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A man with no face shield in a BlackStar tunic waved to one of the guards, who quickly ran over and began sopping up the puddles.

  “I guess they don’t want the scrapper to cheat and get paid for too much weight,” York reasoned, now standing near Mi and me.

  And as the driver climbed out, we could see what kind of work he’d chosen. His right arm was covered with bite marks, and his left sleeve was torn in a dozen places. One leg was also wounded, but he was still able to hobble off the skid and stand proud near the booty he’d hauled back in.

  The guns, however, stayed pointed right at his head.

  “One point seven tons,” the clerk in the tunic announced, reading a small dial.

  “More like one point nine,” the driver argued.

  “One point seven. The bottom one has a stripped engine.”

  “Yeah, but the whole block in the top one is grade ore.”

  “I already calculated,” the clerk sneered.

  I admired how the driver put up an argument, but even he didn’t seem to think it was one he would win.

  “Minus truck rental, fuel”—the clerk punched numbers into a small plastic calculator—“burned engine oil, rations, and mileage. Minus rubber, tool rental, ammunition, fluids, and cleanup.”

  The driver nodded again. It looked like he’d heard the swindle before.

  “Six thousand two hundred four chits,” announced the clerk. “Pay the man.”

  “Good haul,” I heard one of the troops mutter as he slid a stack of large chit plates over to the driver. “Better get that to the store before you get robbed.”

  I saw the man snort. Then, slowly, he lifted a sawed-off shotgun out of his belt. As the guards with the machine guns watched, he handed the weapon over. It was quickly tagged and placed in a small locker near the feet of the clerk.

  Now, I believed, he was unarmed. Sure, he was big and scarred and looked like he could crawl through a cactus thicket and come out the other side without a whimper, but he was also just one man.

  And there were five of us.

  “Are we going to rob him?” York asked eagerly. “Before he can stash his loot?”

  I just smiled and turned. When the tow truck, trailer, and scrap were driven away through the guarded gate, I stood in the driver’s path.

  “How ya doing?” I said to him, looking over his heavy leather gear. The years of marks and cuts on a face that was instantly suspicious. A busted-up hand reaching toward the small of his back.

  I think, at that moment, my entire team figured I was going to try to jack this guy.

  But I said, “Looks to me, sir, like you might be needing a new crew.”

  A smile came across his face.

  I went on, “Two of us. You need two new scrappers, right?” My hand waved toward Mi.

  Still suspicious, he nodded slowly.

  “What’s the cut, when we come back?” I asked him.

  “Can you shoot?” His gruff voice made me think of a guy who’d been breathing road dust far too long.

  “Yeah,” I promised, “I can. But my friend here”—another wave at Mi—“she can really shoot.”

  “How’d you know two? That I lost both my men today?” he asked.

  “Best strategy,” I replied, glancing at the retreating tow truck. “One to drive, one to strap cargo, and one to keep the animals away. Any extra weight would just cut into the fuel consumption.”

  I saw his eyes squint, kind of twinkle. “You get twenty percent of whatever we haul,” he announced. “I keep the rest ’cuz it’s my show.”

  “Done,” I said, and put out a hand to shake.

  When he took it, I noticed something right off. Old, dirty, almost faded from view, but there it was: the man had a tattoo wrapped around his big, callused palm.

  Level 24

  First day of work, you never know who to trust or what to believe.

  The guy told me his name was Screw when we showed up the next morning. The tow truck had been rinsed off, most of the blood was gone, and the trailer had been unloaded. All that remained on the bed was a small hoist crane and several heavy cargo straps.

  “You sure the little girl can shoot?” he asked abruptly.

  “Like no one on the planet,” I replied.

  He handed her an old company-issue single-shot rifle and a handful of bullets.

  “That’s not much ammo,” Mi grumbled, climbing into a shooting turret dead center in the back of the truck.

  “Gunpowder don’t grow on trees,” Screw spat. “You waste a single bullet and it comes straight out of your cut.”

  “What do I do?” But I had a good guess.

