by Ric Beard
Stop being such a whiney old bag of bones, Mikael Andronovich. The Tabs were your doing!
Mikael had to admit the irony.
I sit in the park like a grumpy old fart mentally railing against the complacency of the citizenry resulting from the technology that made me wealthy in the new world.
He tapped his own Tab and checked the time. The bastard was late. Typical.
Mikael looked up when he heard the sounds of dress shoes clacking on the pavement and pigeon shit. The chubby man who served as the city’s mayor approached in the company of two men wearing navy suits and sunglasses. Mikael picked up his fedora and parked it back on top of his balding head. Vaughn sat without even looking at him.
“Mister Mayor,” Mikael said.
“Mister Jensen. It wouldn’t look good for us to be talking in the middle of the day. The people of this great city might start thinking we’re conspiring…”
“Isn’t the political process a conspiracy?
“‘Guess it depends on your perspective.”
Mikael was accustomed to the dismissive tone, but he was still irked by this cretin and his squad of thugs who reigned terror down on those too weak to respond. Vaughn was entirely too reminiscent of a younger Mikael Jensen, for his comfort. He was rife with self-interest and that didn’t bode well for the city. But Mikael’s own son, Blake, often reminded him that every challenge was an opportunity to respond in a positive way. He was a good boy. Better than his father at his age. But Mikael had played a part in that, and Blake was rightfully a source of pride. Mikael had changed his stripes. Vaughn never would.
There were likely a whole world of cities like theirs out there. Cities that survived the fall, places where business could expand and man could thrive again. But this politician wouldn’t put his finger on the trigger and do what needed to be done to connect to the one they knew about. Vaughn reneged on Triangle City’s agreement to clear Old Interstate 40 from the east, so its crews could meet Oklahoma City’s half way. Preparations were made. Taxes were spent on towering machines developed for the purpose of removing the rusted debris of the vehicles of old.
He alleged Oklahoma City was a threat to Triangle's security. He claimed they were a less advanced society longing for what Triangle City had to offer without anything to offer in return except for military technology that T.C. didn’t need and a sick population. Triangle City had its wall and the Expeditionary Forces. The days of The Chain’s reign of terror were behind them, according to Vaughn. The idiot didn’t understand that mayors before him had uttered the same sentiments, only to see another hole punched in the wall and buildings burned. Things hadn’t improved that much.
“I don’t care about perspective, Mayor Vaughn,” Mikael spat. “I care about establishing security and trade routes. You choose to isolate us and The Chain is regrouping in the badlands. It gets worse each time they come. You’ve sent our military south, and I’ve heard you’re turning away volunteers.”
“We sent forces out to address those vicious bastards. We won, so I redirected them.”
“We turned tail and ran when they pushed us back on the western side of the Appalachians. To think you didn’t fight back after they took your only child!”
The mayor’s neck turned red as he rubbed his palms on his pants legs and looked away.
“You have nerve talking about my Reagan, sir. Your son is safe in his swanky penthouse atop the tallest tower in the city while mine served her city and gave the ultimate sacrifice.”
“And then you withdrew and looked south. Don’t try the guilt games with me, Mister Mayor. I know what it is to lose family.”
“You’re a man of some notoriety here, Mikael. When you ran JenCorp, you did a lot of business with the city. So, I agreed to meet you. But if you asked me here to question my every decision, I’m afraid I have more important items on my agenda.” He rose.
“Why are you turning away volunteers?”
“Not that I have to explain it to you, Mikael, but the public doesn’t want a militaristic society. Our forces are plentiful.”
“And absent. You know, Mister Mayor, I have given this one some thought. I think, perhaps you don’t want the Expeditionary Forces outnumbering your Security Services officers in the city.”
“Are you trying to imply something?”
“Mister Mayor, it is hardly a secret anymore. Your goons have become complacent. They are running protection rackets. The citizens know. It is only a matter of time—”
“My men follow the law.”
“That’s a joke if ever I’ve heard one. You know better.”
The mayor pointed a fat, crooked finger inches from Mikael’s face. It trembled as he growled.
“You are slandering a public official.”
The men in blue suits inched forward, the one on the right loosening the buttons on his jacket.
Perhaps they’ve grown so used to the ways of their boss that they think the violence is answer to everything.
“Hey, pick the right goons to frame me and you might get that one to stick. It wouldn’t be anything new.”
“Now you have gone too far,” the mayor said. His face turned an interesting shade of pink. He leveled the finger even closer. Mikael looked at it casually and then up at the mayor. “Perhaps a visit from my goons, as you call them, is just what you need.”
“Who is threatening whom, Mister Mayor?” Mikael stood and both of the mayor’s guards walked forward.
Mikael held up a hand and four men in black, padded combat suits stepped out from patches of trees on either side of the mayor’s group. They wore slim-lined, military-issue SmartGlasses and wielded the newest prototype JenCorp pulse rifles.
“How dare you!” Mayor Vaughn barked. “How dare you, sir! Bringing armed men to a meeting with the…the—”
“Most powerful man in the city?” Mikael posited.
