The Legend of Banzai Maguire

by Susan Grant

  It was well after noon the next day of traveling when the truck pulled off the road. The change in motion startled Bree out of a deep sleep. She’d slept most of the day napping, curled up in a ball in the hay, her head pillowed by Ty’s shoulder.

  But he’d rolled to his knees, his pistol drawn, before she could blink the sleep out of her eyes. She was a fighter pilot, not a special-ops type; she readied for action at a briefing with a paper cup of Java warming her hand, while soldiers like Ty were combat-ready twenty-four/seven.

  “What is it?” she whispered, trying to clear her brain of fog.

  Ty flattened his hand on her head and pushed her down. “Driver’s gone,” he said in a low voice. “He went into that farmhouse, there.”

  Across the road, a small house sat in front of a few acres of unsown fields. It looked deserted. There was nothing else around but woods, thick trees broken only by the farm.

  All was silent except for the gentle mooing of the cows in the truck and the rustling hay. Ty crouched in the hay and waited for the driver’s return. They’d changed drivers once already in Freedom City, stopping only long enough to say farewell to Rocket-man and get a quick-charge of the fuel cell, which, unfortunately, hadn’t given them time to find food. They were hungry and dehydrated.

  A light breeze moved the air. “Lord, we stink,” she whispered, wrinkling her nose.

  “It’s not us. It’s them.”

  “The cows? I don’t know, Ty. I can’t smell them anymore.” They exchanged wry glances.

  Two gunshots rang out from the direction of the farmhouse. Startled birds squawked into the sky. The cows bellowed. Ty grabbed Bree by the hand. She’d barely gotten her hand around her travel sack before he dragged her out of the truck.

  She knew why. In the truck, they were too exposed—and trapped. Taking cover behind the vehicle, he pushed her down into a crouch and peered around the cab, his pistol ready to fire.

  Bree’s heart thundered in her ears, and she tried to work moisture into her mouth, which proved impossible. She wished they had two guns. She felt naked without one.

  Then she heard the crunching of gravel on the shoulder across the road. The gait was irregular, and then it slowed to a shuffle.

  Ty disappeared around the front of the cab. A moment later he skipped backward, dragging a man with him. Bright red blood made a gruesome trail as Ty pulled the driver to safety behind the truck. He attended the injured man with a paramedic’s expertise. Tearing open the shirt, Ty exposed an open chest wound, a horrific mess of broken ribs and torn flesh.

  Bree fought her gag reflex. It was an exit wound, she realized. Someone had shot the driver in the back. There was more blood than she’d ever imagined, and it kept coming, a vast and expanding pool under the driver’s quivering body. Ty wore a good deal of it on his hands and clothes. But the smells were what struck her: sweat and a sharp, pungent metallic scent mixed with the faint odor of feces.

  Until now, the escape from prison, while nerve-racking, had seemed more of a prank than a deadly venture. In a few seconds, everything had changed. Now she felt the pressing urgency of a life-or-death situation. Evil forces were at work here, “loyalists” who might or might not actually give loyalty to their ruler, rather using the label to sanction their violence. Yes, she wanted to find Cam. But at the risk of leading these people to her? She prayed she’d learn more at the rendezvous with the shadows. Now more than ever she knew she mustn’t be late.

  The wounded man pushed at Ty. “Go,” he gurgled. Blood welled up in his mouth and spilled to each side. His eyes rolled back in his head, but with what looked to be a great effort, he spoke again. “Loy...loyalists. Drive—drive away. Take Banzai...” The man convulsed, and a fresh gush of bright blood spurted from his mouth. His struggles to breathe made a horrible sucking sound. Ty did what he could, but Bree knew nothing would help. He was drowning in his own gore.

  Bree pressed a fist to her stomach. She was an air warrior. She’d trained to do her killing from the sky, too far removed to see actual casualties. But here was death up close and personal, the way Ty and his brethren faced it in every battle, in every war.

  “He’s dead,” Ty said. She didn’t realize she’d been staring, morbidly transfixed, until he took her by the chin and turned her head. His eyes were the color of the sky. “Are you all right?”

