“Oh, well, that’s great.”
“We’ll deal with the shit when we get to it.”
“So how do I know you’re not just going to run out on me the first chance you get?”
“Lerah, if I’m anything, I’m a man of my word.”
“That’s it, that’s my guarantee?”
“That’s all I’ve got.”
She shook her head. “That’s just splendid.”
He finished off his beer and stubbed out his cigarette. “I think that’s gonna do it for me. When do we get outfitted?”
“That’s why I’m here; the requisitions officer needs to see us tonight. We’re not going to have time to get sorted tomorrow. We head out at first light.”
“Alright, let’s do it. I’m still feeling rather spritely.”
She turned from him and rested across the bar. “Just… let me finish my drink.” She suddenly felt very tired. She’d gone through the training, she’d sat through the lessons on duty, she knew about the potential danger that came with being a soldier for the Union. Still, she’d gotten comfortable—a bed, a roof over her head, no worries about where her next meal was going to come from—tomorrow morning, all of that changed.
Her train of self pity was brought to a halt. She smelled the man before she saw him. He was a fellow of substantial girth. He wedged himself in between Lerah and Dominic. He leered at her, he had his back to Dominic and one elbow propped up on the bar. Each one of his teeth looked as if it’d been dotted with a black felt pen.
“What’s the lady drinking?” His smile was more perverse than it was charming.
“There’s only one drink being served down here, dipshit.” She shot him a look of disgust and went back to her beer.
The man belly laughed. “A feisty one, you are. I just wanted to come over here and give you a proper apology. The fella you tussled with on the way in, he’s a friend of mine, he’s never been too good with women.”
“He must have taken lessons from you,” she said dryly, refusing to meet the eyes of her pig-faced admirer.
“Hey now, don’t be that way. I’m just trying to be friendly.”
“I’ve got enough friends, fat man. So, how about you haul your ass away and let me finish my drink in peace?”
The man slammed a meaty fist against the surface of the bar. Lerah’s beer careened to the floor, shattered, and spat its contents across her boots. “Union cunt! You think you’re special? Your pussy ain’t plated in gold, you get wet like all the rest.”
Dominic’s voice broke in before she could react. “I think its best you go ahead and disappear. Otherwise, things are about to get real ugly for you.”
“Who the hell—” As he turned Dominic met his throat with the blade of his hand. The fat Outlander stumbled backwards, grasping at his windpipe, coughing, trying to catch his breath. Dominic wasn’t finished. He grabbed him by his collar, doubled him over with a knee to the belly and followed up with another one to the face. The man went down, out cold before he hit the ground.
An angry cloud of Outlanders began to form.
Lerah went for her pistol.
Dominic grabbed her wrist. “No, just stand back. Let me handle this.” He stepped forward, his arms were extended, his duster flared at his heels, taking the beast by the jaws and daring it to bite down. “There’s only one of me. You might get me down, but I’ll cripple a couple of you before you do. You really wanna chance not walking out of here under your own power?”
A skinny man, with a scraggly head of unwashed hair, came charging at Dominic with a broken bottle. He swung the jagged weapon up, down, and side-to-side. He was making tight little arcs, his face contorting with the effort. Dominic caught his wrist on a downward swing, wrenched it back, and slammed his elbow with a closed fist. The man squealed as his bones fractured and tore through the flesh. Dominic caught the broken bottle as it fell from his grasp and let the little man tumble away to the floor.
Two more attackers came in for the kill.
The first one lead off with a sloppy front kick. Dominic caught his leg and buried the broken bottle in his thigh. The second man slashed at Dominic’s face with an open blade. Lerah considered stepping in, but before she could, Dominic had ducked the blade and was retreating backwards while still holding on to the leg of the first attacker as he yelped and struggled to yank the bottle from his flesh. Dominic rammed an elbow into his kneecap, shattering it, before throwing him aside.
