I didn’t use. I never would. Except for surgery, we Outlaw Militia Warriors didn’t use drugs of any kind. Before and after, OMW just toughed it out. Not that the militia organization even knew I was alive anymore. But some traditions were never to be neglected. I stayed clean.
Except for beer. And a little tequila if it was the good stuff.
But not drugs. Ever.
Today’s half-imported, half-homegrown, fermented delight was a lovely extra stout, dark as sin, with a head the color of caramel and a body so thick it was like sipping a milkshake. Best beer ever made, including pre-war stuff. With the beer came gourmet hummus with hot green chilies, a green salad with tomatoes, asparagus, okra, a homemade dressing of basil vinegar mixed with olive oil, and fresh bread. Just like yesterday and the day before, the veggies changing only with the growing seasons, not that I complained. Most anything was better than prepackaged ready-to-eat meals, and not many people got fresh food anymore.
As a chef, Mateo was dependable, not inventive. He lost that part of his brain along with the rest of his body parts, but I never turned away a military vet who wanted a meal, a gallon of fresh water, or a job. Never. It was part of the creed left to me by Pops, my father, who was OMW to the core.
Leaning into the NBP compression command seat, I looked over the boards and screens that ran and oversaw the junkyard’s office. I breathed the air released from the leaves of the modified air-scrubber plants and watched the burning Tesla. I fanned myself with my damp floppy hat, and let the A/C cool me, drying my sweat to a crusty, salty layer of white. I ate, drank the beer and a lot of water, took several electrolyte tablets, and watched through the heavy-weapon-fire resistant window as the Maltodine burned across the exterior of the ancient AGR Tesla.
I could separate, recycle, and sell the body. The hemp tires were dry-rotted, the interior of the cockpit—what I had seen through the silk-plaz canopy—was bare to the frame, the space-worthy NBP compression seats were gone, electrical and hydro were gone. The wings had been stripped off and secured to a separate skid with military flex for easier transport. The rear engine compartment was sealed and invisible from the outside, but the weight alone told me that the Tesla-23B Massive Particle Propulsion engine I had paid extra for—a lot extra for—had been tucked into the hatch along with the weapons, just as I had been promised.
Sooo. That meant my jitters were solely from the ants—my own personal nightmare come calling. Pops had said, “Fear is a peculiar thing, love. You either run toward it, away from it, or you freeze.” Yeah. I had frozen, and that was stupid in the middle of a battle.
I was always in the middle of a battle, even if it was just the one in my head.
Half an hour later, the fire was out. I used the composting toilet, brushed my teeth, put on more 110 SPF sunscreen, and smeared on moisturizing lip gloss in a deep-orange color. Just because it was practical didn’t mean it couldn’t be pretty, even in the treeless, rocky West Virginia desert landscape where no one could see me.
I headed back to the Tesla. It was steaming in the day’s heat as the last of the toxic fumes blew away. The mounting jacks used for the pulse weapons, the AntiGrav, and the WIMP engine were now superheated hot-pink metal, as were the stripped weapons mounts. Using the wrench I had put aside earlier, I popped the lock, and the hatch over the rear engine compartment began to lift, ripping through the fire-proof yellow tape that marked it as sealed by various West Virginia authorities.
The black maw opened. The stench boiled out.
The engine and the weapons I’d been expecting had not been sealed inside after all.
The body in their place smiled at me. So to speak. He’d been dead a while. Most of the tissue of his lips, nose, and lids were gone, revealing tobacco-stained teeth and empty holes where his eyes had been. He was naked and mostly covered by hundreds of bicolors. I froze in place, not breathing, my heart beating so hard it felt as if it would pound through my chest.
The little scavenger predator ants would have sensed their compatriots dying, but that had been eons ago in bicolor time. They paused, evaluated the opening of the hatch and my unmoving body—which was cooler than the ambient temp—decided there were no predators, and went back to work, rushing all over the inside of the Tesla and all over the naked body. Except three spots. Two were where his tats had been inked above his heart.
On his upper pec were two black six-shooters, crossed over a gold star that still glittered with the ink the OMW had begun utilizing just after the war started in 2043—Tattered Pride Gold. Made only for the Outlaw Militia Warriors. The lettersOMWwere red and dripped down like blood onto the lower, larger tat. Touched by the last drop of red ink was an original Outlaw tat, skull and crossed Harley pistons, also free of ants.
The tats were old and faded and so was he, a war vet and an OMW made-man, mid-sixties, silvered red hair and beard, and a tattoo of Tennille Tennyson’s face on his left bicep. Ants were eating away at the tat of the singer’s pretty face. I knew this guy, just by his tattoos, even without running a viber over him for verification.
His name was Harlan. Buck Harlan.
He was my connection to the network, the black-market web where I bought and sold weapons and info. He and Mateo were the only people in the entire world who knew I was alive. He had been my father’s friend. He was also my friend, one of only two. Something inside me broke, shattered into slivers like glass, cutting my soul. I managed a breath I had been holding too long. The ants didn’t notice the slight movement.
The third part of Harlan that hadn’t been attacked by bicolors was the hemp-plaz note in his swollen fingers. On the front were my initials in his messy scrawl.
The chances of Harlan showing up here, in the middle of nowhere, by accident, covered in bicolors, with a note to me in his dead fingers, were low enough to be impossible. Harlan was dead because of me. Which meant there was a traitor in the Gov. and in Harlan’s network. I just didn’t know who.
I swore, but silently, in my head, not where the ants could hear me. They still hadn’t noticed me. Yet. I stepped back, slowly,slowly, moving steadily, doing nothing quick to attract attention. I pulled my Hand-Held and took a burst of the body. Walking at a snail’s pace around the vehicle, I took multiple bursts of stills as I moved, until I was back at the hatch.
Moving so slow it was like watching the sun cross the sky, I slipped on the military bot gloves. But something alerted the bicolors. As the gloves gripped onto my hands and arms, the ants turned to look at me. All of them. All at once. A shiver took me, even with the heat. But I didn’t scream, run, or indicate fear that might tweak their predatory instincts. Moving millimeter by millimeter, I pocketed the Hand-Held and reached for the Maltodine.
I needed to kill them.
Ineededto read that letter.
The ants hissed. All of them together. A single sharp, piercing note. Looking right at me.
“Oh, bloody damn,” I whispered.
The ants raced around, forming into small groups, each the requisite thirty-nine in number, which was three groups of thirteen. There were four groups of thirty-nine in all, with a ragged half group. Enough to start over a dozen new nests. Here. On my junkyard land.
Over my dead body.
Over Harlan’s dead body.
