“You could go that route,” I said, “but why fight and die for something we’re giving away for free?”
“You have a high opinion of yourself,” he said.
“If you want to do this dance—and I really love a good two-step—we can dance. But you’re going to die right here in this street before it’s over, and so will Snuffy, Sneasy, and this guy, who I kind of like. None of it’s necessary, though. I have free food for everyone in the zone. We can negotiate everything else.”
“Screw this!” one of the two clowns who came out with Funboy yelled and reached for the gun in his shoulder holster.
His hand had barely crossed his body before he was staring down the barrel of my .45.
Just as fast as I had my pistol out, the leader had his pointed at me, and less than a second later, so did Funboy.
“You’re fast,” the leader said. “Fast as I am, and that’s fast.”
“My brother’s about twice as fast as I am,” I said.
“There’s only one program with that kind of speed,” he said. There was genuine concern in his voice.
“They were putting some guy named Gaunt into my brother when the bombs fell. He got all the skills, and none of the baggage, so he came home.”
“Shit,” the leader muttered under his breath. His gun returned to its holster as fast as it had been drawn. “Funboy! Get these idiots off the street.”
“Even with Gaunt, you couldn’t take us all,” he said. “But as you say, why fight and die for something you’re already giving away for free?”
“Alright,” I said and holstered my .45. “Your counteroffer for the slaves?”
“Not going to let that go, are you?”
“No,” I said. “No, I’m not.”
“Three hundred apiece.”
“Here’s something you can ponder,” I said. “I know a lot of you are augmented. I’ll double the ration for each of them. I happen to know we eat a lot more than the regular Joe. On top of that, I’ll give double rations for every slave. But it has to be every slave.”
“Triple rations for the women.”
I gritted my teeth as I nodded. No way was I leaving any of those slaves behind. You have to have priorities in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 24
“What’s going on over there?”
“Had an incident, someone was spying on us from the Fed.”
“I heard some gunshots early this morning.”
“Last we saw of the guy, he was about to get hit by a bunch of assholes on top of the Mall. If they catch him, they’ll bring him to us. If they kill him, so be it.”
“Well, let’s get this started,” I said. “I’d love to get out of the city before dark.”
“Then let’s get to it,” he said. “I have forty-eight augmented—”
“That’s not how this works,” I said. “Each person collects their script and collects their MREs. If they’re leaving with us, you’ll collect the script owed as they join. After all that’s settled, if you have anything you want to trade, we also have sacks of beans, flour, and cornmeal. Next month, we’ll have some oats made into oatmeal as well. The sacks will be fifteen script if you choose to buy them instead of the MREs. I’d suggest doing that for some of it, anyway.”
He was quiet for a minute. “Okay with most of that. But the bosses aren’t coming out in the open. Too easy a target. You’ll have to make an exception.”
“I’ll go in and meet them. I’ll verify they’re there, and then I’ll let you be their proxy. Breaking a lot of rules already, why not break another?”
“You’re not getting within a hundred yards of the bosses. And your brother damn sure isn’t. Pick a regular guy, and we’ll—” He was interrupted by the radio beeping. “Okay, they just agreed to you coming in.”
He looked surprised.
“Before they see me, tell them that if I hear a certain code phrase—which doesn’t work on me, by the way—I will shoot them. The code doesn’t work on Jimmy, either. If that’s why they’re agreeing to see me, they can back out of that right now, and I’ll send in one of my boys to verify them.”
The radio beeped again with the same pattern as before.
“They’ll see you; I expect they’re curious about how you’re immune to the code you spoke of. I’m curious how you even know about it. I’m also curious why you haven’t used it since coming here.”
“Not interested in starting a fight,” I said.
“Then come with me,” he said.
“Phil!” I yelled to the wagons. “Start setting up! We’ll be doing this with no bloodshed!”
I followed him toward the Mint.
“What do I call you?”
“I used to be Martin,” he said. “Since I ended up doing this, I’m Slammer.”
“Then let’s go see what your bosses have to say, Martin.”
I followed him into the Mint, where the light was dim. We proceeded down several hallways to a stairwell that led up to the top floor.
“They always want to be in the penthouse,” I muttered.
“That’s true,” he said.
“Why not one of the taller buildings around?”
“This one’s a fortress,” he said. “They wanted one of the bigger buildings, but they listened to their security teams and settled for this.”
There were very few of the imprinted clowns I’d seen outside, but there were quite a few augmented clowns. We passed at least ten of them on our way into the top floor. This place would be a deathtrap if I tried to shoot my way out.
“This is it,” he said and opened a door. “Follow me.”
I followed him into the large office. Across the room was a long table with three huge chairs. There was a person in each of the chairs. The one on the left was large. He had flaps of skin that showed he’d lost some weight since the Fall, but he was still enormous.
The middle chair held a slender man wearing fur robes and a lot of gold jewelry. He lounged in his chair, covered in the riches of another world.
