The Saffron Malformation

by Walker, Bryan

  Quey rolled fast through an intersection and glanced to his mirrors. Behind him Arnie was driving Reggie’s blue car, careful to keep in view of the rig’s mirrors at all times. Reggie was sitting calmly in the passenger seat, a rifle in his hands. He hadn’t fired a shot since they took off from the pack of bodies they’d left in the streets outside Banner’s Seafood Grill.

  The pair of vehicles made moderate progress toward the edge of Fen Quada but Quey still felt agitation clinch around his chest and settle in his leg, rendering it itchy with a need to grow a great deal heavier on the accelerator. He took long breaths to compose himself and leaned on all the will he could muster to keep from letting that happen. They needed to get out of town fast but wrecking the rig along the way wouldn’t do them a bit of good.

  The plan was to take a back road north up the coastline. It would be a slow go but they hoped the Brood wouldn’t be watching it. In that they were correct. The Brood had posted watch along the highway looking for the moonshiner or the girl. They hadn’t looked over the maps closely enough to realize there were other ways out of town.

  A car pulled into the intersection ahead of Quey’s rig and his eyes flared as he realized a crash was inevitable. He turned the wheel hard to the right, aiming for the rear of the vehicle in hopes he could hit it and keep moving. The rig was heavy and its engine was strong but Quey knew better than to think he could simply roll through anything. Getting something lodged under the truck wouldn’t do them a bit of good either as they’d never make it out trying to drag a car through the streets.

  The front end of the truck slammed into the trunk of the car and crushed it like a brick hitting a soda can. The car spun around, scraped along the driver’s side and continued to spin to a stop. The pair of Broodlings in the front seats of the car took a moment to regain their bearings while Arnie and Reggie sped by in the blue car.

  “Call me crazy,” Von said from the passenger’s seat of the now crumpled vehicle.

  “Yeah, I thought I saw it too,” Cray confirmed, meaning the Pickens and Zaul decal.

  Von reached into his leather jacket and pulled out his sheet, folded into a palm sized rectangle. He touched a tiny button on the top of it and the screen flashed to life. He tapped the icon shaped like a wolf’s head with a moon behind it and spoke into the microphone on the base of the device. “Spotted shiner in lower Fen. Dot’s on me.” Then he pushed the button marked ‘howl’ and all across Fen Quada the Angels of the Brood’s devices chimed to life. Most howled like a wolf, others had customized their sounds, usually replacing the wolf’s howl with something violent or sexual.

  The brood’s jammers kept signals from transmitting to the satellites but if a device was in range, no more than a few dozen kilometers, you could still send a howl to your wolf pack.

  In a rig on the streets of upper Fen Quada, Render sat in the passenger’s seat watching the sheriff’s station burn. They had one of the officers tied to the hood of his car and they were about to begin asking him if he recognized the shiner and the girl and if he did then where might they be found, when his device howled. Render pulled it from his jacket and read the message. He could see some of the men on the street were doing the same.

  “What is it?” the driver, a young man with only a single patch on his shoulder asked.

  “Suckin’ fat titties,” Render answered with a smile, “Looks like we just found ourselves a small fortune rollin’ up outta this hole.”

  The driver smiled and shifted the rig into gear while Render sent a howl of his own. This one informed Wayne, a scruffy Broodling who’d been with the group for more years than Render could count, that he was to take charge of his group and finish the raid while Render took his crew after the truck. Then he accessed the Friends of the Brood’s Network and selected Von’s dot. The device took a moment to plot an intercept course for them to follow and Render relayed the directions to the driver.

  “Pull up to this intersection and head right.”

  The car with the smashed trunk was following them as best it could with its rear end crumpled and scraping along the street behind it. Now that they were nearing the outskirts Quey was able to let his foot do what it had been begging to for the last few kilometers: he pressed it hard against the pedal and smiled as he felt the engine begin to pull.

  A few moments later a pair of bikes rolled up along side the car that was fading into their rear-view. The two men in the car waved for the bikes to hurry on as their car struggled to continue.