The man with the blade was the last one left. He was heavyset. He had a patchy moustache and deep set eyes. He seemed to be a man that was used to throwing his weight around. A man that wasn’t easily intimidated. His eyes fluttered between his maimed amigos, bleeding out on the floor, and the monster that put them there. He looked around for backup, only to find that anyone that had shown interest in joining the fray had lost their nerve.
“It’s just me and you, chief,” Dominic growled.
The man began to shake and back away. He dropped the knife and raised his hands high above his head. “No trouble here, I made a mistake! No trouble!”
“You already took your swing, it’s my turn.” Dominic moved deliberately. He swooped down and grabbed the knife, without breaking pace. The man called out for help, his feet sliding on the floor as he turned to run.
“No! Don’t!” Lerah called out to Dominic, but he didn’t respond.
Dominic grabbed the man by his collar and snapped him back against his chest. “Don’t move or I may slip and cut your throat.”
“No please, I’m sorry!”
The man’s voice turned into a shrill wail as the flesh on his face parted beneath the vicious bite of the knife.
“Dominic, stop!” Lerah ordered.
Dominic considered his work, like a painter taking in a canvas before deciding on the next color. “I think we need to even it out on the other side. What about you people, do you think we need a little on the other side as well?” He eyed the crowd like a mad dog, daring them to interfere with his catch. He pried the man’s head over, using his elbow to crank his neck, while keeping a firm grip on the back of his shirt. “Now don’t move,” Dominic whispered as he set the metal tip against his cheekbone.
“Let him go and drop the knife!” Lerah planted her gun against the base of Dominic’s skull.
Dominic froze. “You know what you’re doing with that, sister?”
She dropped the hammer. “Yeah, I’ve got a general idea.”
The knife clattered to the floor and Dominic raised his hands. His captive stumbled away, holding his face, blood leaking vigorously between his fingers.
“Move. We’re done here.”
Dominic shook his head, laughed, and strolled towards the door, ignoring the press of the gun at his back.
“I wasn’t going to kill the bastard.” Dominic took the short barrel rifle from the young requisitions officer and looped the strap around his shoulders. It was a nice piece of hardware. It had a folding stock, which made it easier to conceal, but it still packed enough punch to put a man down hard. He slipped his duster back on; it did a decent job of camouflaging the weapon.
“No, of course not, you were just going to torture him,” Lerah hadn’t stopped lecturing him since they’d left the lobby bar.
“He took a swing at me with that blade. He’d have killed me if given the chance.”
“He’s a common thug. We’re not. We work for the Union. You’re lucky he wasn’t a citizen or we’d be having a very different conversation.”
“Correction, missy, you work for the Union.”
“If you call me by anything other than my name one more time—”
“You’ll what? Shoot me? Arrest me? You can’t do a thing. Remember, you’re Union. Besides, I don’t answer to you. Now, let’s hurry it along, sister, I’m growing tired.”
She turned her wrath on the wide eyed requisitions officer. “Where’s my damned hardware?”
“Uh,” he fumbled around under the counter, “yes ma�
��am, right here ma’am.” He slid a weapon across the counter that was identical to Dominic’s.
Lerah grabbed it up, turned it over a few times, checked the magazine, and then hung it across one shoulder like a tote bag.
“Hey, you got a pistol back there? No wheel guns, just something with a light frame and a couple extra mags? Hause took mine.”
The fresh faced officer slid him a pistol, a twin to the one carried by Lerah. “This is all we got; standard issue.”
It was high capacity and all metal. ; meant to knock down big bastards. “I guess it’ll do in a pinch.” Dominic took the gun, the holster, the magazines, and began assembling them across his body.
“We’re not going to be able to carry any of this into Reeman, you know that, right?” Her hip was cocked and her arms were crossed as she watched him fumbling around with the buckle on the holster. “I think your thigh is too fat for the strap.” Laughter was rising in her throat; she tried to cover it with a cough.
