by Rachel Aukes
He would’ve made a run for it, but they’d found his cutter—poor Beatrice—and left him high and dry in the middle of a desert. He’d get her back—he just had to wait for the right moment to present itself…which he hoped would be any minute now.
The sounds of bootsteps crunching on the sandy ground grew closer, and Rex focused on being as still as possible. One of the buggers stalking Rex had to be within a few feet of him. If the hunter stepped on him, it’d be game over. He waited. He gripped a blaster in his left hand, but he couldn’t move without disturbing his cover.
After several too-long seconds, the bootsteps faded. Rex let out his breath, and his muscles relaxed. He’d make his move soon.
But not yet.
Chapter Sixteen
After sunset, Joe and Val drove around the edge of Clearwater Lake while she filled him in on details of Roderick Sloan and her plan for killing him. He gave her credit—she’d thought through every aspect and knew every inch of the mansion, but if she’d gone in on her own, she would’ve failed. Her plan didn’t take surprises into account, and every plan went off track within minutes of initiation.
He drove, leaning slightly forward in his seat out of concern of setting off the PED, even though he knew they were designed to take some abuse. He didn’t want to see exactly how much stress a PED would take before it cut him in two.
Val sniffed. “Your cutter stinks.”
“That’d be Champ.” With his helmet on, the air filters masked the odor. He made a mental note to clean his rig when he returned to Cavil.
After a moment, she motioned to the lake. “This used to be wild rice fields, going on for as far as the eyes could see. Then Sloan bought up the lake and converted it to hemp fields for his family’s clothing factories on the Tule Coast. A lot of people starved in that first year. Even more in the second year. By the third, anyone who remained was working for Sloan.”
“I heard about the starvation. I assumed it was due to a drought,” Joe said. The truth was, he remembered not thinking much about the fact people were starving. People were starving everywhere. And if they weren’t starving, something else bad was happening. The continent wasn’t called the wastelands for nothing.
“Drought had nothing to do with it. It was due to a rich man’s greed.”
In Joe’s experience, rich men were almost always bad men. If the size of his fields were any indication, Roderick Sloan looked to be as rich as opossum gravy, which meant that he was likely a very bad man.
“Any ideas on how you’ll take him out once you’re inside?” she asked.
“It depends on what I find when I’m in there.”
Val pointed at a rocky outcropping. “Park there. We’ll have to go in on foot.”
Joe parked Monster in between two rocks that cloaked the cutter, except for one of its fender fins. He grabbed his rifle, locked down the vehicle, and followed Val. She led him through the rocky terrain, seemingly unafraid that he’d change his mind and shoot her in the back. She was putting a lot of faith in that PED, or at least in Joe’s sanity.
They walked for the better part of an hour over rocks and around sludge pools. Rumor was that, at one time, the entire Midlands had been covered in lush green fields, though Joe didn’t see anything resembling that now. Clouds attempted to smother the moon, and Joe had to rely upon his helmet’s night vision to make his way; he had no idea how Val was managing without stumbling.
Val slowed before him as they climbed a hill, then turned and held her forefinger to her lips. “We’re almost to the farm.”
He followed silently, and when she went down on her hands and knees, he did the same. She crawled to the crest of the hill; he came up next to her and peered over. Beyond them sprawled acres of green land on which stood a grouping of buildings that resembled an industrial complex more than a farm. Long buildings lined one side of the farm, while on the other side stood hog confinement lots and what looked to be staff quarters.
Joe wrinkled his nose. The wind was at his back tonight, so he didn’t smell the hogs, but there were hundreds. They had to stink something awful; he couldn’t imagine why anyone would even think of building quarters in such close proximity to livestock.
Movement at one of the lots caught his eye, and he zoomed in with his night vision. Two soldiers, both wearing blue MRC uniforms, dragged an old man in tattered, filthy clothes. The man was unmoving, and had the gray pallor of death; he’d likely died earlier that day. The soldiers grabbed the body and swung it into the lot, where skinny hogs instantly convened on the body.