  Reggie watched them through the back window, taking aim with his rifle, waiting to fire.

  “What cha suppose they want?” Reggie asked Arnie who was keeping an eye on his mirrors and his foot heavy on the pedal. His hands were firm on the wheel but he was relaxed.

  “Maybe they’re just thirsty,” he joked.

  Reggie looked over at him, unsure for a moment, then saw the sarcastic twinkle in his eye and they both laughed a little.

  As the last of the outskirts of Fen Quada zipped by and they flew past the sign asking them to come back soon, Reggie’s smile faded. They had started up the cliffs and he could see the convoy racing toward the edge of town—a dozen vehicles at least. “What the fuck are you hot for?” he whispered.

  Arnie glanced at him a few times and kept the car steady.

  Dusty was sitting in the sleeper behind Quey, petting Rachel’s hair. He’d kissed her forehead at least twice and he was talking to her, assuring her that things were going to be fine—assuring himself really.

  From the dashboard the sheet flashed, they were out of range of the Brood’s jammers, and Quey gave it a quick tap. Reggie was staring through the screen. “I got bad news.”

  Quey nodded, “They’re chasing.”

  Reggie nodded, “Hard too. I’m not sure they even left anyone in town.”

  Quey peered thoughtfully at the road ahead. “Why would they…?” he asked himself. But he knew—at least he thought he did. He had cargo, and a truck like his was worth more than cash to the brood.

  “That’s what I can’t figure,” Reggie replied.

  “I heard them talking,” Dusty chimed in from the back. “When I was on the roof. They said something about looking for a rig. ‘Maybe that’s the rig he’s looking for…’ or something like that,” he finished.

  Reggie and Quey exchanged a glance through their screens.

  “They’re going to catch up to us,” Arnie offered. Reggie looked at the boy and Quey shifted his eyes to his screen. “The bikes will at least. Ten minutes or so.”

  Reggie looked back into the screen and exchanged a look with Quey. “What now?” the big man asked.

  Quey looked at the road ahead, saw it was going to fork. “Stop.” He slammed the breaks and Arnie mashed the ones in the car. Both vehicles slowed to a stop a few hundred meters before the fork.

  “What are you doing?” Dusty asked from the back seat.

  “You’re sure about what you heard? They want the truck for some reason?”

  Dusty nodded.

  “Then we need to get you and Rachel into the car.”

  “What?”

  Quey turned to him. “You have to get her somewhere. Somewhere with a doctor.”

  Dusty looked down at Rachel.

  Quey heard the car doors open behind him and a pair of footsteps jogged toward the truck. Quey waited for Reggie to yank open the passenger side door and ask, “What’s up,” with Arnie standing behind him. The boy didn’t know whether he was supposed to follow or not, he just did.

  “All of you are going to get into the car and then we’re going split at the fork.”

  “Why?” Reggie asked with a shake of his head and a furrowed brow.

  “Because they just want the truck. Or me maybe? I haven’t quite worked that out yet.”

  “So you’re gunna give it to them?” Arnie shouted.

  “No but…” he trailed off. “I don’t want-”

  Reggie raised his hand and glared at him. “If you think fo
r one minute I went through all the trouble of finding you assholes just to fucking cut and run, you must be out of your mind.”

  “Yeah, fuck that,” Dusty said from the back, Rachel resting beside him. “At least together we stand a chance.”

  “Look there’s something in the back of this truck that’s important,” Quey began. “Maybe somehow they know about it, maybe someone’s paying them to want it, who knows but I think that’s what this is about.”

  “What? Some fucking moonshine?” Reggie asked.

  “It’s the machine isn’t it?” Arnie asked, meaning Geo.

  Quey didn’t look at the boy but he nodded, “I think it might be. It’s all I can figure.”

  “Look,” Reggie began, “We put Rachel in the back of the car, Dusty in the passengers seat with a gun and Arnie at the wheel- kid can drive. Put me in the back with some firepower and we run together. Shit goes bad,” he looked back at Arnie, “You get out. Get her somewhere that can help.”