“Oh, to hell with this!” The requisitions officer ducked right as Dominic hurled the holster back across the counter. He stuffed the pistol down the front of his pants and wrapped the duster tight before dropping the extra magazines into his outer jacket pockets.
“You’re going to blow your balls off.”
“Wouldn’t you be a sad girl?”
“I think I’d celebrate it as a victory and come home.”
“You’ve really got to start telling me when you’re joking.”
“I don’t joke.”
“Uh-huh, well, good to know.”
“What are we going to do with this shit when we get there?”
“Strategic placement.”
She just stared.
“Think of it as a retreat pattern. We’re going to drop it someplace nearby, someplace convenient. That way, if we have to leave in a hurry, we can use it to cover our asses.”
“Simple enough. So, what else do you have for us?” she asked the officer.
He set down four canteens.
She grabbed two and stuffed them away under one arm. “I suggest you get some sleep.” The door swung shut behind Lerah’s swift departure.
Dominic leaned in, as if the requisition’s officer were an old drinking buddy. “She’s a hard one to crack, ain’t she?”
“That’s the word,” the officer said with an honest-to-God nod of his head.
“What’s the word?”
“Oh, you haven’t heard? That one there, she hates men. No one really knows why, but it’s not just you. No one’s ever gotten close to her, at least not without getting their nuts taken off.”
“That a fact?” Dominic was intrigued.
Lerah answered the door amid the second round of knocking. On the other side stood her father; charcoal slacks, tan shirt, freshly shaved face, high and tight salt-and-pepper hair. His pistol was attached to his belt, his boots held a mirror shine, and his expression appeared to have been carved from stone.
“May I come in, Lerah?” his voice was cold steel; as comforting to her as a warm bed and a hot meal.
She ushered him in and closed the door. “Are you here to say goodbye?”
“Goodbye?” He walked through the living room and into the kitchen, helping himself to the contents of the refrigerator.
“I’m going out on assignment. We leave tomorrow morning.”
“Yes, of course, I know, but why would I say goodbye?” The sharp rip of hard plastic filled the room as he cracked open a bottle of water. “Are you not planning on coming back?”
“Dad, don’t play games with me right now.”
He shrugged. “Who said anything about games? You’re a soldier. You choose your moves wisely. You choose your words wisely. I was simply responding to your words.”
She fell back on the couch. “Well, in that case, I chose my words wisely. After talking to Dominic—”
“Dominic?”
“The Saboteur, Dominic is his name.”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“After talking to him, and hearing his stories about what’s out there waiting for us, I’m not optimistic. So, yeah, it may be goodbye.”
Her father finished the bottle in one big chug, crumpled it, and left it sitting on the counter. “Maybe you’ll live. Maybe you’ll die. It’s all part of being a soldier.” He’d never been the nurturing type. “Your chances of survival are much higher being with him.”
There was a relentless tension squeezing the bridge of her nose, pushing her eyes back, deeper and deeper into their sockets. “You mean the guy that won’t climb out of bed in the morning unless it means more change in his pockets?”
“And why not? An artist gets paid to paint.”
Fuzzy images of Dominic ripping men apart flashed across the surface of her mind. “I don’t see an artist. I see a soldier in dereliction of duty.”
He laughed. “Oh, sometimes I think I raised you to be too idealistic.”
She crossed her arms and closed her eyes, trying to focus on the softness of the cushions rather than the stirring in her bowels. She’d been her father’s greatest admirer, his best student… his only student. She’d never heard him speak so highly of her. This Outlander walks in from the sandbox, shoots up their home, and everyone’s panting over him. Suddenly he’s an artist.
Her father stood behind the couch, his hands clasped at his back, staring at the small bundle of pictures on the wall. “The rebels were never soldiers. They were nothing more than a band of well armed thugs. They yelled something about independence, but it was chaos they wanted; a bunch of dogs too rabid for the leash, barely worth a bullet. The Saboteurs, they were different. They were professionals. They never pretended to be anything more than what they were; men that fought for money. And more than that, they were good. Better than any man we had. Hause couldn’t lay down the bounties fast enough after the war ended; he didn’t want to risk fighting them again. We were hanging a Saboteur a day. A waste, if you ask me.”
