Veteran

19

It was kind of a baseline nausea. Like the day after you’ve had a lot to drink, and although you’re capable of functioning the sickness in your stomach tells you that you overdid it the night before. It was like that but all the time. Just reminding you that there was something wrong, something corrupt in your body at a basic level. Other than that I felt fine.

In the trucks and land trains of Crawling Town there were stabilised trailers with protein vats and hydroponics farms, but they didn’t provide enough for self-sufficiency so Crawling Town raided and traded. One of its main cash crops was drugs. Ironically they made more from selling medical drugs on the black market than they did selling the cheap and readily available recreational drugs. This was one of the reasons that Papa Neon was a genius. It was also where the initial supply of drugs that was going to keep me functioning until close to the end came from.

In the mirror I looked the same, pretty much. They’d even ironed out some of the creases for me. Was this my face? It had been rebuilt so many times I felt a bit like the broom who’d had its handle and its brush changed. The hair had to go, which pissed me off. It wasn’t vanity. I was vain enough to not want to see it fall out but I didn’t want to end up looking like the bald-headed bastards who’d done this to me in the first place.

It was written all over their faces when they came to see me in the Big Neon Voodoo’s ritual infirmary. By this time my hair had been shorn and I had a bandanna tied round my head and sunglasses on. I felt like I was in the American army. There was that awkwardness you have when nobody wants to mention something awful. Weird really, when you consider that several of the people in the room had probably killed more people than they could remember, but they couldn’t bring themselves to say radiation sickness. Well, except for Mudge.

‘So you’re dying then?’ He’d spent some time looking confused by the forced politeness in the room and apparently become bored. There seemed to be a collective sharp intake of breath. I paused long enough to make everyone uncomfortable and then started laughing as Mudge offered me some vodka.

‘A bit faster than everyone else,’ I said.

‘Sure you just don’t like us all coming to see you in the hospital? I think you like the fuss,’ he said. I was about to drink from the bottle when I stopped.

‘Is there no chance of you ever drinking whisky?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ said Morag and searched around in her bag. She pulled out a bottle of single malt, one from the park distilleries. I was impressed.

"Where’d you get that?’ I said.

‘Found it,’ she replied simply.

‘Spent a long time searching for it,’ Pagan said. To his credit there was only a little bit of resentment in his voice. Presumably she’d been looking for it when she should’ve been doing her God homework.

‘Nice rescue, guys. Not sure that was the approach I would’ve taken,’ I said. I would’ve killed them all.

‘I was scared shitless,’ Morag said, glancing at Pagan.

‘I told you, people like that are always scared of women. If they weren’t they’d respond to people better,’ he said. So it’d been his plan.

‘Ever done any psy-ops. Pagan?’ I asked. Pagan said nothing.

When are we going to kill the Wait?’ Mudge asked once the silence had got kind of awkward. I was touched that I could see Rannu nodding.

‘That will not happen,’ Papa Neon said. Mudge’s head didn’t move but I saw one of his eyes rotate to look at the gang leader.

‘They’re going to die before my friend here does,’ Mudge assured him. ‘I’ll film it and everything. We can show you after, if you like.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Pagan said. ‘Papa Neon has helped us out a hell of a lot here. Can you not show a bit of respect?’

‘I thought we’d be doing him a favour. The Wait didn’t seem to have anything nice to say about him and his people,’ Mudge said. I could see him getting irritated now. I took a sip of the whisky. It was good, a smooth burn. I watched Pagan and Papa Neon. I was beginning to see why Mudge and Rannu hadn’t gone in shooting when they came to get me.

‘They are Crawling Town, you are not,’ Neon said.

‘What I’ve seen of Crawling Town amounts to a small fucking war going on,’ Mudge said.

Papa Neon shrugged. ‘Several wars. We are a city; like all cities we have social problems. Though our biggest killer is traffic accidents rather than gang warfare. But it doesn’t matter. We can wipe each other out. If it gets out of hand then steps are taken, but we will not tolerate threats from outside,’ he said with a sort of laid-back finality.

