Junkyard War, page 10
“Roy, no!” Annie said, struggling to form the words. “I can explain—”
He fired. Three shots. Into his wife’s chest. Her breath exhaled. She lay still.
Roy walked away, pulling his daughter as if in a dance step. He shot the sniper as they walked past, though the man was already dead. He holstered his weapon, back straight, his body taut.
I stood there, lips parted, breathing too fast, trying to reason out what had just happened.
“He didn’t know his Old Lady had been infected when he said he’d shoot anyone who ran,” Cupcake said as she lifted Annie in her arms, carrying her like a baby. “And when she ran, he didn’t have a choice.”
“Everyone has a choice,” I said as we walked toward the rig.
I knew one thing. I was firmly back in the biker world. And no matter how this ended up, people were going to die. And I was screwed.
* * *
Locking the cats out of the back of the cab, I cleaned up in the truck, trying to wand off the stink of skewed honor, misplaced promises, and the blood and stench of Warhammer’s thralls. I used some of our precious water to wash off any of her nanobots that might have been lurking on Annie’s skin.
I had killed the sniper in cold blood, and I wasn’t upset by that in the least. But Six-Gun Annie’s death and Camilla’s tears, and even the memory of the brown-eyed woman I had killed at the beginning of all this, had unleashed something in me. Something bitter and miserable. It had been compounded by the bleak purpose in Roy’s eyes as he carried out his promise.
I pulled on clean underwear, but had no clean jeans, no clean shirt. I tried the wand on the cloth, but all it did was turn the blood black. When I was decent, I opened the tiny door to see Spy sitting like some Egyptian goddess on the back of the passenger seat, her odd eyes—one bright green, the other bright blue—on mine. I figured she wanted to chat, and though I didn’t want anyone’s mind in mine, I plopped down in the narrow space between the seats and stared at her.
“I know you think me being upset about Roy killing Annie is stupid, but there’s something about it that stuck me right here.” I tapped my chest. “Did you know that my father sent me into the bowels of a Mama-Bot war machine, carrying a mini-nuke in my backpack?” Tears gathered in my eyes. “It was pink. The backpack. Not the nuke.” I laughed, a single bark that sounded just a little crazy. “My own father. What kind of person does that? What kind of person sends his little girl into the heart of the enemy?” I shook my head. “I’ll tell you what kind of person. The same kind who kills his own wife in front of his daughter just to save face, just to keep a promise and a threat.”
Spy continued to watch me, her eyes steady, unblinking. She sat tall, her front feet together and her tail wrapped around them. Regal. Like the queen she would become when Tuffs died or stepped down.
“That’s part of the reason I left the OMW after Pops died. I knew I’d infect and kill the people I loved. I was so tired of war. So tired of that macho bullshit way of life. So I ran away. To a junkyard. Running from one macho business to another. I guess I didn’t run far from the lifestyle, did I? Basically, I’m a big tangled ball of mixed-up emotions and screwed-up thinking patterns. In my own way, I’m worse than Roy.” I laughed again, that horrid broken noise, and wiped snot and tears off my face. Crying was foreign. Unexpected. “I killed Pops trying to save him. I swore I’d never transition anyone ever again, but I did when I saved Mateo. And Grant Zuckerman, because I was lonely. Did you know his bones are still underneath some John Deere tractors?” My breath hitched on a sob.
Spy didn’t respond. Her tail tip twitched once.
“I transitioned Mateo. Cupcake and Amos and Jagger. Enrico. And Tuffs, though to give myself at least a little credit, I had no idea that I could transition a cat. And Amos asked to be changed. And Jagger was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fine. I have some excuses. But”—I looked out the windshield, seeing only a square of sky—“I broke my own promises. Then there was Wanda. Alex. And now Razor, just because I wanted to show her who was boss.”
So far, I hadn’t touched anyone here except Razor. Part of me hoped she wouldn’t survive her second transition. Another part was ashamed that I had that thought.
Spy tilted her head and one ear twitched. Her odd eyes studied me.