“A waste of rope, perhaps.”
“No, Lerah, a waste of manpower. These men fought for money. We had more of that than we knew what to do with. It would have been a mutually beneficial relationship.”
Lerah shook her head. “We’re better than that.”
“Better than what? Better than winning? Foolish girl.” He came around the couch and stood in front of her with his hands still clasped behind him. “You know, that’s Hause’s philosophy, this idea that we’re somehow better than the men we were during the war. He’s weakening our walls, putting all of our people in danger, and risking everything we fought for in the name of some bullshit sense of morality. What’s the difference between bribing these people with coin and bribing them with a bullet? They love the coin and they fear the bullet, neither emotion gives way to genuine loyalty.”
“I don’t agree with his methods either, but I obey orders.”
“As you should. You’re a soldier. Soldiers obey orders, even if they do so begrudgingly.”
“I figure it’s likely to lead me to a bullet or starvation.”
“Yeah, well, they’ll send you out with enough rations. You won’t starve, but I can’t promise you anything as far as the bullet goes. But you’re a tough girl. My money is on you.” That’s the closest he’d ever come to saying he was proud of her. “You know, your ma, well, I think she’d smile about all this. First female Shadeux, special assignment, I think she’d… well, she’d be happy for you.” Talk of mother; it was a proxy for real emotion.
“Yeah, maybe; we’ll never know.”
“She never really understood our type.” He clicked his teeth together, uncomfortable, his hands now stuffed deep inside his pockets.
She stood. “Okay, Dad, I’ve got to get some sleep, so…”
“Say no more, say no more.” He raised his hands in mock surrender and backed towards the door. “I just came by to make sure you are okay. To make sure you are ready.”
“I’m fine. I’ll be fine. When I get this
done and get back home, I’ll be even better.”
“You don’t like him, I know that. But he’ll protect you out there. He’s better than any man in Genesis. So stick beside him. Follow his lead. Okay?”
“Yeah,” she was already reaching for the door handle, “sure, Dad. I’ll follow his lead.”
“You’re gonna make me proud out there, I know it.”
“Yeah, of course, I’ll make you proud.”
“Alright then, I wish you the best.” He offered her his hand.
She gave it a single shake and forced a weak smile. “Sure, thanks, Dad.”
7
Blake pulled his front door shut as he stepped outside. Riley and Judith were still inside sleeping. Riley, with her knees bunched up against her chest and the blankets ruffled around her ankles. Judith, with the tip of her thumb jammed between her lips and her toy car not far beyond her grasp.
The sun was rising over the horizon as Blake took the front steps like a toddling child. Sleep still weighed heavy on his eyes. He’d tossed and turned most of the night. He didn’t want to risk oversleeping, didn’t want to risk the possibility of keeping Mother waiting. He was still shaken by the visit from Zach and Toby. Her sons were more than just a mouthpiece. They were her hands and her feet. When she uttered a command they were the ones that carried it forth. Blake had seen what happened when she grew suspicious of someone’s dedication to the faith. Zach and Toby’s visit, the things they’d said, meant Mother had a suspicious eye on him. That didn’t bode well for his future or the future of his family. He had to see her, face-to-face. He had to make her believe that his faith, his resolve, was still strong.
The gate surrounding the settlement stood ominously against the face of the deep blue morning, with its towering spikes chomping at the sky like shadowy fangs. The men of the Watch walked the platforms around the wall, their distant chatter reaching him in whispers on the back of the stiff breeze. They were at the tail end of their shifts, biding their time until the morning relief arrived. Most of them now leaned lazily on the stocks of their weapons, looking out over the wastes, while a few walked with their heads down and their rifles perched across the backs of their shoulders.
The Fall of Man: The Saboteur Chronicles Book 1 Page 7