  She yanked herself out of her stupor. “Yes, yes. I’m good. I’m fine. You heard him—he said drive away. I say we do that right now.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Ty pulled open the passenger-side door, and she jumped in while he covered her with the pistol. “Keep your head down, Banzai!” He yanked hard on her sleeve, pushing downward.

  She was face-to-face with the steering wheel. “Where are the keys?”

  “They stopped using keys a hundred years ago.” He reached across the seat and used his thumb to punch an icon on a touch-activated computer that put anything she’d used in fighter aircraft to shame. The engine hummed to life.

  “Gears?” she asked, fastening her seat belt harness.

  “None. Just step on the accelerator. Go!”

  She jammed her feet onto what looked comfortingly familiar to a gas pedal, which was next to something that was reassuring in its similarity to a brake. The truck squealed on the asphalt and lurched forward, which sent Ty scrambling to find his seat belt.

  He turned in his seat. “They see us.”

  Her stomach dropped. “What do you mean?”

  “Drive faster!”

  “Ty! What? Why?”

  “A man and a woman came out of the house.”

  And? She gritted her teeth. “Will you stop feeding me the juicy parts in tiny pieces? This is a getaway, not Mystery Theater!”

  He glanced at her, his expression one of utter male bewilderment.

  “Give me a clearer picture of what’s happening,” she pleaded. “Spoilers welcome. The couple. Where’d they go?”

  “They took the body away from the road, dragged it back to the house.”

  Was this the way SEALs communicated in battle? They fired bullets and they spoke in them, too?

  She inched higher in the seat to see the road and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The digital speed readout crept higher as Bree sped up to pass a vehicle, another truck. Vibrations she hadn’t felt before made the steering wheel buzz. Instability made the tires dance. It appeared she’d reached max speed in the cattle truck.

  Yet thoughts of the dead driver and the smell of death kept her foot pressed to the accelerator. Another thing she hadn’t considered—and hadn’t wanted to consider—was if the so-called loyalists had acted on Kyber’s orders, and not according to their own agenda. She may have made a vast miscalculation in estimating Kyber’s reaction to her defiance. As friendly as he was to her, he hadn’t survived as monarch all these years because of his congeniality. She’d damn well better look at the situation from all angles now, or she and Ty wouldn’t survive the day.

  “There’s another road coming up,” she yelled.

  The smaller path they traveled was about to merge with a larger, wider one. To the right, a magcar highway paralleled their track. Levitated cars whipped past a variety of old-fashioned fuel-cell-propelled vehicles not capable of traveling on the magroads, everything from motorcycle-looking modes of transport to ramshackle trucks that looked as if their sole use was to serve the local farms.

  A display on the dashboard showed the upcoming merge. The roads appeared as arteries: the one they were on in white, the upcoming highway in pulsing red. “We need South, right? To New Seoul!”

  Ty was already scanning a glowing map-screen he’d unrolled on his thigh. His finger remained pressed over their pistol’s trigger. Dried blood covered the back of his hand. “Yes. We’ll be there by nightfall.”

  Their grave situation made New Seoul an even better destination, despite its distance from the cave. It was in the same spot as the original city, but now, thanks to higher sea levels, it was a bus
y port, and a big enough city to allow them to disappear into oblivion once they ditched the truck. There, they could hole up and wait for the storm to pass. If the storm passed.

  Thunder exploded from behind. “Incoming!” Ty shouted.

  Bree jerked her attention to the rearview mirror. Ho, baby! He wasn’t kidding! A low-flying aircraft hurtled toward the truck.

  Ice dumped into her veins as her combat instincts kicked in. She half expected the truck’s radar to warn her of the threat. But the truck had no anti-aircraft radar.

  The jet roared overhead so low that it kicked up a storm of pebbles and leaves. Dust hissed against the windshield, and rocks bounced off the hood. She heard the cows, but didn’t dare look back there, in case the stampede was already under way. Then a splat of something liquid hit the windshield, bubbling where it had dribbled. “They sprayed something at us!”

  Ty flashed a look at the front of the vehicle. “Nanoenhanced acid. It’ll melt right through metal.”

