggles around my neck. My arms were pocked with faint burn marks to go along with the claw marks on my back. Sweat burned all of them.
Crawling into the sleeping compartment, I opened the box of ammo marked 5.56-by-45 millimeters. On top of the packed rounds were ammo belts. I pulled out my replacements—one pre-loaded hundred-round ammo belt and two twenty-round belts—and made my way back up front. Removing my nearly empty belt (I had seven rounds left in it), I loaded one new belt and hooked the other belts into the secure loops on the passenger side floor. One hundred forty-seven rounds. That should do it.
“What’s the plan? We gonna wait for them and take them down?” Cupcake shouted to me as she tried to drag a body out of the way. “I don’t see a chainsaw. The rig isn’t getting over that tree without some serious damage to the undercarriage.”
“Can the diesel push it out of the way?”
She studied the tree and where it hit on the cab’s grill. “I can try, but if it gets stuck, we’re screwed.”
“Try. Slowly.”
“I don’t like it. But I’ll do it. The bodies?”
“Leave ’em.”
“That’s gonna squish.” But Cupcake got back in the cab.
With a steady hand on the Para Gen and a firm grip on the truck’s safety handle, I retook my place, sitting in the open window. I secured the weapon before I returned my attention to Spy. She was moving fast, and the contact was iffy. Without being head-to-head, I didn’t know if it would work, but I sent her a picture vision of her hunting for the reinforcements and from which direction they would come. I got a hint of something dizzying which might have been Spy replying. Or not.
Then I lost contact.
Cupcake shifted into the lowest gear, a basso thrum that vibrated through my butt. The truck eased forward, and the bottom edge of the bumper connected, catching against the upper curve of the downed tree as she bumped it forward. It shifted but didn’t roll. She reversed, stopped, and bumped it forward again. The tree, a long-dead native fir, shifted and rolled an inch. Cupcake repeated the process, getting a feel for the speed and force needed. Brittle branches snapped and broke, the dead tree moving in time with the truck bumps. The tree’s own tapering shape allowed her to adjust the angle and speed of the bump as the tree began to roll in an arc, away from the road. Cupcake was right. The truck squished the bodies still in the road. We were making progress, but it was taking too long.