Joe grimaced. Food was in short supply for everyone and everything throughout the wastelands, but the sight still made bile rise in his throat. He wasn’t sure he could ever eat pork again. The soldiers walked away while the pigs dined.
An arm moved in the fray, and a brutal cry rent the air. Joe’s eyes went wide.
The old man was still alive. They’d thrown him in the pit while he was still alive!
Joe lowered his head to the ground so he wouldn’t watch.
“Anyone who isn’t useful, disappears,” Val whispered.
He glanced over at her.
She eyed him. “Now you see why Sloan has to be stopped.”
He gave her a small tilt of his head.
“The way I figure, a hero or two could make a big difference in the lives of these poor people,” she said.
Joe chortled. “You’ve a small problem with that plan. All the heroes died in the Revolution.”
“Then they’ll have to settle for us.” She motioned to her left. “Come. Sloan’s house is on the other side of the processing plants.”
He followed her back down the slope, thankful to be leaving the nightmare behind, but chilled with dread as to what lay ahead. From there, they weaved around the farm, giving it a full mile berth to not be seen, though the darkness provided good coverage. Val guided him through a culvert, which opened up near the gate to the complex. Beyond the gate stood a huge stone mansion, alongside another nondescript building that looked to be living quarters.
She flattened herself on the ground and pointed to the long building. “Sloan’s farm boys are all housed in there.”
Joe zoomed his vision through a window. He could make out dozens of soldiers, all wearing the standard blue MRC uniforms, lounging throughout. A good number were sitting around drinking, others were cleaning weapons, and a few were lying on bunkbeds that covered half the open space.
He frowned and turned to Val. “Farm boys?” He gestured to the building. “There’s an army of murcs in there.”
“Murcs are thugs; they’re not really professional soldiers,” she countered.
“That’s subjective since murcs are the only legitimate army in the wastelands, which makes them seem pretty dang professional to me.”
“Fine, then. They’re soldiers,” she griped.
“How’d he get so many soldiers to begin with? No, that doesn’t matter. What I want to know is why he has so many soldiers?”
She pursed her lips. “I haven’t been able to figure that out yet. The brothers started increasing their numbers about five months back, and Roderick takes a fair number with him every time he travels. They’re up to something. Whatever it is, it can’t be good for the people of Clearwater.”
“Who cares about Clearwater; it’s not good for us. There’s no way we can take on an army.”
“We won’t have to. I’ve heard the murcs complain about Roderick. They’ll disperse once they lose the source of their paycheck.” She pointed to the mansion. “He just returned from another of his trips today, which means he’ll be tired. It’s a good night to take him out.”
Joe scanned the yard, then looked up at the cloudy night. “The moon’s with us tonight. It’s a decent night for killing.”
He heard her sharp intake of air. “Good. Tonight it is. Are you ready to run with my plan?”
“Not your plan,” he said.
“Okay, then tell me your plan,” she said.
>
“‘Plan’ isn’t the word I’d use. I prefer to go with ‘reckless optimism.’ Tell me, how well do you know this farm? Not just the house, but the entire farm?”
“I’ve spent months watching it. I know it like I know the back of my hand.”
Joe nodded. “Good. Then I have an idea that may just work.”
Chapter Seventeen
It took Joe a full hour to wind around the mansion and come up to it from behind. As Val had said, only one guard stood at the back door. She’d also said that Roderick Sloan was an overconfident man, enough so he wouldn’t think Val would come after him. In a way, Sloan was right: Val had sent Joe to do her dirty work.
Sheriffs and their ilk often had an attitude that they were the “good guys” and couldn’t do something as heinous as murder someone in cold blood, but Val’s hands were as dirty as Joe’s when it came to Sloan’s assassination, even though he was the one pulling the trigger.