Mudge looked around at everyone else. ‘You’re kidding right?’

‘Mudge,’ I said softly, ‘Pagan’s right. Papa Neon’s done right by me. He’s done a lot of shit he didn’t have to and we’ve probably been a huge pain in the arse to him,’ I said, looking at Papa Neon. He just smiled. ‘Besides, he’s one of Pagan’s little conspiracy of God builders, yeah?’ Pagan started; Neon didn’t show any reaction. Morag looked up at Papa Neon as if seeing him anew.

‘It is true. I would see Obatala brought back into this realm and I will dance for him,’ Papa Neon said.

‘You were one of the robed figures in Dinas Emrys,’ I replied. Papa Neon nodded.

‘Could’ve maybe mentioned this before, Pagan,’ Mudge said.

‘He didn’t want to risk exposing his contact, did you?’ I asked.

‘With good reason,’ Pagan said.

‘Pagan’s right,’ Morag said.

‘How’s that?’ I asked, trying to decide how pissed off I should be. If Pagan had contacted Papa Neon in the first place this would’ve gone down very differently.

‘Crawling Town is being overflown almost constantly by recon drones,’ Pagan said.

‘Fortunate Sons?’ I asked. Pagan nodded. ‘We are pretty close to the US,’ I said.

‘There’s more to it than that,’ Pagan said and looked at Papa Neon.

‘You’re not the only ex-special forces type that’s been picked up in town recently,’ the gang leader said.

‘Rolleston’s people?’ I asked.

‘They’re XIs,’ Rannu said.

‘You sure?’ I asked.

‘The two that broke were, before they were broken down into their constituent parts,’ Papa Neon said. I could see Rannu shifting uneasily at this. ‘And this isn’t New York,’ he added. He meant that he couldn’t or wouldn’t protect us like Balor had. I didn’t really blame him. I climbed out of bed and started getting dressed. I didn’t feel too bad, except for the nausea.

‘Dude, should you be out of bed?’ Mudge asked. I looked at him and grinned.

‘I’m gonna need a lot of drugs.’

Mrs Tillwater would not shut up but I was a little too disconcerted to ask her to be quiet. She was interspersing the most banal day-today conversation with descriptions of sadistic violence. Some people would do that just to try and freak you out, but I wasn’t getting that from her. She genuinely seemed ill.

I was riding shotgun with her. Papa Neon had asked her to act as our native guide to the white-trash element of Crawling Town. She had gently scolded him and agreed to do it. I’d chosen to ride with her because I’d been getting tired of seeing the look of sympathy on Morag’s, Pagan’s and even Rannu’s faces.

I’d been right: Gibby and Buck were riding with one of the cyberbilly gangs, the biggest and most powerful one, the Hard Luck Commancheros. Mrs Tillwater was taking us out to see them. Apparently they’d left the town and driven into the ruins of Trenton. We were all suited up. Mrs Tillwater’s hazardous environment gear was lilac, which appeared to be her favourite colour. It had scalps hanging off it. We were in her armoured, four-wheel drive station wagon. Morag was following on the low rider with Rannu, Pagan and Mudge in the muscle car behind her.

‘Of course, there are tribes in the ruins of the cities on the Dead Roads,’ Mrs Tillwater was saying. ‘Little more than savages really. File their teeth, wear human skins, barely human themselves.’ I looked at this woman. Other than her augmentations, the plugs in her neck, replacement eyes, she looked every bit the suburban matriarch. She wore slightly too much make-up, was ordinarily attractive for a woman of a certain age and seemed to take a lot of care with her disconcertingly banal appearance.

‘I hear some of them eat human flesh,’ I said, pretty sure I could defend myself if this got out of hand. She didn’t miss a beat.

‘Yes, but they don’t prepare it properly…’ She went into quite some detail about how to properly prepare human flesh. I began to worry when I found my mouth watering. I was relieved when I started to hear engines ahead of us.

