Outrider

by Steven John

  That was the greatest danger here: a group of boys as fine as his riders could keep the field safe against any normal threat; the martial force of greater New Las Vegas County could keep the field safe against most any army in the world. But if the field was damaged—if much of it was destroyed—there was nothing to do but weep and moan. The drainers could suck as much power as possible, then sabotage the rest and leave, selling what they could to who they could and ultimately doing what they pleased. How to beat an enemy you can hardly define? They weren’t up against a real army; certainly there was no government to topple and sign a surrender. It was an outrider’s lot to fight a battle of attrition, and this time that conflict was sure to cost dearly.

  And why, given all that, given that there was no “army” to fight, why in the hell had Mayor Dreg been so cavalier to send out his troops? Was he hoping to win a battle, or to merely show off on a grand stage? And to who? Most likely just beats jackin’ himself off, Hutton thought as he looked up, breaking free from his long brooding.

  “I’m sorry, Matteson—what did you ask me? Sorry, I get wrapped up in my own cobwebbed old head. Just . . . I get mixed up thinking about this. Sorry, bud.”

  “You apologize to me again and I’ll make you start paying around here. I just asked how bad you think it’s gonna get.”

  “Christ I wish I knew. I got all sorts of theories and all, but between you and me, for all my years spent neck deep in this mess, I’ve never seen anything like this. I hear Kretch and C. J. got sprayed by machine guns. You’ve heard the jets and choppers. And smilin’ Tripp Hernandez. It’s just . . . it’s so much different than any other given day—so much worse than a given worst day, and the thing that kills me is that I don’t get the motivation. It may come as a surprise that ol’ Hutton’s a student of history, but I’m too old to fuck and fight much, so when I ain’t on the move or piss drunk right here, I study. And I can’t square this up. Country’s stable. Which is to say the economy’s stable . . . there’s no foreign aggressor could muster even a bow and arrow against the interior of this nation . . . so what the fuck, Matt? That’s why I’m here having a drink instead of dealing with the goddamn mess at hand—I don’t know how to fight back against something when I don’t know what’s driving it!”

  Hutton slammed his empty glass on the bar and rose suddenly, grabbing his hat so hard the firm felt brim folded in half in his fist. He immediately loosened his grip on the Stetson, massaging flat the crease he’d formed.

  “I got to face the music. Face the bullshit. See you around, Matty.”

  “Yup. Soon and better I hope.” Matteson rose as Hutton strode toward the door.

  “Just one thing I thought I’d add, Boss.” Hutton turned around, looking attentively at the disheveled bartender. “I don’t know a hell of a lot about history but it may surprise you to know that I’m a . . . well, a lover of poetry.”

  “Does indeed,” Hutton said, a broad and genuine smile turning up his lips.

  “Yeah, well, keep it quiet. But a quote I thought may bring some . . . some thoughts to you. Fellah named W. H. Auden wrote these words—part of a longer piece—but he wrote ’em just when World War II was sweeping over everyone a century and a half or so back. He said uh . . . he wrote—wait let me get it just right . . .” Matteson closed his eyes, then whispered:

  “What huge imago made a psychopathic god: I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn, those to whom evil is done, do evil in return.”

  He opened his eyes again. Hutton waited a moment before responding.

  “You saying you think this is . . . like some retaliation? What would anyone be fightin’ back against? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. Not at all, in fact. And what do I know, anyway? I just know that even the drunkest bastard I ever seen in here usually don’t throw a punch when there weren’t some reason, whether it was bad blood stirred up that very night or bad blood flowing underneath a long time, you know?”

  Boss Hutton cracked open the door, sliding into the meeting hall as quietly as possible. He leaned back against the cool cinderblock wall and looked around the familiar space as if seeing it for the first time. Most all of the chairs had been folded and stacked against one wall. There were hundreds of cords crisscrossing the floor leading to banks of screens, tables piled high with computers, and monitors and stacks of communication gear. Antennas stretched up to the rafters thirty feet above.

