The Hammer Falls Page 19

  A sound began to grow from somewhere inside. The wall started to vibrate. Something echoed within, the sound of a turbine.

  “Look out!” Bunny said. “The signature for a security drone just popped up.”

  “It’s awake!” Tina said. “Ahh!”

  Horace heard a nasty crackling pop through his earbuds, corresponding with a sound inside he couldn’t identify.

  So much for stealth. Horace snapped on the vibro-axe and chopped into the door lock. The steel door gave way like sackcloth under the edge of the axe. Moments later he had torn through the lock and flung open the door.

  In the distance, through the forest of girders, a dark, shark-like bulk was floating toward them, beacons flashing on its stubby wings. Tina huddled about thirty feet from him behind one of the plastic-swathed regeneration stations.

  “It shot something at me!” she said, clutching her shoulder. A shimmering bluish laser beam flicked across the distance, held for a split second on the regeneration station, then a massive, blinding arc of electricity thundered like the arc of a welder down the rod-straight pathway of light. Sparks exploded, fountaining over Tina. The stench of ozone and burnt plastic filled the air.

  Horace lunged for her. A massive chunk fell away from the station sheltering her, released by a gouge in the molten plastic. The drone was still a hundred meters away but closing quickly.

  Horace snatched a handful of her sweatshirt and flung her toward the back door. She hit the ground and rolled to her feet as if she had planned it herself. Then Horace grabbed up one of the regenestations and piled it on top of another.

  He heard Tina scrambling to her feet, running for the back door. “Come on!” she called.

  Another blinding glare of laser, then the snapping arc of electricity down the beam blasted the regenestation he had just moved, bowling it back into him, knocking him off his feet and his vibro-axe out of his hand. His breastplate and shoulder guard caught the worst of the blow, but it took him a moment to right himself and snatch up his axe. He lunged for the door and heard the tearing whine of a minigun. Something caught his leg in midstep and spun him around, knocking him off his feet again. Pain exploded up his thigh, but he scrambled to his feet toward the back door. Another minigun burst raked the area with hundreds of high-velocity projectiles. Spots of dim light emerged in lines and patterns on the loading dock doors and walls as the bullets perforated them.

  Then he was outside, Tina was waiting for him, and they were both pelting toward the back gate. His thigh throbbed, forcing him into a limp. He tried to feel whether he was bleeding, but his fingers couldn’t find any breach in the carbon-fiber armor.

  The bus pulled up on the street behind the back gate.

  “Move your butts!” Bunny cried over the earbuds. “Guards here in one minute!”

  From the opposite end of the factory, the sound reached them of the massive main doors opening. The drone was coming out.

  His legs pounded, his breath huffed, the bus started to move away without them. Tina leaped inside. He grabbed at the open door and pulled himself inside, dragging one of his feet across the gravel for several meters until he righted himself, climbed up into Trask’s compartment, and collapsed on the floor.

  The door closed behind him.

  Bunny was already gunning the power plant, and the massive tires spun on gravel and concrete. A hard crank on the wheel rolled Horace against the wall. Everything that was not nailed down spun and rolled and tumbled to the floor. Glass shattered.

  “If that drone sees us, we’re fucked!” Horace called.

  “I know!” Bunny yelped.

  The wind whipped through the shattered windows as the bus picked up speed. In the distance, Horace caught the flashing lights of security vehicles weaving through the dark streets.

  “Like I said,” Bunny called back, “I gave the human guards plenty to think about. But that drone’ll spot us immediately. Except for one thing...”

  The bus charged through a chain-link gate and down a narrow path between towering mountains of metal and plastic.

  “This junkyard right here,” Bunny said.

  The bus rumbled down the floor of a great canyon of civilization’s cast-off detritus. Crushed cars; appliances; endless, countless, trackless mounds of manufactured garbage. The outside air wafting through the shattered windows smelled of old lubricants, chemicals, hydraulic fluid, and rust.

  The bus eased into a box canyon in the garbage and stopped. The power plant spooled down.