The outskirts of Trenton, the industrial part of the city, had been hit by a low-yield nuke during the FHC. It was probably that crater that the dune buggy I’d been attached to had driven through. The nuke had killed the majority of the city’s population. Those that didn’t die probably succumbed to the radiation and burns not too long after the blast. The city itself had been pretty badly banged up. Mrs Tillwater was steering round piles of rubble and the four-wheel drive was definitely coming in useful. I was a bit worried about Morag but she seemed to be getting better with the bike. On either side of the road. damaged high-rise buildings reached up towards the unnaturally red sky like broken fingers. Many of the buildings were covered in freshly painted graffiti depicting complex but abstract patterns. Others had murals depicting stylised tribal heroics and what I guessed were hunts. Much of the graffiti was quite beautiful.

‘Those done by the tribes?’ I asked, pointing at one of the abstract designs. The serial killer sitting next to me nodded.

‘Territorial boundaries. The murals are histories,’ she said. ‘I mean, why can’t they do something useful like clean the place up a bit?’

‘Yeah, tidying would be the way forward,’ I said. Mrs Tillwater turned to look at me.

‘I do understand sarcasm, Mr Douglas, I just choose not to lower myself to use it.’ Suddenly the constant patronising sympathy of the others didn’t seem so bad.

‘The tribes wouldn’t mess with us, would they?’ I said, trying to change the subject.

‘Why on Earth wouldn’t they?’ she asked, sounding surprised. ‘They attack convoys much larger and better armed than ours.’ I looked out the back window to see Morag riding behind us, her poncho flapping in the wind. Suddenly she seemed very exposed.

We turned into the ruins of what we would’ve called a scheme back in Dundee but I think they were called projects over here. Basically it had been a large and ugly estate of state-provided housing. Now it was an empty crumbling mess. There was a large, rubble-strewn open area; beyond that were rows of terraced flats and beyond them a series of ugly high-rise buildings.

Parked in the open area were a lot of different vehicles, most of them muscle cars, heavily customised, all four-wheel drive. There were a few pickups and vans, also heavily customised, and lots of bikes and trikes, most of them low riders or chopped, with a few performance bikes here and there. There was even the ancient halftrack with the cartoon swamp creature painted on the bonnet that we’d seen on the first night. Everything was customised. I couldn’t help but stare at the machines. The noise of the various engines hit us like a solid wall of sound. I overrode my audio dampeners. I wanted to hear this.

‘Boys will be boys,’ Mrs Tillwater said cheerfully. People glanced up as we pulled in. Everyone there seemed to be wearing a duster and wide-brimmed hat, though many of them didn’t have their masks on. Most were bearded, even some of the women, and like Gibby and Buck, dreadlocks seemed to be the order of the day. They had the degenerate cowboy look of the cyberbilly scene. I could just about make out the sounds of heavy western guitar riffs playing through a powerful sound system somewhere. The singer was grunting about his one true love stealing his car.

As we pulled into the area, our beat-up vehicles getting looks of scom from the assembled cyberbillys, I wondered how they managed to get their cars and bikes to look this good in such a corrosive environment. I saw the start of a drag race, two of the muscle cars accelerating so quickly that their front wheels came off the ground, flames shooting from their exhausts as they raced up part of the remaining and very unsafe-looking raised road system. A cheer went up from the onlookers. I almost felt like I could live this way.

Mrs Tillwater found a space and fussily parked in it, I wasn’t sure why. I fixed my mask and goggles in place and climbed out. Morag came to a halt nearby and Rannu pulled up next to us. Mrs Tillwater headed over to a group of the cyberbillys. All of them had the aces and eights of the Dead Man’s Hand painted on their clothes somewhere, the colours of the Hard Luck Commancheros. There were some glances our way but finally she signalled to us and started across the concrete square. We followed, doing our best not to get run over by speeding bikes or cars. It was kind of gratifying to see Pagan, Rannu and Mudge form a loose formation, watching all around. I’d found myself doing pretty much the same thing.

