by Brian Craig
“Yeah,” said Pasco unenthusiastically. “I noticed.” He put the word “politics” out of his mind, and reached for his gun.
3
The only phone in Melendez, New Mexico was in the diner, so that was where Sammy Ulinski headed for as soon as he came into town. It was virtually a ghost town now, though some traffic still came through on the railroad. The railroad had been famous in its day—when it was part of the Acheson-Topeka-Santa Fe—and Melendez had been quite a town, but all that was long gone. Now it was home to scabs and sandrats, and the only reason the diner hadn’t closed down was that every time somebody shot the owner there was another fool in line desperate enough to take his place.
The current owner called himself Geronimo, though he had no more Indian blood in him than Sammy Ulinski. He didn’t look much but he was as mean as they came. When Sammy came in Geronimo fixed him with the particular kind of stony stare which he reserved for people who owed him money. Sammy figured that he didn’t really deserve such treatment, because it was only a few lousy bucks—though it would probably have been more had Geronimo been willing to extend his credit.
He glanced round at the other customers before sidling over to the bar. They were all regulars except for one character who was wearing silly mirrorshades in spite of the fact that it was dark outside and the lights in the diner were hardly garish. Sammy favoured the oddball with a doubletake, but he was a little guy in an absurd white linen suit and he was drinking something disgusting which looked like orangeade—he had “tourist” written all over him.
“Ron,” said Sammy, “I gotta use your phone.”
“The phone is for customers only,” said Geronimo lazily. The phone was visible behind the counter but Geronimo didn’t even look towards it, let alone reach for it “Are you a customer, Sammy?”
“Sure I’m a customer,” said Sammy.
“Paying customers, that is,” Geronimo said, thoughtfully adding the qualification.
“I can pay for the freakin call!” Sammy complained.
“If you got coins in your pocket,” said Geronimo, “you can pay off some of your slate. When you’ve paid it all, and bought a drink—with cash—you can use the phone.”
“It’s a matter of life and death,” said Sammy, with conviction.
“Ain’t my life or death,” observed Geronimo. “Whose is it?”
“Hell, Ron,” said Sammy, “it’s urgent. Just let me use the phone, and I’ll be able to pay off what I owe, and buy a drink, and then some.”
“The horse won’t win, Sammy,” said Geronimo patiently. “They never do.”
“The horse is sittin’ in its freakin’ stable takin’ a freakin’ nap,” said Sammy. “I gotta make the freakin’ call before the freakin’ thing wakes up. Let me use the phone, Ron—please!”
Geronimo seemed to be considering it, but he never had to come to a decision. Sammy became suddenly aware of the fact that the guy with the mirrorshades was standing at his elbow, though he hadn’t heard him cross the floor. The oddball laid a bill down on the counter, where Sammy and Geronimo could both see it. It wasn’t a very big bill, but the guy in the shades, now he was in close-up, didn’t look like a very generous man.
“You don’t have to call anyone, Sammy,” he said, softly. “Today, we’re buying information right here. Cash on the nail.”
Sammy looked hard at his own distorted reflection, and said: “What I got is worth more than that, asshole. Don’t waste my time.”
Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted having said them—the reason being that just as he reached the period at the end of the sentence he found himself looking down the barrel of a forty-five Magnum. He had to concede that the guy was very slick as well as very quiet.
“That’s the trouble with information,” said the gunman softly. “It’s market price fluctuates so quickly. What you knew was worth money until ten seconds ago, but now you’ve told me exactly what information you have, it isn’t worth a dime. Life and death, yes, but not money. Not any more. We’re going to take a hike, Sammy, and you’re going to show me exactly where this horse of yours is stabled.”
Sammy looked away from the gun barrel, first at Geronimo and then at the other customers. His arithmetic wasn’t too good but he made the count six. He knew them all, and they knew him, but he didn’t know whether that was an advantage or not.
“I’ll cut you in, Ron,” he said, with sudden desperation. “I’ll cut you all in, if you’ll get this freakin asshole off my back.”
