Wild Country

CHAPTER 13

Earthday, Messis 12

Jana repacked her toiletry kit and left the public showers in the train station. She handed the attendant the washcloth and towel, along with the ticket that confirmed how many items she had received, so that she could get back the deposit she’d had to put on the darn things—as if someone would want to take a threadbare washcloth and scratchy towel.

Then again, those things might be a luxury for some people at this point. At least she’d thought to bring some of her own soap in a waterproof container and didn’t have to use the bar soap that was supplied for everyone’s use.

She was grateful that she didn’t have to spend money on a hotel room in order to take a shower, which some of her more fastidious fellow passengers had done, but this hadn’t been something she had considered about the reality of traveling a long distance. Their car had toilets and small sinks to wash your hands and splash water on your face, but that didn’t alter the fact that after two days of travel, everyone was starting to smell a bit ripe.

Part of the adventure. But it made her wonder about the personal side of her new life. She’d thought plenty about the professional side, imagining different scenarios of meeting her boss, the Wolf, for the first time. What about the woman who would be her housemate? What kind of house would they be living in? There had to be indoor plumbing, right? Right?

Which was a harder way to travel—four straight days with the nightly stopovers or breaking up the journey and being stuck in a small town for a full day because trains didn’t run on Earthday anymore? More experienced travelers probably used the day to take in a movie or eat a decent meal or rent a room at the hotel. Some of the people going to Bennett had done enough traveling in the Northeast to feel confident that they could navigate through an unfamiliar town and believe the train wouldn’t pull out of the station when they were still a couple of blocks away. For the rest of them, the thought of being stranded in a border town, without luggage, without the papers that proved you had the terra indigene’s permission to cross the border, without anything to go back to even if you had enough money on you to pay for a ticket . . . Those were the reasons most of the passengers who had traveled from Lakeside were staying close to the station, making use of a sandwich shop or the diner that was open. And even those businesses would close an hour before dark, leaving passengers to spend another night on the train or in the train station.

Part of the adventure, Jana reminded herself as she wandered over to the station’s shop. The small space held everything from bottles of aspirin and toiletries to coloring books and decks of cards. There were a few postcards, but nothing that appealed to her.

Turning away from the postcards, Jana focused on the paperbacks in a spin rack. She’d found out the hard way that she couldn’t read when the train was in motion. She hadn’t embarrassed herself or caused her fellow passengers any discomfort, but she didn’t want to gamble with nausea again. Still, she’d have plenty of time to read this evening, just like the other evenings when the train pulled into a station for the night.

She looked at each book that was available. Some of the books held no interest for her and others she’d already read. But it was something to do, a reason to linger away from the train a little while longer.

No authors with last names ending in “gard.” Was that because the station didn’t want to stock anything written by a terra indigene or was it because the person who ordered the books didn’t know such books existed? Would the bookstore in Bennett carry books written by the Others as well as books written by Intuits? She’d have to ask John Wolfgard, since he’d told her he was going to manage the bookstore.

She selected a thriller, then put it back when she realized the gun for hire was a human and the villains in the story were terra indigene. That was when she noticed the woman sitting in a dark corner, half hidden by the spin rack. The body language made her think runaway, but the woman was an adult. Short brown hair. The corner was too dark to tell the color of the woman’s eyes. Jana guessed her age to be late twenties or early thirties. Definitely adult. And yet . . . runaway.

“Excuse me.” The woman had a husky voice.

Jana offered a smile but kept her distance. “You need some help?”

“Are you boarding the train in the morning?”

“Actually, I’m returning to the car in a few minutes.”

“The regular car?”

“No, the earth native car. I’m heading for Bennett.”

“Oh.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Was she officially an officer of the law yet?

The woman stood and came closer to the spin rack, closer to the light. Jana noted the way she favored her left side, particularly her left shoulder. The top she wore was oversize—the kind that could be worn off one shoulder. The woman pushed it off her left shoulder, revealing a dark, fist-sized bruise.

“Have you ever dated someone you thought was really great until you learned his being really great was an act and you saw the real man? I was fast enough that he missed hitting my face.” She hesitated. “I need to disappear. He went off to meet up with some friends or cousins or something. I need to be far away before he returns and starts looking for me.”