  “Hopefully, it won’t spot us among all the garbage, even from above,” Bunny said.

  On the main path about forty meters distant sat an office shack. A light flicked on in the window.

  “Uh oh,” Tina said, pointing.

  The front door opened and an old man tottered out of the shack, wearing nothing but striped bikini underwear and a few wisps of gray hair in unusual places, clutching a shotgun in both hands. His rheumy eyes found their way through the darkness and fixed on the bus.

  Horace stepped outside, peeled back his mask, and approached the man slowly, hands in the air. “Evening!”

  The old man trained the shotgun, a semi-automatic assault model, on Horace’s chest. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  “Uh, we don’t want any trouble. We just uh...” He thumbed toward empty window bays, fluttering with curtains behind him. “We need some windows.” He grinned as wide as he could.

  In the distance, the whine of the drone’s turbine drifted toward them on the breeze.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Goddamn, you’re a big sumbitch,” the old man said. His eyes narrowed. “Don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  Tina stepped around him, “This here’s Hammer Harkness, sir. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

  “Heard of him? Shee-it!” A grin tugged at the corner of a toothless mouth. The muzzle of the shotgun sagged for a moment, then snapped up again. “What the hell are you doing in my junkyard at this time of night?” He stalked closer.

  “Well, you see, sir,” Tina said, hands raised, edging closer to him, “there’s a bunch of Russian mobsters have a base in one of these old factories, and we kind of pissed them off.”

  The old man spat. “I see them fuckin’ limousines come and go, like they’s better’n ever’body else. What’d you do to piss ’em off?”

  Horace said, “Killed one of them.”

  “On purpose?”

  Horace nodded solemnly. “I don’t do that sort of thing accidentally. I’m a professional.”

  The old man chuckled but didn’t lower the shotgun. “I was hoping The Freak would kick your ass. Had money on him, that stumpy fucker.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, sir,” Horace said. “Maybe next time.”

  Bunny’s voice crackled in Horace’s earbud. “Can you get the heck under cover before that drone spots your heat signatures?”

  The noise of the drone’s distant turbine echoed in the canyons of junk.

  “Sir,” Tina said. “Want to come inside? I know where the boss keeps some mighty fine scotch.”

  “Got anything else? Scotch tastes like puke.” The old man lowered the shotgun. Then he looked down at himself, still naked but for the striped bikini briefs, glanced at Tina, then shrugged and walked toward them.

  Tina and Horace did their best to hurry him into the bus. He sat down on a chair with a grunting sigh and cradled the assault shotgun over one scrawny arm like he was hunting partridge with granddad’s old single-shot. Sitting in the chair with his white-fuzzed paunch hanging over his briefs and resting on spindly legs, he resembled a squatting baby bird. “Awful dark in here.” He squinted toward Tina, looking her up and down.

  The only light came from Trask’s desk lamp. As the sound of the drone drifted in with a puff of breeze, she turned the light down further until all of them became vague silhouettes in the darkness.

  “What you got there to drink, missy?” the old man said.

  “Cuban rum?” Tina suggested.<
br />
  “Sold.”

  Glasses clinked and a bottle of aged rum appeared.

  The old man put a hand on his knee and looked around Trask’s cabin. “Hey, weren’t you all doing some sort of soiree earlier tonight? It was all over the net.”

  “We were,” Horace said.

  His eyes widened in amazement. “Is this the same goddamn vehicle? What the hell happened, did war break out while I was sleeping?”

  “Something like that,” Horace said.

  Tina brought them glasses of rum and kept one for herself.

  The old man raised his glass. “Here’s to swimming with bow-legged women.”

  They raised their glasses and drank. The old man smacked his lips in appreciation.

  Horace offered his hand to shake. “I didn’t catch your name, brother.”

  The old man shook. “Terrence. Damn glad to meet you both. Hoh-lee shite, this is gonna be a story to tell my buddy Coocher. He won’t never believe me.”