I wiped another tear off my cheek. “I’m talking to a cat that would eat my dead body if I died. Yeah. Right. Thanks for listening. You got something to say?”
Spy dropped to one of my thighs, which were curled in the yoga position, and stood, her front paws on my chest. She lowered her head and waited.
I put my forehead to her furry, fuzzy one, and the world around me swirled, went dizzy, shifted sideways. Nausea rose, but my world stabilized before I gagged and vomited, so that was good.
In Spy’s strange greenish cat vision, which had no reds and very little yellow, I saw six clowders of cats, each clowder sitting in a tight group in a space that was mostly fog or clouds. Fog was rare enough that I knew the cat groupings were figurative or perhaps allegorical in some way that was important to Spy, but was not reality or an actual memory as I understood those things. The clowders were arranged in a circle, each led by a female, each group facing the center.
In that center was Tuffs.
There was something odd about the circle of cats, with Tuffs as the heart of their universe. In another time, with other creatures, the six points might actually have suggested a star, the kind used in magic or religion or geometry. Since it was cats, and they had indicated no affinity to magic, no religious leanings, and I hadn’t caught them doing algebra or geometry, I figured it was coincidence.
Spy sent me a picture of one group of cats getting up from the circle and walking through the fog to Marconi. It was an odd overlay of allegorical vision and reality that made my stomach roil again. Another group of cats stood and walked to Whip. Yet another group walked to McQuestion, whose hands displayed a delicate tremor, a vibration of pain. His body stank of grief. I hadn’t realized that grief had a scent. The next two groups of cats joined Bengal and Mama-Killer. Spy walked to me. In her thoughts I was identified by the smell of salmon and milk and the scuffed leather of my work boots.
I pulled my head back, breaking the close mental communication, and met Spy’s eyes. “Tuffs wants a team in each club? She thinks she can keep an eye on the bikers, can keep tabs on my . . . on our friends and enemies. She knows they’ll be hundreds of kilometers apart, right?”
Spy stared at me in that way that meant I had stated the obvious.
“I guess Tuffs has already put her plan into action,” I groused at Spy. “That’s why all the cats are here in the first place.”
It was an excellent plan, and if a human had come up with it, I’d think it was bloody brilliant. The fact that a cat had come up with it was bloody scary. The fact that Tuffs believed she could communicate with her thralls and nest mates through such a distance was bloody terrifying.
“I can’t stop the cats from going with the clubs. But if they go, they might be used in dog-baiting events. If they go and are injured or get sick, no one will be there to set up a vet-bay for them. They could die far from home. Alone.”
Spy agreed. “Hhhhah mmm.” The sound stretched out, longer than usual, followed by “Orrrowmerow,” the sound that meant this is a bad problem.
I figured that meant they all understood the dangers of leaving home. “I won’t be able to make the clubs agree to take cats. If Tuffs and you want to do this, you’ll have to figure it out on your own.”
Spy bowed her head again and shoved it against mine.
I saw a vision of the bikers’ Old Ladies, cats on their laps, stroking the invaders, whose tails were twitching slowly. The cats had charmed the women—black and white, young and old—and because cats could suss out who had the most power in a group of humans, they had bonded with the leaders’ Old Ladies or children. I chuckled again, and this time I almost sounded like me. “The cats have already insinuated their way into the different clubs. Figures. Question. Is Tuffs planning on taking over the world?”
Spy sent me an image of dozens of cats sitting in luxury, being fed fresh raw shrimp by besotted humans. And then a vision of Spy telling Tuffs, and then me, what was happening. “So, you’re in charge of the actual spy groups, and you intended to report back to me?” If I was understanding this right, through the cats I might have access to what was going on in all the biker organizations.
“Hhhhah mmm,” Spy agreed, and broke contact.
I washed my face, smeared on fresh sunscreen and the orange lipstick, and set my orange sunglasses in place. Opening the cab door, I leaped to the ground. Looking up at Spy on the passenger seat I said, “It’s up to Tuffs, the individual cats, and the Old Ladies.”