  The cavernous room was bustling with strangers wearing the black fatigues of Civil Defense forces; an unfamiliar cacophony of static, beeping, clicks and the constant drone of machinery echoed off the walls. Jesus H. Fuckin’ Hell—this is goddamn terrible. Hutton pulled off his hat, sighing and massaging the bridge of his nose between two fingers. I always liked to think I was in control of everything, didn’t I? Didn’t you? OK, old man . . . face it. Face it straight on.

  “Who thinks they’re in charge here, huh?” The Boss barked loudly, standing tall with his feet spread wide.

  For a moment the room grew quieter; the murmuring of voices dropped off. Mere seconds later, most every face that had turned to look at him was back on its console or phone or charts. Only a few people paid attention to Boss Hutton—his boys to a man. Noah Fischer was the first to reach Hutton. He was limping badly, dragging his right leg, but the heavy white cast was gone, replaced by a flexible brace.

  “You sure you should be walkin’ around on that thing, Fischer?”

  “Good as new, Boss,” Noah smiled. “Assuming I bought a brand new piece of shit busted ass leg, but I’m just fine, sure.”

  “OK, good man. How you doin’, Greg?”

  Gregory White nodded slowly, rolling out his thick shoulders. “I’m alright, Hut. Except for all these goddamn assholes crowded up in here. Fuckheads don’t know shit about shit!” he said loudly, his eyes seeming to find one soldier in particular. Then, dropping his voice again, he added: “Good to have you back here.”

  “Yeah. Good to be back. How was your patrol?”

  “Field was quiet for me. Seems that’s the exception, though. You see anything out on the line?”

  “No. Not really,” Hutton shook his head, looking away from Gregory and reluctantly making eye contact with Wilton Kretch. “So what happened, Kretch? Heard you and Haskell got lit up pretty good.”

  “Bullets like raindrops, Boss. I ain’t ever seen so much lead in so little time. The kid’s lucky he weren’t alone. I managed to drop one of the fuckers before the shit got too thick and I figured we had to ride out. Gotta fight another day, y’know?”

  “Sure.” Hutton looked away, again scanning the room. “So what’s the story here—they got our hall set up as their command center, that right? Fischer?” Hutton added this last question as Kretch opened his mouth to answer the first.

  “Yeah. Pretty much. Bastards started pouring in around ten, maybe ten thirty. Didn’t ask anything; didn’t say much. Just took over the place.”

  Hutton put his hat back on, shoulders sagging in resignation. There was nothing he could do to stop it, after all. “OK . . . any one of ’em seem to be in charge?”

  “Yeah. I’ll send him over,” Gregory White answered quietly, turning around and making his way through the jumble of cords and desks and men scurrying about in black uniforms.

  “Any word from the field? From anyone?”

  Fischer lowered his head, his fleshy chin compressing against his chest, and shook his head slowly. Kretch glanced over his shoulder, then whispered: “Ol’ Ryan Cannell came back in from a short ride and a few of these security bastards led him off somewhere. Said they had questions.”

  “Where was he ridin’ from?”

  “Checking out the cage closest west of here. We heard there was a fellah got locked up in there and the ol’ man said he’d go look himself.”

  “Watch it with that old man business, Wil—he’s younger’n me, dammit.”

  Wilton cracked a smile which Hutton tried to return, but it came out as mor
e of a sneer. Kretch took in a breath to say more, but The Boss quieted him with a subtly raised hand. Greg White was walking back toward the group, trailed by a tall man with square shoulders, a square jaw and pale blue eyes set beneath close-cropped blonde hair.

  “I’m Colonel Ridley Strayer. As ranking Civil Defense officer and the head of executive security, I’m the one overseeing this operation. I take it you’re Mr. Hutton?”

  “Boss Hutton,” Gregory growled over the colonel’s shoulder. Strayer ignored him.

  “I need you to send each of your men to me as soon as they report in from the field. I’ll want to interview each separately before they so much as take a piss. And no one heads out into the sunfield again without my clearance, is that understood?”