  “Drive,” he replied. “An’ where did you shrimps learn any of this, anyway?”

  I hopped into the cab and fired the motor. It coughed, it chugged, and I realized auto parts were probably as scarce as full vehicles. If we broke down out there, it was going to be a one-way trip.

  I tried to avoid the question. Indeed, how would two working-class citizens, fresh off the city wall, have a clue how to drive or to shoot? Those are rare skills. Military skills.

  But in a way, we’d already given an answer. Screw’s eyes focused on the tape around my palm. And around Mi’s. He grunted again, and I steered the clumsy, slow-accelerating rig toward the exit from the square.

  “Where we headed?” I asked, watching the half-built wall approach and the safety of the pavement leave my tires.

  “Honey hole,” Screw muttered. “I know a spot. Been good to me.”

  “Same place you went last time?” I remembered that he’d suffered losses. I was sure he remembered too.

  “Not my fault those boys couldn’t cut it. Go south. And stay off anything that looks like a road. Those are bad places to get stuck. Too many hole-traps.”

  I knew he’d had enough talking, so I did what I was hired to do. I drove.

  I knew the instant we rolled under the wooden sign that it was a trap. It’d been over nine hours of driving, I was as stiff and sore as I could ever remember, and my senses were likely dulled.

  Still, we were not dealing with a race of supreme tacticians out here. Whatever these rabid humanoids had become, it was not grandmaster chess players.

  I could see how Screw had been picking the abandoned junkyard. Most of the yard was covered with sand, but a storm had blown clear a short stack of ancient cars. How old were they? Thirty years? A hundred? In this dry air, with the heat and no rain, they might have been even older.

  But c’mon, Screw. Couldn’t he see what was up? Over time, one after the next, he’d lifted the vehicles closest to the entrance. That section was clear. Now he was having to venture farther toward the back row to get at what was left.

  On the left of that row, a bleached wooden slab was now leaning against some large rocks. How could that have gotten there? It made a perfect shield for someone to crouch behind. On the right, three or four fresh mounds bordered one of the rusty heaps. We’d already seen the way these savages dug holes and hid in the dirt.

  The problem was—and I knew Mi was thinking exactly this—we had no communication system. I couldn’t radio her and point out what I’d spotted. I was sure she’d pick it up too, but what would she do? Waste bullets on the mounds? Blast a hole in the wood plank? Or wait for me to just run them over?

  “You know it’s a trap, right?” I said to Screw, shoving my right boot into the brakes.

  “There’s always a trap,” he grumbled, pulling his shotgun from his belt.

  “Let’s be efficient about this,” I recommended. For one thing, I didn’t want one wave of the cannibals occupying Mi while another climbed up from the back and had her for lunch.

  The man barked, “We need the metal. Usually if you shoot a big’n and then back off, the rest’ll gnaw on him while we get the load on the trailer.”

  “Usually?”

  “Four times out of five.”

  “Your odds are weak.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled through broken teeth. “But I’m
still scrappin’, and almost no one else’ll even come out this far. I’m gonna retire after I clean out this lot.”

  “So.” I was still thinking about finding a better way. “Where do these guys live? They must be breeding.”

  A snort. “Oh, yeah, they breed. Most times they don’t eat a woman right off. That girlie of yours is sweeeeet tail. Thanks for not knowing about that and volunteerin’ her to sit up there where they can all smell our bait.”

  OK, he was playing it that way?

  “So they’ve got a camp nearby?”

  “I dunno, man.” He was getting impatient. “They can live in dirt for weeks.” But maybe he was right. Against a mindless enemy, sometimes the best thing to do is just wade in and keep shooting until your barrels turn red-hot.

  “They got nothin’,” he said. “Nothing but the scent of that little baby oven up top.”

  I was getting other ideas about how to handle this, but Screw was chattering, his voice starting to sound panicky as we saw some of the piles on the right begin to shift. “There’s never been enough food for everyone. Some had to get pushed out a long time ago. Same as they’re gonna do again when the wall gets built. Our food allocation will only support so many. Same as it’s always been.”

