Peace in an Age of Metal and Men (5 page)

“You always drive people around for Jo?” I asked.

Abi squinted at me. “You always a nosey gossip?” She hiccupped. Smiled sheepishly.

“Not certain I’ve ever been described as such.”

She seemed to consider me for a while. “Aunt Jo keeps me safe.” There was a bitter taste of resentment in her voice.

Abi reeked of whiskey. It wasn’t that she was drunk so much. Her body clearly had enough tech in it to handle the alcohol; Nanomachines would process toxins without much trouble. Still, that alcohol had to go somewhere, and by the smell of it she was either belching it out in a gaseous form or sweating it out. There was a slick look to her skin. Truth was, she was hard to place in my head. She seemed like a kid to my old eyes, but really, she was a grown adult. Maybe it was her oversized overalls that made me think she was younger.

“I appreciate the ride,” I said.

She looked like she had something else to say but chose not to say it. Instead, she silently ignored me and concentrated on the many screens around us. On them, the desert slid by. We weren’t going fast, but that was all right with me. We didn’t have a huge distance to go, in the relative-to-Texas sense. A couple dozen kilometers weren’t much in the grand scheme of the Republic of Texas.

“You’re buzzing,” Abi said after a long stretch of silence.

“What now?”

She pointed at my pants. “Buzzing. In there.”

I felt the ammo pouch and realized that she was right. My glow cube was humming pleasantly. When I brought it out, it stopped buzzing and flickered to life. A distorted hologram appeared above it, but I couldn’t make out the image.

“Hello?” I said.

The answer was a distorted string of noise. Abi shook her head and grabbed the cube from me. She opened the center console, revealing a square hole.

“The shielding interferes with it, but it’s all Quintech,” she said. “It’s all compatible. It’s what they used to be known for, Auntie says.” Before I could protest, she jammed the cube into the slot.

Francis William Brown appeared as a sharp, bright hologram above the center console. He stood there blinking at me for a long minute. His white hair had grown long and unkempt. It was hard to remember that the boy was only twelve. His set jaw and emotionless eyes made him look so much older. Francis was the kind of kid who always had a hard time with life but whom nobody ever felt sorry for. The boy wore the same thin white shirt he always wore and his eyes flickered with a purple light.

“Sheriff,” he said by way of a greeting, “where are you?”

“I’m where I need to be, son,” I said. “Where are you? Your brother’s looking for you last I heard.”

“It’s just…” He licked his cracked lips. “I’d like you to see something.”

There was a long silence. Seeing the boy always brought up painful memories, but it sounded like he was showing interest in something. That was a rarity for Francis and it would be terrible to fail to encourage that. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll stop by the ranch soon as I can.”

His mouth opened as if to say something, but then he seemed to reconsider. A smile tweaked the corners of his mouth but didn’t touch his eyes. His image flickered and disappeared.

Abi said, “What was that all about?” She popped the cube out of the console again and tossed it to me.

“Francis Brown,” I said. “I killed the boy’s mama a few years back, and now he has an odd view of our relationship.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“Is anyone not?”

She nodded. The ride passed in silence. Abi, after a while, turned to me and said, “You really live out in the wild?”

“Something like.”

“What’s it like out there?”

“Hard.” The image on the monitor slid by like it was nothing but a model landscape in an old museum. “Every day’s a struggle. We scrape for food and water. We fend off predators, both human and otherwise. Worst is getting noticed. When you’re the littlest guy around it pays to keep quiet.”

“But you like it.”

“It’s better than the alternative.”

Abi chewed on her lip. “Auntie Jo thinks you’re crazy for living out there.”

“Fair enough. I think she’s crazy enough for living in that junkyard.”

“She doesn’t leave it. Hasn’t since she took me in.” Abi’s eyes met mine and I could see a shadow of a painful past lingering there. “She’s afraid someone’s going to take it from her. She’s afraid of men from the city coming to take everything. She won’t let so much as a field mouse sneak into her junkyard.”

“I got in.”

“And you’re lucky she likes you so much. I’ve seen how she deals with strangers.”

There wasn’t much to say about that. Josephine’s paranoia might have been justified. Maybe someone would take the junkyard from her. Could be that they’d take it even if she stayed. The rule of law held a lot of folks in check, but not everyone followed the same rules. Jo’s floating tank started to make a little more sense.

Abi maneuvered Bessie around to land on a dusty outcropping of rock. “We’re here,” she said.

The vehicle unfolded to let us out onto the rocky soil. Abi had landed us in the middle of the remains of an old building. Wooden parts had long since decayed to nothing, but meter-tall stone walls still stood partially buried in fine dust. Clusters of cacti stretched tall from the surrounding landscape, providing a relatively secluded feeling. Not far from the building, the remains of an old road still clung to the idea of existing. The asphalt had long since crumbled, but the soil beneath was packed hard enough that nothing of any significance grew there.