  “Don’t you fuckin’ talk to The Boss that way, you cityboy pissant of a—”

  Strayer spun on his heel, locking eyes with the large man glaring down at him. “Gregory White. Four sets of charges dismissed, three felony convictions, two of which resulted in jail time—the first for manslaughter the second for rape, if I’m not mistaken. Father deceased, mother and two sisters living in Mobile, Alabama. And kindly slide your hand back off that pistol, if you would. If you really think drawing it would be a good idea I won’t object, but I guarantee it will be the next to last action of your life, followed quickly by the ground rushing up to meet your very dead body.”

  Greg blanched and took an involuntary step back, dumfounded upon hearing his darkest secret casually revealed. He had bragged about the man he’d killed more times than he could count, but about the girl—about the girl he’d poured vodka into and then punched square in the jaw when she tried to keep her skirt down, the girl he’d mounted while she lay there unconscious and bleeding from the nose, the girl whose face he saw every night before sleep took him . . . .

  “That’s better.” The other outriders looked askance at Greg White as Colonel Strayer turned back to Hutton. “Now, I’m sure you have many questions and we’ll try to answer them and to accommodate your men. We’re in this together, after all; we’re partners. But you are not in control. We are in charge. You don’t have to like it—if I were you I certainly wouldn’t, OK? Know that. But also know that this goes a bit beyond petty thieves and little generators. This goes a little bit beyond fifty-odd men and a stable of horses.”

  18

  Scofield was riding at full tilt. Reese’s hooves thundered against the desert floor, sending up a trail of dust. The corners of her mouth were dripping with foam.

  “Come on girl! Just a little while more baby, keep it up!” he shouted as he craned his neck to look back again. His hat bounced wildly in the wind, flapping behind him on its lanyard and blocking his view. He dug his fingers between the flayed flesh of his neck and the rawhide cord and pulled the hat flat against his back. Finally able to see clearly, he swore under his breath. It was no use—it was still gaining.

  Scofield faced forward, scanning the terrain. He’d just broken free of the sunfield and had been making for the nearest dune, but the massive, awful machine bearing down on him was just too fast. The outrider had never thought he’d flat out escape the damn thing, but he’d hoped to gain elevation.

  Not five minutes earlier, Scofield had been making his way back toward the Outpost at an easy canter. He had to report the two men he’d fought and killed. He had to get water for himself and his horse. He had to get more information. All had been perfectly tranquil in the hour following the gunfight. Then, suddenly, a deafening wail sounded behind him. His horse had picked up to a full gallop without Scofield’s consent but the outrider could hardly fault her. All he could see behind them was a massive cloud of dust and sand surrounding some strange, speeding behemoth.

  A moment of abject terror had quickly given way to the lightning fast calculations some men make in moments of great trial. He knew he’d never outrun it, but if he could get to that dune, maybe the machine couldn’t climb. There was a chance it would be slow in turning, but out in this wide open swath of land, he could spend the afternoon feinting left and wheeling right and still not get away. How the fuck is this even possible? It occurred to Scofield that there was a good chance the sunfield was shut down, taken out. A vehicle this big could scarcely come within six miles of the field under normal circumstances; this thing had driven right under the stacks. I could be royally fucked here. This could be real, real bad. This could be it.

  Scofield reined his horse to a stop. In one fluid motion, he grabbed his rifle and the submachine gun he’d taken from the drainers and leapt off the mare.

  “I love you, Reese. You’re the best there is.” He cupped her soft muzzle in one palm, looking into the horse’s large brown eyes. Then he barked at her to stay still, and jogged away from the horse.

  The dust cloud surrounding the approaching vehicle grew smaller and Scofield could hear the rumble of its engine lower in intensity. As it drew ever closer, he could finally see his pursuer. It wasn’t only dust and sand forming the haze around the machine. It was also steam.

  The locomotive came to a stop fifty yards from the outrider. Great clouds of white steam and gray smoke belched from the iron stack atop the gigantic tank engine. It sat upon three pairs of massive treads. The whole vehicle was painted matte black, from the savage-looking scoop jutting off its front to the myriad gears idling along the sides. A large wheelhouse with small windows sat just below the smoke stack. Deep, staccato huffing rumbled across the sand, like the breath of some predator crouched and waiting to attack.