  “How many?” I asked, slipping the truck back into gear.

  “Well, all the execs, a’course, and the troops. Plus other key personnel like me who know their way around. And the better women. The younger women, then, maybe, is what I hear. . .”

  “What you hear?”

  “Hey, man, I bought my place. I had to pay. Sweat and blood, brought in more metal than any other two scrappers.”

  “So how many of the current citizens building that wall are going to get a place to live, inside, once it’s done?”

  Screw shrugged. “Less than they think.” He chuckled harshly. “One man out of ten or fifteen? Less. The younger women stay. I wish they’d hurry, I’d get my pick. And the kids mostly stay. But the completion of that big metal fence is a death sentence for most. An’ Kode’s got ’em all tricked into hurrying. What a cool scam. They think the ones who get their section done first are first to get on the housing list.”

  I let that sink in. Sure, the wall might be months or years away from completion, but that project had an end date. It would insulate the residents. I could not imagine any city, in these days or the past, from Jerusalem to China’s great wall, not wanting some kind of massive barricade to protect itself from the outside.

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  Screw took his gun off safety. “You do a good job. Got the tat. You’re company meat. So I can get you a spot.”

  “You lying to me?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Did you tell that to the last guy? The one whose blood poured out at the weigh-in?”

  “Course I did. But he didn’t do a good job, did he?”

  Right then, three mounds exploded on our right, and the wooden slab to the left tipped down.

  Man, was I glad weapons were so scarce. If the attackers had been armed, we’d have had no chance. It was a grinder of an ambush spot. There were a dozen of them and only three of us.

  Three of us and, you know, one big truck.

  I gunned the engine, hard, gave it everything it had, and lurched forward in third gear. This made the tires spin like mad, racing to catch the tranny. The whole beast sank a bit in the sand, then plowed out as if kicked in the rear.

  I had good timing. So did our attackers. They came at us like they’d done this before. Screw was trying to steady his weapon to fire out the door, but that stubby thing would only be good at close range.

  I could hear Mi up top, chambering one round, then the next, splattering each head down the line, but now the distance between us and the horde had closed.

  Up close, they were foul. Solid black eyes, like sharks’. Their skin covered with white sores. Teeth filed to points. Scars everywhere, as if when the feeding frenzy started, one bite was as good as another and anyone was fair game.

  I still had my foot pegged to the floor, coaxing every bit of fuel through that engine.

  Screw had shot none. It looked to me like Mi was three for three and lowering her sights on number four. Still, there were eight, maybe ten of the ragged, nude men screaming, bearing down.

  I spun the wheel left, hard, still full on the gas. I had to keep the RPMs high, redlining. If the engine stalled, I’d die by teeth. So would Mi, but not for many, many months.

  The truck fishtailed, missing the horde. But better yet, the trailer acted like a whip, snapping around, cracking an arc as its flat-grate side became a two-ton guillotine. I would have liked to have felt it a bit, to have gotten the visceral satisfaction as the rusted edge collided with all their frail bones and meager flesh, but I was still spinning cookies, flogging them into splatters and splinters.

  Soon my foot came off the gas.

  I heard one more shot from up above.

  Then I kicked open my door and climbed down. All the hidey-holes in the sand were empty. The ground, while sporting deep, circular tire marks from my spins, was much less bloody than I expected it would be.

  In the real world, apparently, blood soaked into porous sand very quickly. And it didn’t gush in buckets like the artists would make you think.

  But also, out here, even though these opponents were no more than animals, I felt something strange. An ache started in my heart and went straight for my gut. I heaved, almost throwing up the chow I’d had a few hours ago, then forced it back down.

  Phoenix, getting sick at the sight of blood? And not much blood, at that?

  Strange.

  Something, however, finally brought me back. It was Mi, climbing down, and you know what she said in my ear?

  “I got seven of them.”

  “Seven?”

  “Yeah, seven shots, seven scavengers. You only got six with your truck stunt.”