We were heading towards the street of terraced flats, where a crowd of the Commancheros was gathered. There were a couple of cars and a pickup, but this mostly seemed to be where the bikers where hanging out. Suited me. Mrs Tillwater signalled to me and then pointed up to the road embankment that ran along one side of the square. Stood on top of the embankment watching us was a figure. I zoomed in on her. She wore an outfit of skin, possibly human, and looked lean, tough and athletic. Her hair was tied back tightly and what I could see of her skin was covered in ritual scars. Her mouth was open in a grimace and I could see her filed-down, steel-capped teeth. She carried a compound bow that looked like it had been made from salvaged metal and had a wicked-looking curved blade stuck through her belt.

‘If we can see her then that means there will be others around that we can’t,’ Mrs Tillwater said over our tactical net. It was like the tribeswoman was challenging us. It was strange. I got a thrill from seeing her. I knew she was another human being but it was like the thrill I got as a kid when I was out with my father in the park and we saw a stag or bear tracks, or even heard wolves howling when we had to camp. The tribeswoman looked feral and degenerate but she also looked noble, unafraid and somehow unpolluted. She hadn’t surrendered her humanity to machinery and war. There was little difference between her tribe and one that had cars and guns except maybe honesty. I think I envied her.

‘Will they attack?’ I asked Mrs Tillwater. I could see her shake her head as the answer came back over the net.

‘No, they’re just letting us know whose neighbourhood we’re borrowing.’

We’d reached the crowd of cyberbillys and I saw them both. I glanced to my left and saw Rannu making his way round that way; I glanced to my right and saw Mudge. I let Mrs Tillwater and Pagan go ahead of me and kept my head down. Morag was next to me. Buck was straddling a low rider, revving it. Gibby was kneeling down next to the engine, fiddling with it. The pair of them looked up as we approached. Neither had their masks on, just plastic sunglasses, though their faces were largely covered by beards anyway. Buck nodded at Mrs Tillwater, then I saw Gibby look to my left – he’d made Mudge. A word passed between Gibby and Buck. Gibby stood up, both of them reaching for their old customised,44s. I came round from behind Mrs Tillwater, the Mastodon in one hand, the Tyler in the other. I couldn’t use my shoulder laser because of the radiation duster.

‘Don’t do it!’ I shouted. Mudge had his SIG drawn and was moving in on the pair, the fully automatic pistol levelled at Gibby. Pagan and even Morag had their pistols in their hands but kept them down waiting to see what the crowd was going to do. Rannu had disappeared somehow despite being the only Nepalese present. He suddenly appeared again, one of his Glocks levelled at Buck and Gibby, the other held down at his side ready to fire into the crowd if need be.

Mudge was still moving up on Buck and Gibby. He didn’t look happy. I wasn’t either. I could still remember them flying away from us, leaving me standing with the corpses of two of my friends. Mudge walked up to Gibby and wrapped his hands round the ex-pilot’s greasy dreadlocks before digging the barrel of the gun painfully into his skin.

‘Hello, Gibby,’ Mudge said. ‘Jakob, we only need one of these cunts to talk, right?’

‘Calm down, Mudge,’ I said. The crowd was edgy. I was sure that weapons were being drawn out of sight. The cyberbilly closest to me tried to pull a cut-down pump action out of her duster. I moved the Tyler to cover her. ‘Do that and I’ll turn your head to steam,’ I said. ‘Okay, everyone, just take it easy. We just want to talk to Buck and Gibby.’

‘I don’t,’ Mudge said helpfully.

Except for Mudge, who wants to torture them to death,’ I muttered to myself. There were a lot of Commancheros here and lots close by. If it came down to gunplay it would get futile very quickly.