“There’s a zone just over there that’s giving weird signals.” She pointed down the road, where a crooked
wrong way
sign stuck out of the dry earth. The paint on the sign was still legible, despite having been worn down by years and bullets. “That’s where your friend was telling you to go.”

“We can’t fly any closer?”

“No, sir. It’s a few more kilometers at least, but if we get any closer our systems will fail and we’ll drop like a rock.”

“I’ll walk, then.”

“Yes, you will.” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “Can I come with?”

“Nope,” I said. “Too dangerous.”

She blew out a whiskey-scented sigh. “Danger’s fine by me.”

I shook my head.

“Do you know how boring life is, living in a junkyard?” She gave me a moment to answer, but I didn’t. “Pretty damn boring. I want to
go
somewhere. Do something.”

It would be nice to have someone by my side again. The extra eyes would help me spot trouble. Her experience with tech would no doubt be valuable. I liked her. Something about her earnestness was charming. It would be safer to have her with. It would be better.

“No,” I said.

I walked.

Swallow Hill wasn’t hardly big enough to spit at.

The town was Main Street and a few outlying structures nestled comfortably into the cleavage of two rounded hills. The hills protected this little town, making it a beaten-down version of what might have passed for quaint a hundred years prior. Brick façades faced the main thoroughfare. A tavern, a bank, and a general store all lined up nicely across from a clock tower attached to what must have long ago been a church. Farther up the street sat squat residential buildings—some apartments and some single-family dwellings. Beyond that were more hills: cracked, broken mounds that made jagged edges of an otherwise pleasant horizon.

The sun had climbed up the sky, baked the life out of the land, and now, having ravaged another perfectly good day, was lazily drifting back down. Stark, gray towers, about a kilometer out of town, hadn’t bothered me one bit. Cracked earth and punctured armor told of a battle long ago, but still these towers stood, sentinels against the sky.

A man stood at the edge of town. His white hair fell in wisps down his back, and his filthy overalls looked like they barely held together. He had a rifle, clutched in his knobby hands. His eyes seemed to stare off into space.

“Howdy,” I said by way of greeting.

He didn’t respond. I waved a hand in front of his face and touched him on the shoulder. Nothing. He was alive and breathing. His eyes flashed a bright blue—light visible even in the sun. Still, he didn’t move to acknowledge me.

What was I doing there? The question nagged me as I passed the man and strolled into town. What was going on had to stop, and a clever man could solve problems without violence. Words were his bullets and truth was his fist. There was a man killing children in Swallow Hill. All I needed to do was figure out who that murderer was and it would be easy enough to hand the evidence over to the town’s law.

Zane had somehow known about the murder, but how much did he know about the town? Closer up, the buildings looked broken. Old. Some even seemed structurally unsafe. The tavern leaned right up against the polished stone bank. Dry earth had blown up against that side of the street, causing the place to have an abandoned look. Other buildings were in much worse shape: even the old church at the head of the square seemed ready to topple. Tables had been set up outside to form an open market, and the theme seemed to continue tentatively into the building. All of the town was worn down: drab and ragged cloth decorating time-scoured wood and stone.

There were people, but they didn’t look much better than the town in which they lived. A sad couple passed me in threadbare clothes. The man’s skin had yellow, unhealthy patches and his fingernails were broken and cracked. The woman at his side was pretty in her way, but sallow cheeks and thinning hair told of a hard life. Her eyes flashed blue as I met them, revealing the tech hidden behind them. I tipped my hat and wondered what they thought of a stranger wandering into their secluded town. Their expressions were filled with worry as they pulled each other close and hurried away. How might they have acted if I’d moseyed into town fully armed? Would their worried caution be replaced with open hostility?

There were others, all of them looking my way as I strolled casually through the center of town. An ancient woman scowled at me from under a flowered hat. Two teenage boys watched me from the shadows of an alley. Across the street, a man in a light-tan duster and a star saw me and approached.

“Long way from home, mister,” he said.

“Sure.”

The man looked me up and down. His fingers touched the pistol at his side.

I didn’t give any ground. “I’m not looking for trouble, Deputy…”

“Sheriff Flores.”

“J.D. Crow,” I said, sticking my hand out for a shake. He didn’t take it. “I’m not here for trouble, son. All I want is a few answers.”

His eyes narrowed. “Folks here don’t see many outsiders, stranger.”

“No, I don’t suppose they do.”

“If you’re looking for trouble—”

“I’m not.” Thought that had been established.

“If you are, there’s plenty to find.” He glanced down at his sidearm. “More than you might like.”

“How many people live here?”

“Last fella come through here looked a whole lot like you. We ran him out of town real quick.”

“What do you folks do out here? Ranching? Manufacturing? Not much trade or you’d have more visitors.”