  The floor was littered with holo-prints, scattered during the fevered flight from the first drone attack. In the dimness, Horace could see well enough to pick up one of his, and he happened to have a marker still in his pocket. He autographed the holo and handed it to Terrance. “This’ll help.”

  “Why, thank you kindly!”

  Bunny’s voice spoke in Horace’s ear. “Ask him if he’s seen anything besides limousines.” The door to her compartment was closed.

  “So, Terrence,” Horace said. “How long you been here?”

  “On this planet? Seventy-eight years. In this junkyard, twenty-two. Took it over from my brother, God rest his useless ass.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of stuff come and go.”

  “I see everything come and go, mostly go. Every few years some politician or CEO decides he’s gonna refurbish this area. They pump a shitload of money in, try to buy out the geezers like me, bring new companies in, but it never works. When some new company they just lured in finds out how the ground is so polluted it makes all the workers sick, and the water supply in this area makes a nice oily film in your coffee cup—if you’re idiot enough to drink it—well, that’s pretty much the end.”

  “The InVista plant, you know it?”

  The whine of the drone’s turbine echoed a little louder in the canyons, but their irregularity made it impossible to track direction or distance.

  “Go past it all the time. Hard to call it a plant. Can’t say they’ve ever had anyone working there unless they got just a handful of employees and they all ride in limos. Seen a couple transports at the loading dock, but the transports said Regenecorp.” The old man took another sip of rum and shrugged. “It’s all bullshit anyway. The corps, the gub’mint, all of it. The only thing that really matters in this life is friends.” He stabbed at finger at Tina. “You listen to me, little girl. Friends is everything. The people you care about is all what matters. There’s your Old Fart Wisdom for the day. Come back tomorrow and I’ll give you another dose.”

  Tina smiled. “A girl can’t have too many friends.”

  “Oh, hell yeah, you can! Too many, and they ain’t friends no more. You get you a nice tight bunch, and you cleave to ’em. The older you get, the more you need to hold on to the people from the young’un days.” He squeezed his fingers into a fist and pulled it toward his chest.

  A warmth of truth washed through Horace at this. And then came the accounting. He had no one like that. They were all gone.

  The sound of a turbine grew suddenly louder.

  Terrence glanced back and forth between them. As if coming to an abrupt decision, he downed his rum. “Well, I thank you for the hooch. But I oughta be getting back to bed.”

  “Sure you won’t stay for one more?” Horace said.

  The sound of the aircraft ebbed and diminished.

  Terrence cocked an ear at the sound and said quickly, “I gotta get back to bed.” He gathered himself to stand.

  “Here it is straight, Terrence,” Horace said. “That drone out there is not patrolling; it’s hunting. You poke your ass outside that door, it’s likely to get shot off. Another one just like it slaughtered at least a dozen of our buddies tonight.”

  Terrence sank back into a chair, eyes wide.

  “And it was legal,” Tina said.

  Terrence snarled. “Fucking corps.”

  “You said it, brother. You’re a lot safer sitting here with us until that thing leaves.”

  Terrence took a deep breath and let it out slowly, fingering his shotgun. Then he swallowed hard. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll need another jolt to get back to sleep after this anyway. This story’s gonna give ol’ Coocher a shit-hemorrhage.”

  Tina poured him another, and he took it with a leathered, trembling hand.

  The whine grew louder, and Horace’s spine clenched tight. He stood, readying himself to act.

  Bunny’s voice came into his ear. “Nobody make a sound.”

  He put a finger to his lips for Terrence.

  Terrence swallowed hard, downed his rum again, and took his shotgun in both hands.

  Another puff of breeze wafted the scent of jet exhaust into the cabin. The sound rose.

  And fell.

  And rose.

  And fell.

  The sounds echoed through the junkyard canyons for interminable minutes.

  The sound continued to diminish for what seemed like an hour.

  Finally, Bunny said, “It’s moving away. But we have to give it some time, stay out of line of sight. The targeting optics on that model can see a mouse from orbit.”