In the chair on the right was probably the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Every part of that beauty screamed of falsehood. She’d been sculpted before the Fall and retained that ethereal beauty. She wore a revealing dress that had probably cost a great deal at another time.
“He’s cute,” the center head said. “Can we keep him?”
“I’ve seen prettier,” the woman said. “Perhaps we should keep him anyway.”
“I’ve seen what I need to see,” I said. “There’re three of you. You’ll get your rations.”
“One word from us, and everyone will attack you and your men,” the fat man said. “Why should we not do so? And why should we not just come out and take your farms?”
“Do you know anything about growing corn?”
They were silent.
“If you attack us, you’ll probably win a fight right here. But you’ll lose a lot of lives. If you go to the Farms, you’ll lose more. Then, say you took the Farms. You’ll have had to kill over three quarters of the people out there, maybe all, and you’ll have them. But who’s going to grow your crops?”
“It seems you may have a point,” the fat man said. “But, as my security chief has pointed out, you don’t have the upper hand in your dealings with us. As befits our stature, I expect five times the normal rations you bring.”
“Yet you’ll get one, just like every other non-augmented person in this zone. You have no stature beyond these streets you control. Obsidian is gone. Teledyne is gone. They’re all gone. You have these Agents, and you could wreak all sorts of havoc as you go down. But you’ll go down. This city is a shit heap, and you need us a lot more than we need you. Now, I’ve bent the rules as far as I plan to with the price I’m paying for the slaves you hold, and I offered to supply your augments with extra because I know what happens without it. If you want to dance with the Farmers, then step on up. I won’t be making any more exceptions.”
Both
men looked at me with shocked faces, but the woman smiled. She turned to the other two. “You thought you were dealing with sheep. It seems we may be dealing with wolves.”
“Are we dancing?” I asked.
“No, we’re not,” she said. “Go make your deals and trade your goods. The next time you come here, we’ll discuss the dancing. By then you may have realized there’s no way you’ll save this pitiful city, and there’s no hope left in this Fallen World.”
* * * * *
Chapter 25
“This one stays,” Martin said. “She’s Lasko’s favorite.”
“Deal was for all of them,” I said as the girl approached the wagon.
She was pretty—too pretty. The prettier you are, the rougher this place was on you. Some of the things I noticed after we’d started this whole venture grated on me. We’d fallen so far after those bombs dropped.
His radio beeped, and he pulled it from his belt. He looked at the screen and frowned.
“Sorry, girl,” he said and drew the pistol at his hip.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Before he could pull the trigger, the radio went off again. He looked at the screen.
“Lucky girl,” he said and motioned her forward.
My pistol returned to its holster. “You knew if you shot her, I was going to shoot you.”
“The curse of the imprinted, Pratt. Orders are orders.”
“I’m guessing the one who’s really in charge up there overruled Lasko?”
“She did.”
He pointedly turned the radio off. “Let’s get this done before someone does something monumentally stupid.”
“I agree.”
As they all came by the wagon, I counted forty-eight people with augments. Most seemed to be at Funboy’s level. There were two or three operating at or near Martin’s level. Each of them left with double the script of the others. There were close to a hundred of the single imprint. They all moved the same way, male or female. It was disturbing to see a bunch of them at the same time. I don’t know what the imprint was they’d used on these people, but they all had that glint of madness in their eyes.
I wasn’t sure if there was a database like Collins was looking for, but there was an Imprinter in there.
There were also a hundred and sixty slaves. The majority of them were females, and I emptied out a whole wagon of MREs for them. I loaded all the former slaves into the wagons so they wouldn’t be out in the open where the clowns could sit and stew over their loss. The looks from the former slaves toward the non-augmented clowns were enough to tell me some things. Many of the women were still recovering from wounds, and my eye was twitching by the time we had them loaded.
“Now it’s not them I’m worried about breaking the peace here,” Martin said.
“I really don’t understand how you can stand there in that getup and let this happen to people,” I said.
He scowled. “Orders are orders.”
I shook my head.
“You said there was a possibility of trade for goods as well?”
“It doesn’t even faze you,” I said.
“You live in a world of choices, Zebadiah Pratt. I’m just a fucking clown. I’ll leave Funboy with you to discuss any trades for goods. We have a lot of things you may be interested in that we have no use for.”
He turned and walked away.
When we rolled back down Arch Street, we had a wagon full of blue jeans of nearly every size, and ten drums of diesel fuel, which I paid dearly for. There were waves from some of the people in the zones between the Circus and the Convention Center, which everyone called the Freakshow. We turned up a street that took us to Race Street on the other side of the Convention Center.
We rolled to a stop alongside the loading bays.
“We didn’t hear gunshots,” Eddie said as he stepped out on the loading ramp. “Kind of expected to hear gunshots.”
“No use fighting for something we were giving away. We got what we went for, and they got a lot of damn food. No one got shot. I guess it’s been a good day.”
“Then why is your eye twitching?”
“Can’t seem to get it to stop,” I said. “Galls me to trade with that place. A hundred and sixty slaves, every one of them in pretty rough shape.”