  Humans, too, she thought. But he didn’t need to spell it out. She got the picture.

  “If you see it coming, steer around it.”

  “Sure.” The truck burst through the cloud of debris. Ahead, she faced a picture she didn’t want to see. “It’s coming back for more!”

  The acid-shooting jet banked sharply as it reversed course. It looked similar to the one she’d seen taking off vertically when she was on the balcony with Kyber. A civilian craft if she had to guess, not military. The driver had called them loyalists. But were they? The further she got into this, the more certain she was that the people who had killed the driver hadn’t acted under Kyber’s orders. Likely, they might be rogues with their own issues with the shadow people, and these might not have anything to do with her escape or Ty’s. After all Kyber had said and done, she couldn’t imagine him wanting to kill her to save himself from the embarrassment of the world knowing Ty had escaped. Or so she hoped. Either way, having rogues on their butts was much more potentially dangerous.

  The dark silver craft whooshed over the truck again. More acid hit its mark. The hood was sizzling and so was the far left corner of the windshield. A section had melted and was buckling under the pressure of the wind. A hissing glob fell through the roof and boiled its way through the cushion on the seat. The acrid stench of melted plastic burned her nose as the substance bored straight through the chassis. Through the new hole in the seat, she could see the road racing by underneath the vehicle.

  The dust kicked up was thicker this time. Bree couldn’t see the road ahead, and eased off the accelerator. The tires bounced over the shoulder, and she pulled back toward center. Then she was in the clear again.

  Ty tried to lower the passenger window but it was stuck. He smashed out the glass with the butt of his pistol, making room for his shoulder and arm. Shattered glass snagged the fabric.

  “Careful,” she yelled over the noise. “The glass!”

  He glanced down, seemed to deem it okay, and aimed his weapon out the window.

  Bree couldn’t stand the sight of him hanging out of the truck. Please, please, don’t get killed, Ty. “What are you doing? You can’t shoot a plane down with that!”

  “I would if I could. But maybe a few pings on the fuselage will send them home.”

  Not only was he a treasure hunter and playboy, he was a cocky treasure hunter and playboy. “I’m going where there are more cars,” she said with determination. Traffic would make the truck a harder target to hit, if that’s what the pilot decided to do. An F-16, radar, and some guns sure would go a long way in helping her feel less inadequate. But she had a pistol-toting SEAL hanging out the car door. That had to count for something.

  Bree turned hard, racing up the ramp to the bigger highway. The truck skidded on its right-hand-side tires before settling back on all four.

  The cows protested loudly. She could feel the shifting of their weight, and it was playing havoc with her driving. She chanced a peek. Some had froth spilling out of their noses. Others stomped around with the whites of their eyes showing. She didn’t know what the cows liked less, the noisy airplane or her driving.

  Bree checked the rearview mirror. “Here she comes again!” The aircraft roared toward them, even lower this time. Instinctively, Bree ducked down, felt the vibration of the jet’s engines in her stomach.

  Ty took aim. As the craft passed overhead, he fired once, twice.

  Bree’s ears rang from the bangs.

  The jet’s wings rocked. Hydraulic fluid, or similar stuff, streamed out the belly of the craft. “You got a hit!” Bree yelled. “Woo-hoo!”

  As the craft banked away from the road, gaining altitude, Ty pulled his body back in the cab.

  “You’re a wild man,” Bree praised.

  “I’ve been called worse.” His smile was anything but humble.

  She almost expected him to blow smoke off the tip of his gun, like the victorious cowboy after an old-fashioned shoot-out. “You do this type of thing much?”

  “Not from a cattle truck,” he admitted.

  “That makes two of us.”

  “Ah, hell.” Bree followed his disbelieving gaze to the wounded craft. It was descending, coming down fast, its wings rocking, as if the plane had become difficult to control.

  “It’s making an emergency landing,” she shouted. “And it’s going to use the road as a runway!”

  She scanned the highway, and the display in the truck, looking for exits. But there were none. The plane was coming down. Other drivers saw it, too. All began pulling off the road. Bree jerked the wheel to the right. The truck bounced over the shoulder. She smelled dirt, hot tires, and cow manure.

