It was hard to make out details in the gray wash of stone and shadow.
No one spoke. I pulled off my sunglasses.
People were living here. In this toxic place.
Beyond the wall, at the base of the stone cliff, the rubble had been used as building materials, stacked and mortared into walls for one-room houses, most roofed with old lumber and tarps, some with something like thatch, one with sheet metal. Stone fences separated each house. Curious people were standing in the open doorways. With the exception of one man who was wearing a clean shirt and jeans, the angry people on the far side of the rubble wall were dressed in filthy gray and black overalls. The crowd held rifles. Pointed at us. They were emaciated. Dirty. The kids in the doorways looked as if they hadn’t had a real meal in days. And no vitamins in years.
Coal was piled in front of each home.
To my left was a greenhouse with the plastic torn off. One wall knocked in. Nothing was growing in it. There was no sign of transportation anywhere. From the look of the impaled bodies, they had enemies.
If the kid in my med-bay had stolen his scooter back from these people and killed two of them, I was mighty impressed with his fighting skills.
Spy hopped onto the Harley in front of me, her back paws on my right thigh. “Orrrowmerow,” she said softly. “Orrrowmerow siss.”Danger.
“Yeah. Bloody hell,” I whispered back.
A wind whipped through. Four County Mine stank, the toxic fumes billowing, fresh as if the hazardous materials were still being carved from the rock. Coal smoke was mixed in, clearly being taken from the mine and heating the small houses. But there was no smell of cooking food on the air. And the peoplelooked as if they were boxed in here, killing all comers. Afraid of something. Of someone. They were hiding.
I considered their situation. The miners might have been the ones who had hurt the kid now in a med bay at the roadhouse, and for that alone they deserved some kind of punishment. But. They were starving, and for no reason I understood. The miners had staked a claim on the old Four County Mine and they had coal but no trading partners, no tech, no soil. If the greenhouse was an indication they had no farming experience either because it was set up in the shadow of the mountain. They should be rolling in goods and services and food because miners always had things to trade.
They needed a front man. The part of me that had run a scrapyard for years stood at attention.
Into comms I murmured, “Targeting lasers on the man in the back, halfway between the houses and the wall, standing alone. Make sure he sees the red.”
Instantly the clean man’s chest lit up. He flinched. The tiniest bit.Tough dude. I’d have run.
Take no shite, Little Girl. Pop’s voice, in my memory.
A woman stepped in front of all the others. Once strong, now boney. Filthy.
I swung a leg over the bike, set the jiffy, sauntered up and between the Marconis. I walked carefully with my hands out to the sides. Jacopo and Mina dropped off their bikes and melded into the shadows, the targeting lasers vanishing with them.
The armed miners didn’t notice. Terrified of something only they knew about, they were all focused on me in my ancient riding jacket, no colors, used black helmet, and guns.
I hopped up onto the wall and sat, ignoring the rifles aimed at my chest now.
Spy leaped up beside me and sat. She licked her front paw. Insolent. Unconcerned.
I shoved down on the nervous giggle bubbling in my chest. Shoved down on the tickle in my throat brought on by the toxic fumes.
“Howdy boys and girls,” I said. “This can go one of two ways. You can let us through, gratis, and promise us trade in recompense for the kid you beat up and stabbed,” the woman winced, proving me right, “or we can kill you all without you even knowing where the shots came from.
“Jacopo,” I said conversationally, “how ’bout you put a round into the left eye socket of the body to my right.” Without taking my eyes off the group, I pointed at the impaled body.
One shot rang out. Every rifle moved from me to the shadows behind me. The woman in front tipped her rifle barrel. A man moved in front and looked up. He backed away fast, eyes wide in his coal blackened face, head nodding fast in alarm.
“Or we can fill you so full of holes you’ll be dead before you hit the ground,” the woman said.
“In that case, my people will kill every man and woman here and take your kids to be fostered in Logan.” False threat, but they didn’t know that.
Two of the men with guns glanced back over their shoulders at the houses, dread and worry for their families on their faces.
In Logan, fostering was once a dubious term usually indicating slave labor in a coal mine there or at a farm. Or, in a few isolated places, in the sex trade. Logan had developed a rep at the end of the war. Supposedly, Anse Hatfield had cleaned that up. We’d see.
“Then,” I continued, “we’ll take over here and mine this place for ourselves.” Not true. But if I wasn’t Pop’s daughter, and wasn’t delivering false threats, it could be true. And they had hurt the kid under my protection.
“Ya’ll look like bloody shite. With so many people going cold this winter, your coal is worth more than gold. Yet you’re starving to death.”