“I don’t have much . . .” Jana reached for the back pocket of her jeans and the few bills she’d tucked there.

“I don’t need money. I have money. A couple of nights ago, he wanted a ‘loan’ to play a few hands of poker, and when I wouldn’t give it to him, he hit me. So I closed out my savings account, packed my clothes and personal papers, and I caught the first bus out of town. Got off here. I was hoping to cross the border, find some work. But border crossings aren’t easy, or safe, without the right papers.”

From a few comments she’d heard from passengers in the regular car, you could cross the border if you put enough money in the right hand—unless one of the Others observed the exchange. If that happened, you’d end up in someone’s belly and your skin would be nailed to the station wall as a warning.

She wasn’t sure if that was only a story told to scare people into behaving, or if it had started because someone had seen a skin nailed to the outer wall of a train station. She just hoped she didn’t see any evidence that the story was more than a story.

“What’s your name?” Jana asked.

“Candice Caravelli.”

“You in any trouble with the law, Candice Caravelli?”

“No, but Charlie might be. Charlie Webb. He’s the man I was dating.”

The spin rack suddenly started spinning. Coloring book pages riffled. Then . . . nothing.

“What . . . ?” Candice’s brown eyes widened with fright.

Before Jana could think of a reply—or even a way to voice her suspicion of what had just happened—John Wolfgard walked into the station.

“Air says this female is running away from a bad mate,” John said.

Oh gods, oh gods. She hadn’t considered that an Elemental might be listening to her conversation.

Air was not the only Elemental, but Jana was not, was not, so was not going to think about what that might mean when she took a shower.

“Yes, she is,” Jana said. “She needs to get far away from here, and she’s willing to work. Right?” She looked at Candice.

“Absolutely. I’ll do anything.” Candice thought for a moment. “Almost anything. I’ll do any kind of work that’s legal.”

John cocked his head. “You have money for a ticket to Bennett? If I allow you to cross the border with us, you have to come all the way with us. No getting off at one of the stops and leaving.”

“Okay. Why?”

“Because the terra indigene don’t know you.”

There was no mercy in the wild country, no safety in the dark. She had heard that over and over again from Karl Kowalski and Michael Debany while they had tested her skills. They hadn’t been trying to scare her off; they’d wanted her to use caution and common sense because there would be no boundaries between the humans living in her new town and the most dangerous forms of terra indigene.

Candice took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay. Are there jobs in Bennett?”

“There is a lot of work,” John replied. “Tolya Sanguinati is the town leader. He will decide if you can stay and what work you should do.”

“Sanguin . . . Okay.”

“Would you rather stay here?” Jana asked.

Candice shook her head.

Jana helped by hauling the big suitcase. She was stronger than she looked, but she was glad the suitcase had wheels. Even with wheels, she couldn’t imagine Candice pulling it down the street while carrying a soft weekend bag and a purse over the uninjured shoulder. The woman probably had the essentials in the weekend bag so that she could abandon the large suitcase and run if she had to.

John stood beside Candice while she bought the ticket to Bennett. The man in the ticket booth seemed a little too keen for Candice to give him her name, which wasn’t necessary since she was buying a ticket at the station, but John gave the man a toothy smile and said he would take care of the personal information at his end.

They left in a hurry, getting Candice’s large suitcase stowed in the baggage car before climbing the steps into the earth native car.

Jana said nothing when Candice sat beside her. The woman was understandably spooked. Besides, once the train started moving again, people changed seats to chat and get to know the people who would be their neighbors. Hopefully by then, Candice would feel comfortable enough to take a pair of empty seats and they could both stretch out and get some sleep.

“When I first met him, Charlie was so sweet,” Candice said. “Then sweet morphed into sly. He used to take me out to dinner or pay for the tickets when we went to a movie. Then he’d show up and say he was short of cash and would I mind picking up the tab. And then he started showing up, expecting me to give him sex before he ‘borrowed’ some money and went out to play cards or do something with somebody else. By then, he’d said some things that made me realize he was part of some kind of gang and the work that was the reason he had to travel probably was borderline legal at best. But you get hooked, you know? First you get hooked because he acts sweet and then you stay hooked because you’re scared of what he’ll do if you start saying no.”