  Arnie nodded and glanced at Quey who sat thoughtful.

  “Might not be perfect but it’ll give us a chance,” the big man concluded.

  Something occurred to him and Quey looked at Reggie. “You got grenades?”

  The big man grinned and chuckled heartily as he said, “Betchyer ass.”

  Reggie ran to the car, stopping to raise the trailers door along the way, and gathered a bag of guns and a case of ammo. Dusty carried Rachel in his arms, his back arched and his feet taking small quick steps under her weight, and laid her gently in the back of the blue car. He caressed her cheek once, saw her head was still bleeding a bit and the sight of that stabbed him before he took a breath and closed the door. Reggie handed him a bag with some guns and ammo inside and hurried back toward the rig. Quey shifted the truck into gear as the sound of engines made its way up the road. Reggie jumped into the back of the truck as the first of the bikes began to close in.

  Dusty climbed into the front seat in near synchronicity with Arnie on the other side and the doors slammed. The sound of engines grew louder as the Angels of the Brood approached.

  The rig took a bit to gain speed but Reggie was ready for the Angels gaining on them. Six bikes rolling two by two and moving fast were roaring up the road behind them. He could see the first two clearly. The one on his left had a scraggly beard and looked like the years on the road had been unkind to him. The one to his right was in equal need of a bath and a shave, but this guy was younger. Kneeling in the trailer of the truck behind a barrel of shine he rested an elbow on its top and took aim at the younger man.

  The rig rolled forward toward the fork with the blue car close behind. It didn’t matter which direction Quey took, north up the coast or east toward the inlands, but he chose east. The roader in him just knew it was the better choice.

  In the car behind the rig, Dusty chambered a round in the rifle and leaned out the window. “You swipe ‘em if they try to get by,” he shouted to Arnie, half his body hanging out the window, wind whipping his short blonde hair into a frenzy.

  Arnie nodded and checked his mirrors.

  Dusty pulled himself up so he was sitting on the passenger’s side door and leaned over the roof with his rifle.

  Reggie fired. The report echoed through the trailer a number of times and the bullet missed its mark. Nodding, Reggie took aim again, this time for the chest, and he fell into the rhythm of the jostling truck. He saw the two lead bikers pull pistols and take aim. He didn’t mind, even as they squeezed off rounds, because they did it like armatures. They may have been okay shots on stable ground, with two hands on a gun and their eye down the sights, but not one of those circumstances was present now. They were simply holding the weapons in front of them and squeezing the trigger. Anything they hit was luck. This time when Reggie fired the scruffy young man in front collapsed atop his bike and wobbled, then toppled to the ground.

  The two Angels behind Reggie’s kill swerved, one right and the other left, to avoid their fallen comrade and the group as a whole fanned out and backed off.

  Dusty squeezed off a shot that found only air and muttered, “Fuck.” He squeezed off two more for a miss total of three. “Fuck!” he growled.

  The bikers rode five across, each with a pistol aimed ahead of them. They opened fire. One of the bullets passed close enough to Dusty that he could hear it so he ducked back inside and slammed the gun down to the floor near his feet.

  “What’s wrong?” Arnie asked him.

  “Can’t hit shit,” he replied. “Might as well just throw the fucking bullets at them for all the good I’m doing.”

  Arnie checked his mirrors and said, “Hold on.” Dusty was about to ask, ‘what?’ but then the kid yanked the wheel hard to the right and slammed the breaks. The car screeched as it stopped sideways across the two lanes. The bikers, startled, did their best to adjust. One of them raced past the trunk without so much as a slight change of course. Two of them dropped their guns as their hands gripped the handlebars and steered around the car and two others crashed into the passenger’s side of the car. One ran into the front end, stopping the bike instantly and sending the rider over the hood and rolling across the pavement. The other smacked square into the middle of the side and cracked his skull on the edge of the roof. He fell to the ground twitching.

  Dusty glanced at Arnie with a look that said, ‘Fuck that was awesome,’ and Arnie shrugged before righting the car and starting after the others.