Spy and her clowder cats, who had been sitting on the running boards, leaped to the ground and wove around my feet. In the distance, I heard gunshots. Gently, I shut the cab door and jogged behind cover, to a spot where I could see the fortress. More gunshots sounded.
If the clubs had gone to war with each other, it would be stupid to charge in. Same if they were just shooting beer bottles. If they were killing their infected members, there wasn’t much I could do about it. “Cupcake,” I asked into my comms system, “what’s going on?”
“One of the Old Ladies pulled a knife on another one, and they ended up brawling in the dirt. Their men pulled guns and fired them into the air. I nearly had a heart attack, but no one’s dead.”
“Why were they fighting?”
“They both wanted the same cat.”
“Bloody damn.” I looked around for Spy, but she was suddenly nowhere in sight. I muttered, “Cats do not have magic. They cannot make humans fall in love with them.” But I remembered the circle of circles, six groups of cats, and the queen in the center. That could be construed as a metaphysical seven and the use of magical power. It could also be an indication that the cats wanted me to make a bigger nest, just as Tuffs had.
I was pretty sure I was slipping off the road into some form of delusional insanity.
“Cupcake, get the vids ready. Now that the thralls are weeded out and the club leaders have seen the trade stuff”—and the blasted cats are causing trouble, I added to myself—“we need to tell them what we want and let them see the cats in action.”
* * *
There have been times in my life when my worldview broke, fracturing into millions of sharp, cutting, jagged edges that left me bleeding. The first time was when the first Mama-Bot crawled out of Possession Sound, Washington, and began destroying everything in its path. The second time was when Little Mama, my mother, took a hit while riding sidecar next to Pops. One minute she was firing at enemy troops; the next she had rocked back in the sidecar, dead. I had never told anyone, but I’d managed to steal the video of her death from Pops and had watched it over and over, bits of me dying along with her each time I watched. The third time was when the bicolor ants swarmed me and I should have died. The worst time of all, when my worldview broke and fell apart, was when I tried to heal and save Pops by transitioning him, and he died instead. There were more, but, to me, a shifting worldview always meant trauma, pain, and death.
When I watched the leaders’ faces as Cupcake narrated Spy’s and Maul’s reconnoiter of Warhammer’s bunker, I saw another way for worldviews to change.
Pulling a rabbit out of your hat doesn’t always mean doing magic, finding a rabbit, or even having a hat. It means making others believe you had done what you claimed they were seeing. And the cats were seemingly taking orders, working as a team, and using rational thought processes to solve problems, which went against a human worldview.
Worse for them was watching rats walk in lockstep, attacking the cats.
The Boozefighter Henry Thibodaux, AKA Bengal, said, “Them rats. They workin’ together.” Despite the name, I hadn’t known he was Cajun until he let down his guard and his childhood accent came flooding back. His dark eyes were on the cats, watching them run away from the rats, which were attacking in a near-military line. “Big as nutria, they is.” He shifted his eyes to me, where I stood in the corner of the poker room in the fortified, repaired house. “That ’cause they infected too?”
I jutted my chin. “Yes.”
“That all got to die. I’m in if we kill all them rats.”
The Black Sabbath leader, J’Ron Walker, AKA Mama-Killer, said, “I seen things big as that in the old subway tunnels. But rats walking like troops is fucking bad.” He looked at Bengal and then to me. “I want to hear the plan, but unless it’s fucking nuts, I’m in.”
Whip, of the Hells Angels, made a cutting motion with one hand and the vid froze on a closeup of Spy’s odd eyes in Maul’s camera. He swiveled in his chair to me. “The cats are working together too. Why? Cats never work as a team.”
I let a bargaining look enter my eyes; it was a combination of knowing more than I was telling, and being willing to share some.
“The rats were turned by Warhammer.”
“And the cats?” Whip asked.
“Theirs is a unique mutation,” I lied, then added a bit of truth. “They eat toxic rats and bats. And they also ate a few of Warhammer’s members.” I shrugged at the expression on Whip’s face. “But the cats don’t answer to her. They don’t answer to anyone, hence the unique mutation. They do, however, work with a team if they feel like it. Cats view their providers as servants and their enemies as protein. It’s efficient.” They also considered their servants, should they pass away, as protein, but I was too canny a bargainer to say that.