“You got out,” Jana said, wondering if she’d have to deal with many domestic disputes. “You got out, and now you’re on your way to a fresh start just like the rest of us.”

Candice nodded. Then she sighed. “Men. You can’t live with them; you can’t feed them to the Wolves.”

Jana’s breath caught. She looked around. Nobody listening that she could see. “I don’t think that’s something you want to say once we reach Bennett.”

“Nobody means anything by it,” Candice protested. “Who would take it seriously?” She stared at Jana. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Jana agreed. She closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, but she couldn’t stop thinking about all the ways things could go wrong once more humans arrived in Bennett.

Alone in his hotel room in Shikago, Parlan dealt four hands, all the cards faceup. He studied the cards, much as he studied marks who bought a seat at his table. Whose hand would he bust? Whose hand would he help just enough to almost win the pot? And whom would he help win because the player wasn’t bold enough to bet big, thereby ensuring that Parlan would still be ahead at the end of the night?

A signal knock on the door. “Come in.”

Parlan watched Judd McCall enter the room. A handsome man in a rough sort of way, he had light eyes that didn’t betray his taste for spilling blood when the spilling was needed—or even when it wasn’t needed.

Judd took a couple of glasses and a bottle of whiskey from a tray on the dresser and poured two stiff drinks before sitting at one of the seats at the table. He studied the cards. “You finished up early.”

“Half the people who used to come to play aren’t alive, and I had a feeling that half the people I played with tonight were hoping I wouldn’t realize any IOUs they wanted to put on the table to bankroll their play weren’t worth anything.” Parlan dealt more cards. “Of course, anyone putting in a worthless IOU had a string of bad luck tonight.”

“Of course they did,” Judd agreed. “Do I need to persuade any of them to make a payment?”

“No. Not worth it.” Parlan gathered the cards. “Want to play some blackjack to pass the time while we’re waiting for the others to arrive?”

Judd laughed, a soft, jagged sound. “I know better than to place a bet when you’re the one holding the cards.”

“No bets. Just practice.”

Judd swallowed the whiskey and poured himself another glass. “All right, then.”

Parlan shuffled the cards. “It’s time to move on. Time to get back to the West Coast and pay a visit to Sparkletown. Those are the only people who can afford high-stakes poker right now.”

“Not easy crossing borders, and we’d have to cross three of them to get to the West Coast.”

They’d been on the wrong side of the continent, providing lucrative entertainment in his private railroad car and in private rooms at select hotels, when the whole damn civilized world was torn apart. Toland was useless to him. Henry Hollis had been right. Too much destruction there and travel so limited in that part of the Northeast there was the bad chance of getting stuck. And Shikago? Tonight had shown him he’d already wrung the gamblers who could afford to play with him out of everything he could. They had to move on and find another rich vein of fools, and that meant getting out of the Northeast Region.

After a few hands, Judd pulled some papers out of his inside jacket pocket and tossed them on the table. He smiled. “Couldn’t get us over all the borders to get back to home territory, but there are the papers that will get all of us on a train that will cross into the Midwest. It leaves tomorrow. Also arranged for your private car to be added to the train.”

Parlan didn’t ask how Judd persuaded the men responsible for border crossings to provide the papers for them and the private car. Judd always knew just how to apply the right kind of pressure to the right person to smooth their travel arrangements.

“Destination?” he asked. Not that it mattered.

“For now, we have passage on a train running along the High North border,” Judd replied. “Can’t say if there’s anything left beyond the towns with the stations.” He studied the whiskey in his glass. “Sweeney Cooke slipped across the border, picked up a car once he was across. He said the previous owner wouldn’t need it anymore, so the cops aren’t going to be looking. What cops are left, that is.”

“What’s he doing on his own?” Parlan asked. Sweeney wasn’t family and wasn’t sharp enough for most of the cons and games the clan played. But he had a talent with his fists, much like Charlie Webb. Those two were hammers and useful when needed. Judd, on the other hand, was a knife.