The guard leaned against the house, his eyes closed. Guards sleeping on the job was half the reason Joe wanted to go in at night. During the day, all the murcs lounging in the barracks would be awake and moving around.
The night was quiet, and the time was coming up on the witching hour—though he’d often thought that time of night would be better called “the killing hour.” The deepest part of the night flipped a switch in humans, turning the strongest of men into a five-year-old afraid to look under his bed. Having a fear of the dark was a survival mechanism baked into human DNA over hundreds of thousands of years. A creak in daylight was simply a rocking chair on old boards. A creak at night was a demon searching for souls.
Whenever an assassination had to be up close and personal, Joe did it at night. It was how he’d been trained, and he knew how to use the dark to his advantage.
Joe tapped the controls on his forearm, raised his left hand, and aimed carefully as he crept closer to the guard. When he was within five feet, he fired the dart. It hit the guard in the neck. His eyes shot open, and he reached for his neck, but then his eyes rolled back, and he slumped over. In that time, Joe had covered the remaining steps and caught the man, letting him down silently onto the ground.
Joe looked around. When he saw no one, he pulled out his blaster, opened the door, and stepped inside to find himself in the dimly lit butler’s station—at least, that’s what Val had called it. All it looked like to him was a pantry-like room with a variety of fancy dishes and trays lining wall shelves, and a large, high table in the center of the small space. Two swing-style doors led beyond the room, and he moved to the door on the right, placing his ear near it to listen for sounds of any movement.
He heard nothing—as expected for that time of night.
He trusted that Val had given him the correct directions to Sloan’s bedroom: Right door out of the butler’s station, thirty feet through the dining hall and fifteen feet across the sitting room, take the stairs, and his bedroom is at the end, roughly forty-five steps. She’d finished her instructions with an “I think” that didn’t instill the greatest confidence, but Joe had gone off far less intel before and was still alive.
Assassinations weren’t so hard as long as you weren’t afraid to kill an unarmed person, and you didn’t make a ruckus doing it. People thought assassinations were complicated ordeals when they really had just three steps: enter, kill, leave. The devil was always in the details, of course. If Joe was seen or heard, he’d have to improvise, and he preferred not to have to take on Sloan’s farm boys. Val had promised to provide a diversion should one be needed, but Joe didn’t trust her to take even a paper cut on his behalf, especially considering he’d come to Clearwater to kill her. The way he saw it, he was on his own.
No, the hardest part about assassinations was living with yourself afterward. It was easy when the target was an evil SOB who deserved to be taken down. It was much harder when it was a political rival who may or may not be an evil SOB. Joe assumed and hoped that Roderick Sloan was one of the bad ones, but Joe would kill him even if the administrator wasn’t. Joe had a bomb tacked to his back, and he knew enough about PEDs to know that they were sensitive to any kind of tampering. That meant Joe was at Sheriff Val Vane’s beck and call until she decided to kill him or deactivate the PED.
He sure hoped she’d do the latter.
With his blaster in his right hand and his left hand ready to fire the last two darts, he pressed the door forward quickly and smoothly, as he’d learned from experience that doors tended to squeak more when opened slowly. Sitting at the massive dining table was a single guard, focused on a plate full of meat.
Joe fired a dart before the guard went for his blaster. The man slumped forward, his face landing on the plate of meat. A fork fell out of his hand and fell onto the table with a clink. Joe swung his blaster up and waited for guards to enter the open dining hall from the opposite end. After seeing no movement for a slow count to ten, Joe resumed his movement through the mansion.
His mouth watered as the smell of smoked meat filled his nostrils. Then he swallowed with a grimace when he remembered where the meat had come from and what it’d likely been fed with.
His helmet chimed, and he froze. When he saw it was from Val, he answered.
“Are you done yet?” she asked.
“Working on it,” he whispered.
“You’d better hurry. I unlocked all the slave dorms, and they’re all running out. They’re going to draw attention sooner rather than later.”