  With those words, Horace could breathe again. “Terrence, it’s probably safe for you to go, if you keep your head down.”

  Terrence let out his own breath. “Gawddamn, that was just like in a movie!”

  “I hate movies,” Tina said.

  “All right, then, I’m gonna mosey home,” Terrence said. “You’re welcome to stay awhile.”

  “Thanks, brother. And don’t worry about the gate. We’ll pay for that.”

  The old man nodded, then stood up, stretched his legs, and turned toward the door. The back of his underwear disappeared between pale, wrinkled cheeks.

  Tina clutched a guffaw tight into her mouth.

  Sunrise crept between the mountains of refuse, casting dark, jagged shadows over old tires, refrigerators, battered vehicles, water heaters, and countless discarded relics of use and obsolescence. Horace dozed on Trask’s sofa, Tina curled up like a fetus between the arms of the office chair. Light filtered through the breeze-ruffled curtains, nudging him to wakefulness.

  He elbowed himself upright with a groan, stood, and stumbled outside to relieve himself near the garbage. In the morning silence, tremendous snores echoed from Terrence’s shack, and he couldn’t help but smile. “Jesus, what a sight, that old coot.”

  There it was again, that word. Old.

  He chided himself. No time to feel sorry for himself.

  “Bunny,” he said, knowing his netlink was still set to intercom mode. “Are you awake?”

  “I am now.”

  “How soon before we can roll out of here?”

  “The coast is clear now, I think. The drone has been back in the shed for about half an hour.”

  “Have you talked to Trask?”

  “He’s out. They’re putting his arm back together.”

  “How would you feel about driving us to Vegas?”

  “You’re on Krok.”

  “I’m kidding.” Half-kidding. He had to get to Las Vegas. He had to make all this stop, one way or another.

  “I gave Jimmy some jobs while I took a nap,” she said. “He ran the serial numbers of those regenestations. All of them have been reported stolen.”

  “Then why were they delivered in Regenecorp trucks?”

  “See? You’re not a palooka after all. And we found something else. Those machines were all used at Death Match Unlimited events, the big ones. And all of them are associated with failed resurrections. An
d in all of those cases, the odds said the fighters were expected to make clean recoveries.”

  “So they fudged the odds, killed some fighters, and made millions.” His teeth clenched.

  “Billions. And they ditched the evidence here. They’re too expensive to be simply discarded. Better to take them out of circulation for a while, change the serial numbers, and put them back into play.”

  One of those regenestations, or another like it, could have been hooked up to Gaston. What if Gaston’s resurrection had somehow failed? The entire pit fighting industry relied on the integrity of those machines. For his entire career, he had relied on the integrity of those machines. His insides turned to boiling water, and he swore invective that peeled the veneer from the walls. His entire grand speech to these fighters—those that were still alive—had been turned to so much bullshit.

  “Somebody’s going to pay,” he said.

  Tina sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  “Good, you’re awake,” Horace said. “If it got out that Regenecorp rigged those machines...”

  Bunny said, “They would not be able to withstand the public uproar. Their stock would crash.”

  “Heads would roll.” Horace liked the idea of that.

  “And if Death Match Unlimited found out Regenecorp was pooping around with the lives of their fighters...”

  “A clusterfuck of epic proportions. The fighters would march into corporate headquarters and kill every executive they could find.”

  Tina cleared her throat and piped in. “Then you really would be like Spartacus. You could lead the gladiator rebellion.”

  That was one of her references he understood. “Except weren’t they all crucified along the highway as a warning to others?” After a moment of thought, he said, “Regenecorp has no real competitor. They have the patents locked tighter than a virgin’s asshole.”

  He could practically hear Bunny blush through the earbud. “Uh, right,” she said.

  Tina said, “And if we try to prove this, drag it out into the daylight, those machines will evaporate like the wisp of morning dew on the hair of Hammer’s back.”

  “Uh, gosh, you’re both so...poetic,” Bunny said.