  Mayor Dreg wiped droplets of coffee off the desk with his sleeve. He had slammed a fist down so hard his mug had bounced off its leather coaster, jumping an honest inch into the air. “I can’t tell what the fuck I’m looking at, man! What are these goddamn dots and circles?”

  “Those are probably helicopters . . . half-tracks or . . .” Strayer’s voice crackled through the speaker, a syllable dropping here, a word garbled there.

  “I can barely understand you, Strayer! Speak up!”

  “I’m shouting, Dreg!” The absence of the words “Mister” or “Mayor” was not lost on either man. “I’m two miles south of . . . glowline on a satellite phone. I shouldn’t . . . using . . . thing as it is!”

  Franklin leaned closer to the screen set in his desk, straining to make sense of the pixilated image before him. He could see about a mile-long stretch of the sunfield and in various places there were strange objects that looked like smudges to him. Supposedly these were the various vehicles of his defense force taking position, but the pattern of deployment and the snail’s pace at which it was happening consternated The Mayor. He could not unveil the full sweep of his plans and ambitions until the Civil Defense Forces were in place. Sweat dripped down the rolls of his neck and pooled in his bushy eyebrows. He loosened the thick knot of his crimson tie.

  “Why can’t you get me better images of my field?”

  “The aircraft . . . stay above twenty-thousand feet, Mayor. We have one glider and an analog film camera. That’s . . . blurry you. . . . It . . . at least another two hours to divert lower orbit satellites . . . problem . . . higher resolution aerial reconnaissance . . . and are . . . but from Oregon. Maybe by sundown. Not . . . but we’ll see. We’re doing all we can.”

  “Have you engaged yet?” Dreg growled between clenched teeth.

  “Say again.”

  “Have you engaged!”

  “With who? Ghosts? We haven’t seen a single soul out here.”

  “What’s the name of the deputy head of security forces? Black guy, wide shoulders? Not you. What’s his name?”

  “Major Engel?”

  “If that’s his name, then yes, Engel. He’s the one right below you, correct? Federal Military background? Former Air Force man, I think. He was there at Hale’s apartment. That’s Engel?”

  “Yes.”

  “When next you have something to report, have Major Engel call me, Strayer. I get tired of your insubordinate bullshit.”

  F
ranklin wished he were holding a handset so he would have something to smash down. Instead he jammed a stubby index finger against the red button at the top of his phone console, hanging up on the security chief. He was livid, his mustache quivering, toes curled into balls and stretching the thin leather of his wingtips to the very edge of ripping apart.

  His anger was fueled by both edges of the same sword: First, Strayer was acting like a mutinous prick and had taken the execution of the response into his own hands, treating Dreg as a man to be read reports to rather than the man he reported to. Second, The Mayor had absolutely no grasp of martial issues and, while he never quite admitted it to himself, he was innately aware of his own impotence in that arena. He had neither the experience nor the mind for matters of tactics and strategy.

  Mayor Dreg didn’t even know how many men he had in his defense forces, never mind who took care of logistical re-supply for vehicle batteries or ammunition or who was cooking the soldiers’ meals or what kind of aircraft were circling the sunfield. A glider? Had Strayer really said there was a glider? Why was there a goddamn glider!

  All that compounded with the fact that he had arranged for a division of Federal Forces to be waiting the day after he returned from Boston, and now had no clue what to do with them. Where to put them and when? He feared he would have to reveal his trump card to Strayer, essentially ceding full control of the operation to the colonel and thereby losing his triumphant moment—his hero’s victory; his display to centers of power ranging from Los Angeles to Austin to Washington itself that there was much power indeed in the hands of Franklin Dreg.

  Dreg had been long accustomed to issuing orders and having them carried out. Only now, when his city faced a crisis that demanded reaction rather than action was he finally, acutely aware of his plight: quite simply, he did not know what to do. Instead of rationally delegating duties to those fit to carry them out, he became increasingly furious and increasingly bent on managing matters directly, despite his total lack of ability to do so, and despite the fact that his intentional delay of a response had let the crisis grow so large.