‘Jakob,’ I heard Morag say. I didn’t like the tone in her voice. ‘Ow, fuck!’ I turned round to see Mrs Tillwater with an automatic held to Morag’s head. It looked like she’d just bitten Morag’s ear through the hood of her poncho – I could see it bleeding through the material. I moved the Tyler to cover Mrs Tillwater.

‘You have been told once,’ she said evenly. The suburban matriarch gone, she was all military commander now. ‘They are Crawling Town; you are not. Now lower your guns,’ she ordered. More of the Commancheros had their weapons in their hands now.

‘Fuck her,’ Mudge said. ‘Shoot her in the head.’

‘I will eat her,’ Mrs Tillwater said, and I believed her. I lowered my weapons. Rannu and a relieved-looking Pagan did the same. Obviously Mudge didn’t. The cyberbilly whose head I’d threatened to turn to steam tried to take my Mastodon out of my hand. She found herself lying on the ground with my foot on her throat.

‘Let’s not get carried away here. We lower ours, you guys lower yours, and we’ll see if we can make it through the next ten minutes without any of you getting killed,’ I said. Always negotiate from a position of strength, even when you obviously don’t have one. Mudge still had his gun levelled at Gibby.

‘Mudge!’ I said. I saw one of his eyes swivel towards me. Finally he lowered his gun. I turned to Mrs Tillwater.

‘Now let her go,’ I said, holstering my two guns. Mrs Tillwater released Morag, who spun away from the serial killer as she was putting her automatic back in her handbag.

‘What did you have to bite me for?’ Morag demanded.

‘Sorry, dear,’ Mrs Tillwater said unapologetically.

Morag punched her. It shouldn’t have connected with a vet like Tillwater, but it did. I guess she hadn’t been expecting it; I know I hadn’t. It was hand-to-hand stuff from Morag’s softskills but she’d obviously been practising enough that her body had properly integrated the software. She caught the side of Tillwater’s jaw with her fist and knocked her back a bit. Tillwater’s head snapped back and she looked furious, as did Morag. I got ready to draw my pistols but Mrs Tillwater just smiled, nodded at Morag and turned away.

‘Hell, that was tense,’ Buck drawled. Mudge pistol-whipped him so hard it knocked him off the bike. Even I cringed as the bike hit the concrete, scratching the electric-blue paint job on the alcohol tank. Gibby helped Buck pick the bike up.

Buck was bleeding from the mouth. He spat out blood and a tooth. The crowd was getting restless again.

‘What the fuck!’

Gibby looked at the ruined paint job. ‘Fuck this! Everybody kill these people,’ he said. Weapons were drawn again.

‘Buck, Gibby,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was talking to two naughty boys, and she kind of was, ‘both myself and Papa Neon would appreciate it if you would talk with Jakob and his friends.’

‘But look what they did to my bike!’ Buck moaned. Mudge didn’t help by grinning at him.

‘Everyone!’ Mrs Tillwater said to the Commancheros. ‘Shall we give these old friends some time together?’ Then she turned to me. ‘I’ll be just over here with all of Buck and Gibby’s friends, so I want you to play nicely,’ she said sweetly. ‘Understand?’ All trace of sweetness gone.

I nodded. ‘Everyone put your guns away,’ I said over the tactical net. Eventually even Mudge holstered his SIG.

‘Come on, everyone,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was organising a picnic.

‘We ain’t going nowhere,’ one of the Commancheros said. ‘Who the hell are you to tell us what to do?’ Mrs Tillwater walked over to him. He towered over her.

‘I’ll come and find you and we can talk about it tonight?’ she said and then smiled up at him. I was pretty sure I saw him blanch behind his goggles.

Finally, once everyone had stopped being macho, the five of us were left alone with Buck and Gibby. Gibby at least had the common courtesy to look a little nervous. Buck just looked pissed off.

‘We need to talk,’ I said to the pair. As soon as I opened my mouth Buck revved the engine on the low rider, drowning me out. ‘That’s pretty childish,’ I said, and predictably he revved the bike again.