The mayor growled, but didn’t raise his finger this time. “This challenge will not go unpunished, Jensen.”
Mikael noticed movement and turned his eyes onto the goon standing to the mayor’s right.
“I suggest you take your hand away from your jacket, young man.” He ticked his chin to gesture behind him and the man’s head swiveled to find a pulse rifle pointed at his neck. Mikael turned his attention back to the mayor and pulled his tie tight. “I always come prepared, Mister Mayor.”
Vaughn looked over his shoulder and considered Mikael’s men for a moment.
“I assume those aren’t JenCorp security. I thought you’d retired. Unless your son is suborning your threat on a government official.”
“They’re former JenCorp personnel. They began working for me this morning.”
“Private security? Your paranoia abounds.”
“All evidence to the contrary.” Mikael nodded toward the mayor’s bodyguards. “These men are my campaign security.”
“What? What do you mean, campaign security?”
“It wouldn’t do to kill a man who’d just registered to run for mayor, would it?” Mikael stepped forward and gently bumped the mayor’s chest with his own. “Your reign is coming to an end, Mister Mayor.” He leaned forward to whisper so only the mayor could hear. “Any retaliation on your part will be met in kind. Come near me or my family, and I will put you in a hole. I have come far in my quest to live a clean life, Mister Mayor, but it would be entirely too easy to revert in the interest of wiping the likes of you from the face of this world.”
He turned as if to walk away and hesitated.
“And before I go, let me leave you with one last thought. Should that tiny little brain of yours get any silly ideas about an accident befalling me or anyone I care about, you might want to remember whose pulse weapons your thugs carry.”
“What’s that mean?” The mayor asked, confusion washing over his face.
“Trust me.” Mikael raised his eyebrows. “You don’t want to find out.”
He turned up the sidewalk leading back to the road, his guards fal
ling in behind him. He could feel the mayor’s eyes on his back as he walked toward the park exit. Then he heard a yelp and a flutter. Mikael smiled.
It seemed the mayor had kicked a pigeon.
Chapter Twenty-One
A Nerd in Hero's Clothing
Triangle City
“Repeat. Miles is where?” the voice boomed from her handheld.
“He made for the wilds,” the woman in black replied. “Brought down a building in one of the city’s old world sectors for good measure.”
“How do you know he didn’t die in the building?”
“I found his tracks outside the wall.”
“You’re outside the wall?”
“Mm hm. Just.”
There was an audible sigh.
“Why the hell would he do this, advocate?”
She shivered against the cold.
Blasted woods. Tired of blasted woods.
“He’s not my guy. I wouldn’t know. Maybe he wanted to cover his tracks. Maybe he needed a distraction? Maybe he was just pissed off.”
A bird chirped overhead. She scanned high in the pines above, trying to locate it, hoping it was one of the pretty red ones.
“Doesn’t sound in sync with our intel. Miles doesn’t do anything without a plan.”
“Nothing should surprise us anymore,” the woman in black replied. “Especially with this group. He infiltrated the city six years ago. Do you know where I was six years ago? I was tilling a field! That’s a long time! It would certainly piss me off if I invested that much time and failed my mission.”
“Who says he failed? Maybe his timeline just got pushed. Shaw is still there.”
“Maybe she has a different mission.”
“Did you read the brief, advocate? They’re a team.”
She spotted the bird and zoomed in with a tap of her glasses. It was, indeed, one of the pretty red ones. “Ooh.”
“What’s that?” The tower marshal asked.
“Oh, nothing.” She watched the bird and longed to whistle back at it. “I read the brief, Tower Marshall. All due respect, they haven’t gone near each other the whole time they’ve been in the city. But if that’s what the boss says, that’s what I’ll go with.”
“Good. Look, Shaw is our queen, but Miles’s survival is key, too.”
“Understood.”
“When did he run?”
“Miles doesn’t run from anything.”
“Keep your smart-assed comments local, advocate. We’re pressed for time.”
“Sorry. He broke out night before last.”
“Find him.”
Find him? Is he serious?
“I’m on Shaw. Where the hell is Jacob?”
“He’s occupied. Re-tasked. Shaw’s inside the city,” the tower marshal said. “We can watch her with tech. We’re tapped in. God knows they have enough of it. Miles is out of bounds. We need eyes on. He lives at all costs. You have full authority. Break shroud if you have to.”
Damn!
Breaking cover was serious. If the TM was willing to have her presence known to Miles and his group, the boss had serious plans for them. “Okay, Marshall. I’m on it.”
“Good. The boss isn’t going to be happy when he hears Miles is out of bounds.”
“It isn’t like he has that far to go.”
“Oh, do you know where The Foundation’s home base is Sasha? Last I checked the boss didn’t want us following them there.”
“No, but we all know it’s somewhere in those mountains near Asheville. Why worry about Lucian?”
“Because he isn’t the only person on the interstate, and his trip home could get ugly.”
“The Chain?”
“Roger. We don’t have anyone east of the Appalachians but you, so we don’t know where they are exactly; but they were spotted moving toward Asheville from the Tennessee side.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“How many Chain?”