  I just stared at her. Apparently, the sickness wasn’t in her gut too.

  “So?”

  But I already knew what she’d say.

  “I guess my stats are still higher, sweetie. Accuracy for sure. And I’m definitely winning on total kills too.”

  I made quick work with the boom, strapping and hoisting as much old car as the trailer would carry. Mi was on watch for a second attack, and Screw had the scrap wrapped tight in just a few minutes.

  When he turned, Mi was pointing her rifle right at his forehead.

  “No moves,” I told him. “Not the sawed-off or the hideaway you got in the small of your back.”

  “You know about that?”

  “Hand it over,” I told him.

  “It’s just for show,” he said, producing a small revolver. “Ran out of shells for it way back.”

  He wasn’t lying. The gat was empty and corroded. I was pretty sure he still had a blade or two tucked under his gear, but that wouldn’t do much good with Mi keeping her sights on him. He’d seen what she could do. And anyway, I just wanted to have a talk now. One in which he knew for certain he should not lie.

  “Tell me about the tattoo on your hand,” I ordered, and leaned against the cab.

  “You want to do that out here?” he asked, licking cracked lips, eyes darting as if the ground would come to life again. “Why don’t we get on the road . . . ?”

  “Out here,” I demanded. “I’m not sure you’ve got a round-trip ticket.”

  Now he knew I meant business. And yes, I’d sure leave him.

  The problem was, and Mi knew this, we only had half of our gas left. We had to return to Redwood. Anything in any other direction would be past the point of return, especially now that we were hauling a wealth of heavy scrap on the trailer. We’d need every drop to get back in.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked. “It’s the same as yers. Same as anyone who was in service.”

  “In what?”

  “To the company. I did my tours years ago. ’Fore you were born.”
/>   “I don’t get it,” Mi said. “Like military tours? As a goon trooper?”

  “Whatever. You sign over or they banish your family. They keep you alive. You get protection. Five years ago all of Redwood had scavs in the alleys and the troops would only answer in BlackStar neighborhoods.”

  I had to think about that for a moment. The timing. It clicked. “So something changed, didn’t it?”

  “Oh, yeah. I mean, we were getting nothing from the shipments. Barely any food, bad ammo, shelves were bare. We always had good water and some electric, but we were gonna be written off. I think supply had pretty much abandoned this outpost. Trucks rarely came. So no gas shipment. No metal trade. Begging in the streets and no way to control the hordes. The cannibals were all over us.”

  “So what happened to all the regular animals out here?” Mi jumped in, waving a hand. “No hunters around. Shouldn’t these plains be full of deer or whatever?”

  “We ate ’em!” Screw smirked. “What you think? No gas left? Sheeesh. Hunted night and day, millions of us. Fished out all the rivers and ponds. Sweetie, everyone was starving. For a long time. It’s crazy how those old morons thought the world could live nice without fuel.”

  “So now they all retreat to virtual reality.”

  “Better than real reality.” He liked to spit when he talked. “Plus, we had it comin’. Everyone was warned. Peak oil came and went. Then gas was ten bucks a gallon. Next week it was fifty. Five hunnerd. No one drove. No one flew. Couldn’t sell a car for a dime. I know the history. No cops, so cities got lawless. But screw ’em, had it comin’. We was warned, over and over again.”

  “So you signed your butt over to BlackStar?” I pointed at his hand again.

  “Yep,” he said. “Ate good enough. Had to beat down my neighbors from time to time, got to show them who was law. Took a wife. Took another when she wouldn’t work. Got a good deal for my daughter. It worked out for old Screw.”

  I could almost hear Mi’s finger squeeze her trigger a little tighter.

  “But that’s same as you.” He pointed at my hand. “Yer no different. Not a bit. They own you too, you got the mark. It’s where you learned to kill and where your chickie got her eye. What were you, corporate trooper? Something high up, not like a store cop or wall guard. Assassin? Private hunter? Makes no difference to me, let’s have some road-trip fun with your little betty and get back on the throttle toward home. Deal? I’m willing to pay.”