“No way,” said Geronimo, just before the man with the mirrorshades shot him right between the eyes.
Nobody moved a muscle.
“He wasn’t going to help you,” said the man in mirrorshades amiably. “I didn’t have anything against him whatsoever, and I’m not a violent man by nature. Now, if that’s how a non-violent man can be driven by these kinds of circumstances to treat guys about whom he is utterly indifferent, what do you think said same circumstances might lead him to do to a guy like you if you piss him off, asshole?”
Sammy opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“Of course,” said the man in the white suit evenly, “it’s just possible that the information which you have isn’t the information I happen to be looking for. But you’d better pray that it is, Sammy, because if it isn’t, I could become very annoyed with you. You wouldn’t like that.”
Sammy managed a faint cough. The little guy grinned, and lifted up the bar-hatch in order to let himself through. He stepped over Geronimo’s body and took hold of the phone, wrenching the connection from the wall. Then he threw the instrument hard against the wall. Sammy watched it come apart, and coughed again.
“That’s a fair comment, Sammy,” said the man in mirrorshades. “You’re absolutely right—it’s a very hot day, even without taking the unusual circumstances into account. Now, start walking. Go swiftly, and go silently to where you left the party whose whereabouts you were just about to disclose to certain other parties—possibly even including mine.”
Sammy looked around again, but the five guys who were left—if five was the right number—were concentrating very hard on being unobtrusive. Sammy knew that as soon as the guy in the dark suit was gone they’d start arguing about which one of them should inherit the diner, but for the moment they were being as good as gold.
“This ain’t fair,” said Sammy, very faintly.
“All’s fair in love and war,” said the other, mildly. “And I love my work. Move .”
Sammy moved. He suspected, deep down, that there wasn’t much point in moving, but he moved anyway. It was funny, in a way. He’d more than once been watching TV in this very diner, with some of those very guys who were watching him now, when some stupid old cop show would come on, and you’d see some shark taking a sap for a ride, and the shark would tell the sap to move and the sap would move; and Sammy had always thought—and often said out loud—what a freakin’ stupid thing it was for the guy who’d been told to move actually to move, when he had to know, deep down, that he was going to get it anyway. He’d never understood why the stupes did what they were told, when they knew they were going to get it anyway.
Funnily enough, he still didn’t.
It did cross his mind to stop again, and to say: “You’re going to kill me anyhow, so it might as well be now.” But cross his mind was all it did. Somehow, he couldn’t hold on to the thought long enough to turn it into an intention. The only thought he could actually cling on to was the ridiculously hopeful one that somewhere between the diner that was under new management and the place where Kid Zero had holed out in order to catch up on his beauty sleep, some miracle would occur which would turn things right around. He knew how stupid it was to think that, but he just couldn’t kill the hope, and while he couldn’t kill the hope he couldn’t do the brave and noble thing which his intelligence—such as it was—told him he might as well do anyway.
So he walked, as quickly and as quietly as he could,
towards the place where he’d made the mistake of thinking he’d got lucky, when in fact he’d got very, very unlucky.
He wondered whether he might pass the time by suggesting to his captor that Kid Zero was one hell of a fighter, and would kill him as sure as eggs were eggs, but he didn’t think the guy in the mirrorshades would take this advice very seriously. He had become very wary of upsetting the guy in the mirrorshades any more than he had already upset him, although he knew that matters of degree were unlikely to be important.
Had he been a philosopher, or even a psychologist, Sammy Ulinski might have been very interested by the peculiar state of mind in which he found himself, now that he was staring death in the face, but he wasn’t. He was only a guy who couldn’t count to six with any certainty, and he was scared shitless.
On the way in, the distance between Kid Zero’s hideout and the diner hadn’t seemed so very far. It was way out on the edge of town, but Melendez wasn’t a very big town. On the way back, though, the trek seemed endless, exhausting and extremely stressful. The night was dark but it was still hot, and to Sammy it seemed that it was hotter by far than the place which lay at the further end of the road paved with good intentions. When he glanced behind him he saw that the little guy’s mirrorshades were now glowing green, like a cat’s eyes—which told him that they weren’t really shades at all, but some kind of gizmo.