‘Fuck it. Let’s shoot him and torture Gibby,’ Mudge said as my audio dampeners kicked in to drown out the bike engine’s throaty roar.

‘We’re wasting our time,’ Pagan said and again the bike engine was revved.

‘We don’t want to talk to you. Fuck off an leave us alone,’ Gibby said. He was looking pretty scared. I didn’t think it was because of us.

‘You know Rolleston’s going to find you sooner or later,’ I told him.

‘Yeah, because of you, you fucker!’ he answered.

‘Rolleston’s always known where we are,’ Buck said angrily. ‘And that was fine as long as we didn’t talk to anyone.’

‘Well, whether you talk to us or not he’s still going to kill you,’ Mudge pointed out.

‘So fucking what? You know anyone over forty?’ Buck asked. Maybe Rolleston, I thought, but decided to keep that observation to myself.

‘That’s no reason not to talk to us,’ Morag said.

‘And it’s no reason to talk to you,’ he replied. ‘Unless you wanna work it off. darlin’,’ he said, grinning. I felt like hitting him. Morag didn’t; she felt like kicking him. I was worried that she was getting too violent. However, Buck managed to lean out of the way of the kick. Morag looked pissed off and Buck just grinned at her.

‘Maybe you want to watch the mouth-’ I managed to say before Rannu kicked Buck so hard it picked him up off the bike and knocked him to the ground. I cringed as the paintwork got another scratch.

‘Fuck!’ Gibby shouted. He sounded genuinely distressed.

‘Thanks,’ Morag said to Rannu. Buck clambered back to his feet looking livid.

‘You boys play nice now!’ Mrs Tillwater shouted from where she was standing with the rest of the Commancheros, presumably swapping recipes or something. Buck picked the bike up again, grimacing as he looked at the paintwork.

‘We’re finished here,’ Buck said. ‘You ain’t getting shit from us.’

‘You owe us,’ Mudge said.

‘How you figure that?’ Buck asked.

‘You fucking left us there to die.’

‘We didn’t like it none,’ Gibby said. ‘But we didn’t really have much of a choice.’

‘And so fucking what? That was then, this is now. I’m over it,’ Buck added.

‘You fucking over it if I come back and bugger you to death with an exhaust pipe?’ Mudge asked. Suddenly we were all looking at him. ‘What?’ he asked. ‘It’s a threat.’ Buck revved the engine again.

‘Like I said, we’ve all gotta go sometime,’ the cyberbilly said.

‘Yeah, but an exhaust pipe?’ Gibby said, looking a little disturbed. Buck gunned the engine.

‘This,’ he said, patting the bike, ‘this is what it’s all about.’

‘Look, I like bikes as much as the next guy, and that’s a sweet ride,’ I said, momentarily distracted. ‘But there’s more important things at stake here.’

‘No. There’s nothing more important. I know this and that’s why I’m free,’ Buck said.

‘Yeah, I’ve seen your freedom,’ Mudge said. ‘You guys are free to die of cancer, free to die of respiratory problems, free to have deformed kids and slowly rot away.’

‘Live free and die of cancer – John Wayne taught us that,’ Buck said.

‘Who?’ I asked.

‘I ought to have you horse-whipped,’ Buck snarled.

‘Can we talk or not?’ I demanded. Buck’s live free and die young crap was almost as irritating as Balor’s warrior crap. I wondered why people, men usually, couldn’t make it through life without developing some kind of crackpot code of ethics.

‘Maybe we should, man,’ Gibby said. ‘We’re fucked anyway. These guys might be jerks but Rolleston’s a real fucker.’

‘Rolleston never done marked up my bike,’ Buck said.

‘If you guys help us there’s a chance, a slim one, but a chance that things could change sufficiently that Rolleston might not be a problem any more,’ Pagan said.

‘You wanna talk to me?’ Buck said. I nodded. ‘Go get your bike. We’ll talk up there.’ He pointed up at the most distant high-rise.