“You wonder why we want to leave?”
“Not in the least,” I said. “Let’s get everybody loaded and get the hell out of this place.”
“Amen to that, brother.”
It took close to an hour and a half to get everyone back into the wagons. We had a full load with all the goods we’d traded for, plus over three hundred people packed into the wagons. Once we cleared the city, they could get out and walk alongside the caravan. The afternoon was nearly spent as we rolled west toward home.
I thought we were going to make it out of Philly this time without anyone getting killed, but the Blues must have decided they didn’t like the deal we’d made. Shots rang out as we rolled down the street. I turned to see Eddie stagger against one of the wagons. Phil slumped over on the seat of the first wagon, and Gary was spinning the fifty to point toward the Justice Center.
Everything hit me at once. All that fury that had been building in me from the moment we’d started dealing with the zones.
“Alan!” I yelled to Phil’s second. “Get the wagons around the corner!”
“Jimmy!”
I moved across the street a lot faster than the shooters were expecting. It looked like they were on multiple levels. Jimmy went straight up the wall, and I slammed into the door with my enhanced strength. It would have held against a regular person, but I hit it like a wrecking ball. They were clustered inside, and it made for a target-rich environment. I didn’t even draw my pistol. There was no need. When I hit them, my fists drove through them. They had no room to fire at me without hitting their own. But it didn’t stop some of them from trying anyway.
I punched a chest that shattered and caved in. Picking up the body, I charged toward several people who had opened fire. I felt tugs on my arm, but never slowed.
Behind me something roared, and I saw Billy charge past me into the gunfire. His hide was too thick for the small weapons to do him any harm. Anyone, or anything, that got in his way was broken. He was doing a fine job on the left side of the room, so I headed right to do the same. I glanced out of one of the picture windows to see bodies hitting the street. My brother was doing that thing he does.
“You go left!” There was a hallway to the right and a hallway to the left. Billy waved and charged down the left hallway. I went down the right.
I’d like to say we stopped when they started running away, but it would be a lie. I almost did, but then I thought of the hundred and five people who had been enslaved by the Blues. When the three of us walked out of that building, I was dragging the city manager behind me. I left him there in the street for all to see.
I had four new gunshot wounds that had already stopped bleeding.
“You should dodge those,” Jimmy said.
“I’ll try that next time,” I said. “Quick healing or not, it still hurts like a bitch.”
Bodies littered the street, most of them from the upper floors.
“You have to throw them all out the windows?”
“Some went through walls.”
I laughed. “Did you just make a…never mind.”
His face was dead serious. Sometimes I really missed my brother.
As we rounded the corner, a lot of guns were pointed at us. Close to a hundred Farmers were coming toward us.
Gary was in the lead. He stopped and shook his head. “Jesus, Zee, did you leave any for the rest of us?”
“There may be a few, but I wouldn’t bother. Phil? Eddie?”
“They’re both okay. Phil has a nasty cut on the side of his head. Eddie was hit in the shoulder. We lost six Guardsmen in the ambush. Another twelve were wounded. They stopped shooting at us about the time bodies started raining from the sky. I still
lit up the third floor pretty heavy, while you guys were on one, and Jimmy was throwing people out of the fifth.” He pointed to the wagon sitting in the street with the fifty and without horses. “The horses couldn’t stand the continuous fire, so I tripped the release, and they went with the wagons.”
“I saw the damage when we got to the third floor,” I said. “The horses can take short bursts, but you were right to hit the release with that much fire.”
“I kept firing until the wagons were around the corner,” he said. “Figured we’d come join you after that.”
“Alright,” I said. “You did good, Gee.”
“What next, Sir?”
“Take fifty men. I want all the weapons out of that place, and I suppose they aren’t going to need the MREs anymore. We’ll be waiting in Faulkner’s zone. I think we’ll leave the weapons and MREs with him. He’s a lot better than most of these warlords we’ve found.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And if there are any more in there, you tell them if they cross the Farmers again, it will be their funeral.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Billy, you better go to the third wagon and get some pants. You’re going to scare somebody with that.”
He looked down, and his hands came together to block the view where his pants were torn. “Yes, Sir.”
I could see the pale faces of the Guardsmen looking at the three of us. They’d heard rumors of what Jimmy could do. They’d heard the stories everyone told about what I’d done. And Billy was a damned Guynoceros. Everyone was just a little freaked out by the sight of us covered in blood. Some of them were staring at the bullet holes in my coat, others at the bullet holes all over Billy’s body. He’d soaked up a lot of fire. It hadn’t penetrated completely through his skin, but it would leave a lot of scarring on his grey hide. He may have been unhurt, but his clothes had suffered dearly.
We’d tried to deal with the Blues on our way into the city. It was their choice to do what they had on our way out. I hated to kill people, but it was something I’d always been good at—even more so, lately. But no matter how many I killed, there seemed to be more and more folks who just needed killing in this Fallen World.
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