“The cats’ mutations left them more like a pride of lions than housecats. It also gave them the ability to understand English, and I’ve been talking to them. A lot. The cats are still independent, like all cats, but if the bargain is good enough, they’ll work with, and as, a team. What you’re seeing is the cats’ willingness to understand a problem and work together because the bargain was good enough.” I grinned just a little. “Bargains with cats always have a protein component. But this time, they want the rats destroyed too, so it’s a win-win for them.”
“The cats talked to you? Told you that?” Whip asked, amusement in his tone but speculation in his eyes.
“Not with words, no. Remember the rat Spy dropped on the table when I first got here? That was her . . . call it her proof of status. Best hunter in the pride. Proof she can take down huge rats. In biker terms she’s the president’s heir and runs her own chapter house.”
Whip studied me for a little too long before he swiveled his chair to Cupcake and pointed at the screen for us to continue. When the vids had been studied long enough for the leaders to all understand the need to take Warhammer down, see what prizes were on the table, and get a feel for the layout of the bunker, Marconi ordered the food be served and we got down to bargaining. I couldn’t take off my gloves and eat, for fear of infecting someone with my nanobots, so I made an excuse, and Cupcake brought me warm broth to sip, which I could do with my gloves on.
No one cared that I didn’t eat. The leaders ignored me, which was fine by me. I didn’t have to offer much, not after they watched the vids. Their own people turning against them and the lockstep of the rats was enough to create a temporary alliance. The potential spoils in the bunker cemented it. All I had to do was throw in some Dragon Scale armor and some of the blasters from the containers I got from Marty’s foundry when I discovered his part in Harlan’s death.
The only sticking point for agreement to attack the bunker was the lack of heavy artillery.
“I am not attacking a war bunker with handguns and blasters, and without military backup,” Whip said. “And if we do bring in the military, they’ll just take their bunker back when we’re done. We’ll have nothing. This meeting is a waste of time.”
That one point—admittedly a pretty major one—also had Mama-Killer standing and ready to ride off into the sunset.
Jagger looked at me, amusement on his mouth. Bloody damn, there was so much I wanted to do with that mouth. And the rest of him. My nanobots stirred.
Unless Jagger had told McQuestion, no one knew about the Simba or the warbot. I had to assume that all of Jagger’s memories had returned, and that my mind-wipe, when he was transitioned, had fallen apart. Yeah, he had probably told his boss. Which was why McQuestion was still sitting. And Marconi probably knew about the Simba from witnesses at the camp where we salvaged it, which meant that Whip knew.
“Stop,” I said. “Wait.” I slipped my comms back into my ears and tapped a small depression. “Now.”
“Now what?” Marconi asked, too knowingly, his expression sly.
Slowly, drawing their attention to every movement I made, I stood and walked to the huge window looking over the hills behind the armored house. “Now this.”
The men gathered in front of me, elbowing me to the side. Which was fine with me, because I got to watch their faces when Mateo drove the Simba down the hills and toward the back entrance, narrowly missing crushing Marconi’s bikes. With the camo feature turned off, it was like watching an entire city block crush across the landscape on tank tracks. Then it stopped. The Simba sat there, in all its mid-war glory, clearly not a piece of scrap, but a war machine with functional weapons.
Mateo didn’t have to get out, so the fact that the driver was a warbot was still a secret. A partial secret. Maybe.
In the poker room, no one moved until Bengal swiveled on his feet and demanded, “What the fuck else you got hid?”
“Not much as you hope. Maybe more than I’ve said.”
The Booze and the Sabbath glared at each other, looked back out the window, and both shrugged. “I’m in,” they both said.
The Simba’s chameleon skin wavered, and it disappeared, visible only by the movement of crushed trees as it crawled up the far hill on its massive tracks.
“And you want nothing out of this bunker except a prisoner, right?” McQuestion asked.