“You what?!” he whispered roughly.
“I couldn’t just leave them.”
“Yes, you could have.”
“No, I couldn’t. Now, hurry. I’ll come get you as soon as you call.”
He disconnected the call, forced himself to take a calming breath, and continued silently forward, landing toe first on each step until he reached a door. Again, he listened. Again, no sounds came. He entered a smaller room filled with an opulent desk and several delicate chairs. The sitting room. That made sense.
A sound to his left brought him swinging his blaster toward the desk. “Hands up,” he whispered sharply.
He saw a tuft of hair before a small shape slowly rose from behind the desk. He turned the barrel of his blaster away. She was a small girl, smaller than Nick, and she wore what looked like a cleaning uniform. In her hands she held gold credits, and he noticed a desk drawer stood open.
He brought a finger to his lips, then motioned her to leave through the dining room. She eyed him for a long second before rushing away. Her elbow knocked a crystal globe off of the desk, and it hit the floor with an echoing shatter.
He hissed. She froze. The sounds of bootsteps pounding on a hard floor erupted.
“Run!” He motioned to the dining hall.
She ran the other way.
He went after her to stop her, but she shoved through the far door. He flattened against the wall when the door was flung open. As it swung closed, he rushed toward it and kept it from slamming shut, leaving a narrow slit. He could hear a ruckus in the area beyond the sitting room.
He winced. She’d been caught.
He peered through the crack to see three murcs, all in exoshields, standing in the foyer. Joe frowned. Since when did they have those? That Sloan could afford to outfit his guards with exoshields meant that he was far richer than most in the wastelands.
The girl cried out, and Joe clenched his fist as he watched one of the guards hold her by the arm to keep her from running while he peeled the coins from her grip. There were sounds of more steps, and Joe strained to see the stairs, where a man in a white robe and slicked back hair came plodding down, followed by a bodyguard—also in a shield. Joe recognized Sloan’s face from the picture Val showed him.
“What is so important to wake me at this ungodly hour?” Roderick Sloan had a raspy voice, like a goose with a bad cold.
“I caught this little rat-flea stealing from you, Mr. Sloan,” the murc holding the girl said, and plopped the credits into the administrator’s palm.
>
Sloan eyed the credits and then the girl. “You thought you could steal from me and get away with it?”
She swung out and kicked him in the shin. Sloan howled and jumped back, grabbing his leg. His face reddened, and he pointed to the door. “Throw her to the pigs.”
“No!” she shrieked. “I don’t wanna be pig food!”
“Oink, oink,” the murc holding her taunted.
Fury rose in Joe. He took a step back and kicked the door open.
Chapter Eighteen
As the door swung outward, he stepped out, firing shots above the girl’s head. He took out three murcs before they unslung their rifles. The child fell to her knees and covered her head.
Sloan stumbled behind the remaining murc, who had his rifle in his hands. Joe fired without hesitation, and the guard fell.
Sloan blanched. “Don’t shoot!”
Joe was pulling the trigger when alarms went off outside. Joe immediately relaxed his finger but kept the blaster aimed at his mark. All the murcs in the barracks would be running outside, cutting off Joe’s escape route. He’d never be able to sneak off the farm now. He scowled, wanting very much to strangle Val for screwing up what was intended to be a run-of-the-mill assassination. Now, he’d need a miracle…or leverage.
He took a step toward Sloan.
“Don’t hurt me,” the man pleaded. “H-here, take these. I have more where they came from.” Sloan held out the credits the girl had stolen.
Joe swiped the coins and handed them to the girl. Then he grabbed Sloan by the shoulder and shoved him forward, pressing the barrel of his blaster in the rich man’s back. “You’re my ticket out of here. You play along or else you’re going to be able to whistle tunes through several new holes in your chest.”
“Anything! Just don’t kill me!” the man blathered.
Joe glanced at the girl. “Stay behind me, kid. We’re getting out of here.”