Sammy didn’t even know why the Kid was wanted; he was going to die without even knowing why. Absurdly, he couldn’t even remember where he’d heard the buzz that the Kid was wanted. It had gone out on the wind, taking wing the way rumours always did. Melendez was the back end of nowhere, but rumours had no trouble getting there. If there was a sandrat between Amarillo and Albuquerque who hadn’t heard that the Kid was in the territory and was wanted bad, he was probably deaf.
“As a matter of interest,” said the gunman softly, as they walked through the empty streets, “Who were you going to phone?”
“I got contacts,” said Sammy. “Honest brokers, who’d have seen me right.”
“Some two-bit Op,” said the guy in mirrorshades. “Not the heroic kind, I presume—he’d just run the message on, to anybody and everybody.”
“He’ll get it anyhow,” Sammy pointed out “Those guys in the diner can put two and two together just like you can.”
“Yeah,” said the gunman, with a throaty chuckle, “but they can’t mend a cable as easily as I can break one. Anyway, my friend will keep an eye on them, to make sure they don’t get hurt by running around in the dark.”
“What friend?” asked Sammy. “I never saw no friend.”
“You think I came out here without a driver, Sammy? You think I’m some kind of comedian? The family is strung out all over the freakin’ plains, but we don’t spread out that thin. You saw nothing because your eyes were still bugged out by the sight of Kid Zero’s bike homing in on one of his little rest stops. What a freakin’ hole this is, hey? Now I understand why we gave Nevada back to the aborigines and retired east of the Mississippi.”
It was Sammy’s homeland that the guy in mirrorshades was insulting, but Sammy wasn’t patriotic enough to leap to its defence. Privately, he thought that it was a bit of a dump himself, and he’d have moved out long ago if he’d had anywhere to go.
“It better be the Kid,” muttered the sweating gunman, when they’d gone a couple of blocks further. “If you’ve dragged me out here for some punk biker who’s lost his gang I’ll be annoyed with you.”
“I know what Kid Zero looks like,” Sammy assured him. “I watch Homer Hegarty all the time.”
“A real public servant, Mr Hegarty,” said the man in mirrorshades. “If I ever find his freakin’ cameras zooming in on my face I’ll blow the sucker away. But it’s nice that everyone can recognize the Kid. Even in the desert, he can’t hide.”
Sammy realized that the Kid must know that. He must know that everybody was on his tail, and that he couldn’t hide. He must know that his hours were numbered and there was no way in the world he could get away.
You and me both, Kid, thought Sammy. You and me both.
He came to a junction, and stopped. He pointed down a street which went all the way to the wilderness.
“Number thirty-three,” he muttered. “The Kid is hiding out in number thirty-three. I saw him. You can see the numbers, can’t you? Those trick glasses…”
“Keep going,” said the gunman, impatiently interrupting him. “Quick and quiet.”
“If you shoot me now,” Sammy pointed out, having suffered a sudden and highly unusual attack of rationality, “you’ll wake the Kid. Let me go, and you have a clear run at him.”
“Keep going,” said the gunman, raising the Magnum in order to stick it in Sammy’s face. “Or else I’ll have to take time out to be very unpleasant to you.”
“From here,” Sammy said, in a stubbornly logical way that was altogether foreign to his nature, “the Kid can hear my screams.”
The little man in the mirrorshades kneed Sammy in the groin and smacked him just below the diaphragm with the stiffened fingers of his free hand.
As Sammy went down he tried as hard as he could to scream, but there was no breath left in his lungs—and when he finally felt able to suck in a little more air he found that there was already a hand at his throat, squeezing gently. The whole world turned upside-down, so that when he fell he seemed to be falling up rather than down—but he hit the ground just as hard.