“He heard rumors about abandoned towns and decided to take a look. First one he came to wasn’t completely abandoned. The survivors made him uneasy, so he headed back out. The next town he came to was empty. Nobody and nothing living there, but the stores and houses were full of things for the taking—money, jewelry, liquor. He had plenty of loot in the car when I slipped across the border and found him.” Judd leaned his forearms on the table. “Might want to think of setting up a headquarters, a place where we can hold our acquisitions. We can take over a couple of houses. There’s food available, not to mention cars and gasoline. Once we strip the carcass of one town, and sell off everything worth selling, we can move on to the next.”

“And if the next one is inhabited?”

Judd shrugged. “If the odds are against us and the saloon is open, you can play a few hands of poker to liven up the evening. If there’s only a handful of squatters or survivors, well, who would be surprised to discover they didn’t survive after all?”

Parlan studied the other man. “Sweeney would have fixed on easy pickings, and he’s good at finding such people and places, but he wouldn’t have thought about setting up headquarters and all the rest.” Ever since that talk with Henry Hollis, he’d been thinking about the need for some kind of base of operations.

“Nope. He would have gone around in that car, filling up the trunk with money, the backseat with jewelry, and the front passenger side with bottles of liquor to keep them within easy reach. And sooner or later, if someone he feared didn’t insist that he deposit the loot at headquarters, he’d drive into a town that still had a sheriff, and the sheriff would notice all that appropriated jewelry, and things would turn sour for all of us.”

“So we keep him close enough to control but let him off the leash often enough to satisfy his acquisition fever,” Parlan said. And other base needs.

“That was my feeling,” Judd agreed.

“Did you appropriate all the loot and put it in a safe place?”

“Of course. Sweeney wasn’t happy about that, but he didn’t argue long. I gave him enough money that he could buy a couple of hours with a whore and take his disappointment out on her.”

“He thinks with his cock too much of the time. He’s going to screw up a job one of these days.”

Judd smiled. “He does that, I’ll screw him.”

Parlan frowned at something Judd had said. “You slipped across the border and came back?” Since phones didn’t work between regions, that was the only way Judd could have found out about what Sweeney was doing.

“Pick a back road and do it quick and quiet. One man can do it if he can reach an inhabited place and blend in. The clan wouldn’t be able to get across that way. We’d draw too much attention. Each on his own, some of us would make it back to the West Coast, but not all of us.”

Parlan understood that “all of us” didn’t include anyone but the Blackstone family and Judd. “No checkpoints on the roads?”

“Might be on the highways used by trucks hauling freight, but not the smaller roads. Then again, the only time I didn’t feel like I was being watched was when I found Sweeney in that little hole-in-the-wall town. Made sure it looked like an exchange of goods, and came back.”

One by one, the men arrived at the hotel room to report any information of interest. The first ones were Parlan’s son, Dalton, and his brother, Lawry. Sweeney Cooke, having successfully snuck across the border into the Midwest, was staying there and awaiting instructions from Judd.

The last man to arrive was Charlie Webb, who was baffled and furious that the piece he’d been screwing had run off before he could squeeze the last dollar out of her, and all because he’d given her a little needed discipline.

“Charlie,” Judd said, “once we cross the border you can buy all the company you want.”

Charlie looked like he wanted to argue, but nobody argued with Judd.

At Parlan’s signal, Judd explained about the abandoned towns and how Sweeney had already scouted out a couple of them. Dalton didn’t say much, but Lawry thought having a headquarters would be a fine idea. And Charlie, fixated on the woman who had run out on him, thought having a place so far out of the way that women would have to stay put and be agreeable was just what they needed.

“Then we’re agreed that we should look for such a place?” Parlan asked.

It wasn’t really a question. He was the leader, the front man, with his quaint manners and clothing that made him look like a successful gambler from the frontier days. The fact that he and his family were Intuits made being successful so much easier.

The men agreed, as he’d known they would.

Parlan smiled. “Then tomorrow morning, the Blackstone Clan will board our private car and head to the Midwest.”