  Reggie saw the car spin and the carnage it caused and laughed. Three bikers left and only one with a gun. Reggie squeezed off a shot and a bullet shattered a weathered young face in a brilliant spray of red and changed that stat to none with a gun. “And then there were two,” Reggie said, taking aim again.

  Arnie had his foot pressed hard on the accelerator but the dead stop had cost them serious ground, and had given the Brood’s cars time to catch up. Four in all, he could see as he checked the rear view mirror, and a rig behind that.

  The two remaining bikers exchanged a glance and a nod. “Brood!” they shouted and torqued their throttles all the way open. The bikes raced forward and as Reggie took aim he could see them reach into their saddle bags. From the sacks each drew a grenade and the big man’s heart skipped.

  “Shit,” he said. There wasn’t time to take both of them out so he did what he could. He killed the one on the left as the one on the right chucked his explosive. Reggie watched the grenade clank against the floor of the truck and bounce slightly on its path past him. Instinctually, the big man reached for it, as if it was a baseball and he was playing shortstop, of course he’d always been a left fielder and the grenade whizzed past him.

  Reggie ran toward the door, reached down and gripped a lever on the back of the truck. It was the ramp release and he pulled it up and sent a long piece of thick metal sliding from the back of the truck. He climbed onto it and worked his way down toward the end where sparks shot up from the metal bouncing and scraping across the pavement. Reggie held tight, his fingers lacing through a bit of mesh near the side of the ramp and tucked his head as best he could.

  From the cab of the truck Quey saw little of what was happening behind him and he thought that was a good thing because if there was action in his mirrors that meant it was getting too close. Then his sheet started to buzz and he had a message from Dusty across the screen. “Stop!” it said.

  A second might have ticked, but not two before the truck shook violently amidst a concussive boom. Quey, sitting in his reinforced truck—the only thing that saved him was the extra plating—coughed violently from the force of the blast as he slammed on the breaks and the truck screeched to a stop.

  The remaining biker backed off. He pulled to the side of the road and stopped to wait for his buddies to come by. He was going to warn them, whoever this moonshiner and his friends were it wasn’t going to be like chasing down common folk scampering for their lives driven by fear. They had skills. Five dead, just to stop the truck he could see smoldering up ahead. Still they
had stopped it, though he only had a few brief moment to feel good about himself and his aptly thrown grenade before the Once Men came out of the brush behind him. Stalking him through the tall grass they were on him before he had a chance to look back. Laughing, they dragged him screaming into the bushes.

  Von and Cray waited beside their crumpled car until another happened along and scooped them up before pressing on. They heard the explosion and saw the cloud of smoke rise up in a plume over the road ahead. The Broodlings smiled satisfaction as they hurried to catch up with the pack of bikes. Their smiles faded as they began to pass cycles lying on their sides with their drivers motionless nearby. A good click up the road they spotted the bike standing alone near the shoulder and the flaming skeleton of the truck up ahead, thick smoke still rolling into the air above it. They stopped near the bike and looked at it curiously for a set of ticks. Cray’s eyes widened and his lips trembled slightly under his unkempt facial hair before he bolted frantically from the rear right seat. The others looked, first to him, then out at what had stricken him. In the thick grass just off the road Once Men emerged from their hiding places. The two closest to the road stood side by side aiming shotguns and as the Broodlings’ eyes widened with understanding the savages opened fire. Pellets tore through the vehicle and the Angels of the Brood sitting inside.

  Von managed to get his door open and collapsed from the vehicle. The man in the middle of the back seat was shouting frantically and fumbling for his gun.

  “Ga ba! Ga ba!” one of the Once Men shouted. Von tried to crawl away but there were at least a dozen to either side of the road and more moving around in the bushes further back. Von wasn’t sure why but he found it funny. Even as they snatched him and hauled him away to be torn apart and eaten he was laughing.

  The kid in the back seat—he was new and Von couldn’t remember his name—managed to get of a set of shots. He must have hit one of them, judging by the savages wailing, and then they pumped clusters of pellets into him and the road was silent again.