  The jet hit the road, hard. The wheels ejected smoke and flames. Sliding sideways, it careened toward the truck.

  “Get out!” Ty grabbed Bree by the hand and pulled her from the cab.

  Screeching over the asphalt, the jet slid past. A sharp burning odor filled Bree’s nostrils and made her eyes water. She ran with Ty through clouds of powder. In a tornado of dirt and noise, the feel of his hand was welcome.

  “Go, go, go!” He propelled her in front of him where he could keep her in sight, though it slowed his pace. His legs were longer; he could outrun her. Yet Ty Armstrong would die saving her. That, she knew in her gut. He remained staunchly at her side, pushing her ahead of him as they veered into the woods. They broke through trees into farmland. Cabbages grew in neat rows. Puffy clouds dotted the sky above. The scene was bucolic and peaceful, an illusion destroyed by the sound of an explosion.

  “Oh, my God. You did it. It blew up,” Bree said between gasping breaths.

  “It was a lucky shot.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “It’ll draw attention away from us—for a while, anyway.”

  “And I think it’d be a stretch to relate us to the accident in the first place.”

  Ty made a sound of agreement. He sounded more winded than she was. But exertion was a bitch when your stomach was empty. “Eighth radius, Bai-Yee Square. All we have to do is make that rendezvous. Focus on that, Banzai. Getting there in time.”

  At nine straight up. She squeezed her eyes shut. They had to make it, no matter what.

  They reached a farmyard. Another large truck sat behind a barn, its engine idling, its covered bed full of cabbages and cool shadows. It was market-bound.

  Ty’s big hands curved around Bree’s waist. He threw her into the back of the truck and jumped in after her. The cabbage smelled wretched, but it was head-and-shoulders above the cow manure. They buried themselves in hay and cabbages and hunkered down.

  Sweat dribbled down Bree’s temples. She swiped it from her eyes and yanked the pieces of hay poking her out of her pants. She felt heat and exhaustion radiating off Ty. His eyes were bright blue in his grimy, bearded face.

  Footsteps approached. Ty pressed his finger to his lips. Bree nodded, her heart thumping so loudly she was sure the farmer outside could hear it.

  But the truck only jerke
d and began to roll forward. For a long time it bumped along what felt like narrow side roads. Then the ride smoothed out and the truck accelerated. Apparently, the farmer had used back roads to circumvent the airplane accident.

  Once they were under way, Ty took the map from Bree’s travel sack. Direct signals from satellites provided a simple map with instantly updated positions. Who had said she’d had her fill of tech? Now Bree was singing its praises. “Where do you think we’re headed?”

  To the south.” Ty’s relief was visible. “Let’s hope it’s the non-manufactured food market in New Seoul.”

  He exchanged the map for a head of cabbage. No...he wasn’t. He couldn’t. But he did. With the kind of eagerness a man like him might devote to a steak dinner, he thrust his thumbs into the cabbage and tore it apart. Ravenously, he bit into one half. Then he glanced up. “Don’t look so shocked,” he mumbled between mouthfuls. “It’s good.” He offered her a bite.

  She swallowed. “No, thanks.”

  The more Ty ate, the more color left his face. With a great effort, at last he swallowed what he’d chewed and threw the rest of the cabbage into the pile, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Good intentions,” he said. “Bad idea.”

  Bree grabbed a fistful of hay and offered it to him.

  He laughed. “Thanks, but I’ll wait for dinner.”

  Exhausted, Bree turned away to stare out the back of the truck until the adrenaline drained from her system. Scarlet, I’m coming for you. It might take a little longer than I thought. Don’t give up on me, Cam.

  But instead of bringing her closer to her friend, every mile Bree traveled took her farther away.

  * * *

  When the cabbage truck finally stopped, it was dark. Bree smelled the sea and tasted salt in the air. Shivering from the cold, hunger, and exhaustion, she crouched next to Ty and peered outside through a gap in the tarp. They’d pulled into a port. Shouts and activity from all sides told her that it was a dock where farmers unloaded their produce. Their driver left the cab of the truck. Without checking the back, he walked away and disappeared into the crowd.