Flores grabbed my arm. “Listen here, fella.” His eyes flashed brightly enough that their internal glow was visible even in the sun. “This here’s a quiet town. We ain’t rich, but we got our place and all these nice buildings and fancy clothes don’t mean we got anything worth stealing. You so much as look funny at any my people, you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of dead.”

I pulled my arm free. Sheriff Flores wasn’t going to give me anything, so there didn’t seem to be a point in pressing matters.

Nothing was going to happen outside of talking, so I went where talking was best. The tavern was a crooked, smoke-filled mess of oak and steel. Blue lights hung from the ceiling, piercing the cigar haze with razor-sharp rays. A more diffuse glow came from somewhere above, reflecting from the smoke and doing more to obscure than illuminate. Paint on the inside walls was caked on in layers, chipped down to the wood in places. The bar was solid mahogany with tarnished metal stools. There were only two tables in the entire place; one was circled by four men playing poker.

The bartender, a white-haired man with big belly and a finely articulated artificial right hand, frowned at me as I moseyed slowly up to the bar.

I held up two fingers. “Whiskeys.”

He nodded, filled two shot glasses with a golden liquid. The aroma calmed me and brought me back. There was a time when I’d have had trouble with the alcohol. Drinking one whiskey would lead to another, then another, then another. That was years ago. I hadn’t had a drink in so long.

“I’ll have another,” I said. My first two shots were down. “Make it two.”

The barkeep’s frown deepened. “Eight stars,” he said. “Coin. No credit.”

I fished the coins out of a pocket and dropped them on the bar. The barkeep nodded and poured two more glasses. Then he turned around to a stove where he was frying up something that smelled like fat and spices. Thick sausages rolled around in the pan. He looked back at me questioningly.

Bile bubbled up in the back of my throat. The image of the slaughtered boy flashed in front of me. Sausages. He had been next to a sausage-making machine. There was no way to know if that boy had made it into the sausage machine, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to take the risk. The two shots of whiskey looked up at me like the yellow eyes of death. There was peace in them. An answer. Get lost. Let it all go. Be at peace.

Be dead.

It was good whiskey. The best. Those first two shots still lingered in the back of my throat, calling out to their friends. The alcohol had little effect. The nannies in my blood burned it off almost as fast as I could drink, but alcohol slowly killed the bastards. All that tech inside of me would die if I drank hard enough. Eventually, I’d overload the nannies and they’d stop repairing my body from the damage done by my metal arm.

They’d recover, though. They always did. It always hurt.

Behind me, one of the poker players won a hand, hauling in hundreds of stars in a single bet. I glanced sideways at him. Of all the men there, he was the only one who looked like he made some money. He was a man in his thirties, smooth-skinned and bright-eyed. He grinned at winning, but he didn’t look down at his money. Instead, his gaze flickered from one opponent to the next, as if sizing them up. As if expecting trouble.

“Mighty nice town you have here,” I said to the barkeep.

The barkeep turned to me, bent down so our eyes were level, and said, “Mister, we plan to keep it that way.”

Our scowls locked, his face twisted into a mask of disgust that didn’t seem to fit his rosy cheeks and soft jowls. The poker players stopped, filling the room with a heavy silence. The barkeep’s hand moved slowly under the bar out of sight, but he kept his eyes right on me. Muscles in his neck tensed, like he was some great bear ready to rear up and maul someone for waking him up. His eyes flashed with an inner light.

I spoke through gritted teeth. “Barkeep, best take your hand off of that weapon.” For a second, I didn’t know if he would back down. A man protecting his place of business could be a fierce thing. “I’m unarmed.”

His scowl turned to a mirthful grin and he stood back from the bar. He laughed from his belly. “Just giving you a hard time.”

I grunted.

The poker players anted up.

“Why are you in town?” The barkeep pulled out a rag and started wiping down the already clean bar. “Swallow Hill ain’t on the way to anywhere, and it ain’t on the way from anywhere.”

“Well,” I said. “Heard the whiskey was good and the people friendly.” I downed another shot.

“You’re half right.”

“That’s good whiskey.”

He polished the bar with a scrap of filthy cloth. “We’re not so bad. Just don’t like rough-looking strangers walking into town, especially after all that’s been going on.”

“Trouble?”

He bit his lip and leaned closer. “Don’t think it’s a bad town, but we have our issues.”

I met the man’s gaze and gave him a questioning look.

“Kids gone missing. Three of them now. Just gone.”

“Seems like a lot of folks have gone missing. It’s mighty sparse out there considering the size of the town.”

His face was hard to read. “Lots of folks working long hours.”

I nodded. “The way of the world.”

He was peering at me and I could see the lights flashing in his corneas. “When we find the fella responsible for them kids, it ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“No.” My voice was barely a whisper. “I don’t imagine.”

“Another whiskey?”

“Nope.” The taste of bile still hung in the back of my throat. No amount of whiskey was going to chase it away. “Tell me, though, is there a pig farm nearby?”