While Sammy was writhing on the ground, somewhat disoriented by his many discomforts, the guy stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth, and then sealed it in with thick black tape. This made it very difficult for Sammy to sob while he wept, but he did the best he could.
Several minutes passed before Sammy could stand up again, and the man in green-glowing mirrorshades seemed to feel that his patience was being unjustly tried. Sammy couldn’t muster the least hint of resistance when he was finally hauled up out of the dirt.
“Number thirty-three,” said the man in mirrorshades. “You’d better be telling me the truth, Sammy, because you are right out of moral credit with this particular bank. Move!”
Sammy moved. Even though it made no sense to do so, he moved. Even though he knew full well that he was going to get it anyway, he moved. He moved to the door of number thirty-three, and he went inside. The man in the funny looking mirrorshades came in behind him.
As they went in, Sammy found—much to his own amazement—that his thoughts were still chock-a-block with hope. He could find room in his tiny mind for only one idea—the idea that the Kid might somehow be up and about, ready to ambush the man who had come to get him.
He knew, even while he retained this brief and temporary obsession, how absurd that hope must be—but even so, he was mortally offended by the appalling injustice of it all when the Kid’s pet rattler sank its teeth into his leg.
4
When the last of the pattern mines had been laid down and the smoke-cylinders were empty, Carl did a quick count of their remaining pursuers. He made it forty-three. With the sneaker in its current beat-up condition that was about thirty too many. Most of them were still running beside the road rather than on it, just in case he’d cleverly saved a little surprise package for them, but they were being too complimentary. “How long?” he asked Pasco.
“Thirty minutes,” Pasco told him. That was the ETA of the monoplane—the whirlybirds carrying the heavy artillery would be a further twenty minutes behind.
Something under the hood was making ominous noises, as though the engine were grinding its teeth in chagrin. Carl couldn’t blame it; his own jaws were set very tightly.
“We got enough guts for one pass,” said Carl grimly, “but with the shield out we’re going to have to duck down real low, and we’re going to have to shoot off everything we can from the remaining fixtures. Then we have to make a run with the portable four-point-twos and all the ammo we can carry. But we have to find a hidey-hole, or they’ll ride us down.”
&n
bsp; “It’s as flat as a freakin’ pancake out there,” muttered Pasco. “We should have brought a freakin’ tank.”
Neither observation was particularly helpful. They had brought a vehicle built for speed rather than siege because they wanted to move quickly; they hadn’t anticipated that they would have to fight a running war. Carl refrained from pointing out that they might still be okay if Pasco hadn’t taken it into his head to drive the Atlas Boys into a frenzy.
Carl screwed up his eyes, trying to see some place that might be defensible, but the darkness was too deep. The absence of a windshield made it a little easier to see, and the stars were as bright and clear as they always were out here on the desert’s edge, but the moon was as thin as a cutting from a fingernail, and it wasn’t easy to guess what might be set back from the road. The sim was a better guide, though it wasn’t easy to read its off-road signals while they were travelling at speed.
“Near side,” said Pasco suddenly. “Abandoned gas-station.”
Carl looked across as swiftly as he could, and saw the headlights sweep past the edge of the old forecourt. There was no way to know whether the shadowed buildings were wood or stone, but the engine was telling him loudly mid clearly that they had to take the chance. He went past and started counting off the distance.
He checked the radar and saw to his relief that the bikers were beginning to bunch again, and had come back on to the blacktop in order to make up distance. He steadied himself, knowing that he mustn’t turn too soon, and switched off the lights.
“Coming up,” he said to Pasco, when the moment approached. “Hang on tight.”
They were both tightly-belted but Carl saw Pasco put out a hand lo brace himself against the dashboard. He hauled the wheel over to the left as hard as it would go, and stamped the brake-pedal. He knew that if the U was too tight the sneaker might turn over, but if it was too shallow they would be off the road and maybe skidding in dust. He gritted his teeth as the vehicle lurched, the engine’s sullen mutter of pain becoming a screech of agony—but then they were round, and heading back towards the pursuing shoal of bikes.