“You need to move now. It might already be too late.”
“If he sees them he’s gonna get nosey, isn’t he?”
“What do you think? It’s his nature. He’s a nerd in hero’s clothing.”
“I think I better go after Miles.”
“Sharp as always, advocate.”
The woman in black smirked.
“And Sasha?”
“Yes, Tower Marshall?”
“Keep yourself alive.”
“Yes, sir!”
She shoved the handheld in her pocket and drove off on her bike.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Badlanders
Outside Triangle City
Miles wasn’t returning to the mountain compound any time soon. The solar strips on his hover bike had done their jobs poorly because of the constant rain and the tree cover outside the wall where he’d hidden it. The near empty charge indicator made his heart sink.
For six years, his focus on the mission in Triangle City had diluted his memories of home. They were a distraction he couldn’t afford. He’d had to get into character, to function as if he really was a migrant seeking citizenship within the comfort of the city walls. But being outside the wall and seeing the amazing pines indigenous to the area flooded him with memories of the little cabin in the mountains and the expansive underground complex beneath where he’d spent so many years. How quickly the shroud of fiction that had been his life was lifted once he allowed the thoughts of home to flood his mind.
He knew he was in one of the spots within the Triangle City safe zone where there were no cameras, but he was still too close for comfort. So, he dropped the emergency wheels from the bottom of the bike.
After pushing for half an hour, with the stitches and snake bite screaming, with sweat running down his back, he used what little charge there was to run the hover engine on low power, lessening the weight on the wheels so it would be easier to push the bike across the terrain. He trudged on for a couple hours, found the edge of a clearing where he could get shade for himself and direct sunlight to charge the bike. Even with the help of the hover engine, he found himself huffing and puffing.
A sleeping roll under a tarp would have to be enough shelter for now. There was no way he’d close himself up in a pod with his bike out in the open for someone to see. Certain that some of his stitches had popped loose, he peeled his shirt off. Relief swept over him when he saw all of them intact. The snake bite was inflamed, but salve would calm it down soon enough. He dabbed the cool paste on both arms, wrapped them, and collapsed on his sleeping bag.
When he awoke twelve hours later, he felt like hell. His stitches were sore, he could barely move his shoulder where the snake had bitten him, and the muscle groupings ranging from his back to his calves were like bags of stones from the effort of pushing the bike.
He struggled to his feet in slow, methodical motions set minutes apart and found the world tilting slightly to the left. Reaching out to stabilize himself on a tree turned out to be a mistake as the shoulder wound screamed, his arm muscles revolted, and he found himself planted firmly on his ass with a tree root in the center of his tailbone. He growled as he shoved a hand under his back to rub furiously at the tailbone, which, of course, caused the nerves around his stitches to complain.
Miles needed more time to heal.
But I’ll heal when I get home, for as long as I like.
Two hours later, after stabilizing the bike, confirming a full charge, and counting himself lucky there had been no patrols to stumble upon him, Miles packed his gear and mounted up. The bike hovered smoothly for an hour before coming up on a deep stream. Once he’d finally garnered the courage to slip into it, the cold water numbed his aching body as he washed the grime off. His wounds had calmed a bit but were still angry. Providing more water to his belly and more salve to his wounds, he pulled back onto Old I-40, zooming toward Asheville. He had some old friends there, whom he’d traded with for years and looked forward to a friendly face or two.
He was halfw
ay en route to the Asheville township, where he planned to turn north, rounding a curve, when a sight that sent a jolt through his body made him halt the bike.
Badlanders.
Lots of them. If there are this many milling about in the road…wait, this is…
The Chain.
Not now! God-all-mother-fuck-twat-blaster! Years of quiet and you sons-of-whore-cocks pick now?
There were about fifty of them milling around in the middle of the interstate. Miles couldn’t guess how he managed to stop his hover bike and pull off the highway undetected. At least he’d finally had a stroke of luck. He maneuvered the bike into the forest and waited for nightfall. His efforts to highjack a drone’s comm system to get a message back to Kade in Triangle City were fruitless because drones weren’t flying this far west of the city.
Because the halfwit mayor has every single one of them flying south to cover the Expeditionary Forces.
He hadn’t known all of them were gone, leaving Triangle City’s ass so completely exposed!
They should at least have one drone out here. They need to know how close The Chain is to the city! He shook his head and debated turning back, but logic won the day. Every set of eyes in Triangle City would have seen his face by now; he was a marked man. Even if he rolled close to the safe zone, the west-facing cameras therein would detect him and bring a tactical support unit from Security Services. He’d killed a cop, regardless of it having been the self-defense killing of a crooked cop. He would have to find another way.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Yo
Statesville
The camp below was draped on the foundations of an overgrown office park with dingy three-story buildings he imagined were once white. High weeds reached up from between cracks in concrete. He saw a variety of vehicles, counted thirty-eight tents large enough to hold ten people each, and six campfires. The buildings could house thousands, in addition to the almost-four-person-capacity of the tents. Miles ticked off the number of people entering the camp via the interstate Triangle City’s road crews had cleared, before being called back prematurely.
