I started back whisking, but more slowly.
Thanks to my nanos, my best friend looked mid-twenties, not the mid-forties she really was, and she looked even younger when she poured on the dumb blond act. These days, when no one had protection under the law, regardless of gender, there weren’t many choices in life for women. It was be cute and hope to be protected and pampered, or be tough and fight a lot. Cupcake was both.
Two of the guys who thought Cupcake was sweet and pretty, began regaling her about the tech they had heard about.
Pops hadn’t raised an idiot. Cupcake was being given a list of things the Dark Riders were looking for, and Jolene was taking notes. Unfortunately, so was Gomez. And CAIT.
I blanked out the chatter and set the eggy goo aside. I then followed the directions on a curling, stained, three-by-five card taped to the grill hood. It was a recipe on how to make pancakes. I mixed up batter in a bigger bowl and set it aside too.
Placing the sliced “maybe-ham” on the hot grill, I listened for a sizzle. The mystery meat (maybe carrion. Could be dead raccoon) was supposed to sizzle when the temp was high enough to cook food. There was no immediate sizzle sound, so I left the cook top and went snooping.
I found the usual survival supplies: tinned meat five years out of date, dried beans in Mason jars and Bell jars, some wartime MREs, a bag of tiny seeds marked “Amaranth,” which was a gold mine. Prewar, Amaranth was a usually thought of as a weed. Now, because wheat needed water to grow and Amaranth thrived thirsty and hot, the seeds could be planted in bare ground and new seeds could be harvested in two or three months. In one season, a farmer would have ten times the seeds or a subsistence harvest to grind into flour. In two seasons, a farmer could have a money-making crop as well as a dependable food source.
I’d never tasted the grain. Probably tasted like crap. But starving people would pay big for it. The miners could grow this stuff even in the contaminated earth where they lived. I wanted the entire bag, which had to be a good half kilo. I took two big scoops and put them in a zippy that still worked, more or less, and sealed the plastic bag in a small tin, like an old-fashioned tobacco tin, but dull metal, like lead.
I put back the remaining seed and left an IOU beside the bag. I wasborrowingthe amaranth seeds, part for the miners, part for Cupcake’s greenhouse, notstealing. Stealing in thesetimes could result in a death sentence. The IOU promised I’d bring something to trade next time I came this way, or send Cupcake with an equal value.
I also found some medical supplies, the legal kind and the illegal kind. There was a kilo of MJ, some once-sterile suture thread and needles, a couple of dried out packages of burn dressing, gauze, body tape, aspirin that been exposed to moisture and was streaked with brown. And some Dulcolax chews. I tased one and decided it was still potent and sweet. I carried the laxatives to the kitchen where the mystery hammy-meat was now sizzling.
I melted the laxatives in a small steel bowl, added the beet-maybe-strawberry syrup, and swished it together, placing the bowl on the cooler edge of the grill to stay warm. When I caught Cupcake’s eyes, I held up the empty laxative bottle and mimed eating, then cutting my throat. She gave me a sight nod. Message sent and received. Don’t eat the food. Our customers were about a have a poo party.
Back in the cooler, I gathered the mushy onions.
I threw away the rotten parts and chopped the rest on the grill. I spotted some utensils, including three cast iron fry-pans on a pegboard-type wall and lifted down a big one. With it, I squished the rest of the onions onto the grill, tossed them with a steel spatula, and when they smelled less rotten, poured eggy goo over them. Added a sprinkle of salt. I spooned out flap-jack batter and turned the mystery meat. I tried flipping the hammy slices but that didn’t end well.
I didn’t bother reading the orders Cupcake placed in the order window. When the pancakes were ready I used a spatula and began putting them on plates as fast as the dough browned. I poured the special-made syrup over them, placing the plates in the order window. When I was relatively certain all thebikers were eating pancakes, I layered onions and eggs over the mystery-ham and set those plates in the window.
The DRs didn’t seem dangerous on the surface. Just a mixed-race group of men, former military, full of banter. But I knew that once their hunger was slaked and I was out of food, things would change. I was right.
One of the men swatted Cupcake on the butt. All of them laughed, speculation in their eyes. Cupcake pretended outrage. The look in her eyes was far more than outrage, but the men were alone with a pretty woman and no protector. I strapped on the six-shooter, pulled my shirt over it, lifted the biggest cast iron frying pan. It was substantial. A suitable weapon for a fry cook.
I moved to the open doorway.
The butt-swatter said, “What’s a pretty thing like you doing stuck here in the outback of nothing? I know a man who’d like you, give you a gooood life.”
The other men laughed.
“He do like blond women,” another man said. “Might even keep her.”
“Maybe we should break her in first,” a third man said.
A fourth man leaned into the window where I stood and said, “I like my woman a little darker. I’ll take the red-headed one. Hey, baby. You feeling frisky?”
The cats, had to be a dozen, raced in and took up perches along the perimeter of the room. Spy sat on top of the cash register like the warrior princess she was and focused on her clowder. Or maybe, since they appeared ready for war, they were now a destruction of cats. Her claws protracted and re-sheathed. Protracted and re-sheathed. Yeah. She wanted a good fight.
“You should come with us, Baby,” the butt-slapper said to Cupcake. “We could show you good time.”
Cupcake made wide eyes. Shot a glance at me. And I had a great idea.
“Would you take us to the crashed spaceship in the old Brushy Fork Coal mine?” I asked the guys. “We’ve always wanted to see it and our boyfriends won’t take us.”
Suddenly I had all their attention, even Cupcake’s. “Seriously. It’s been there since the end of the war, half buried in an impoundment pond.” Of which there were dozens in the state, toxic waste water left by mining companies, contained by earthen dams, seeping into the groundwater, deadly and ignored for decades. “Sometimes it still bursts into flame! All by itself,” I added for effect.
Fry pan in one hand, held behind me, I stepped into the dining room. As innocent as I could be, I batted my eyes, which probably made me look like I had gnats in them or was having a small seizure.
The door opened. Amos and Bengal walked in and the place went silent again. Bengal, AKA Henry Thibodaux, out of New Orleans, was prez of the Booze-fighters. During the war, he had been he augmented, toes to teeth. He lost an arm recently and now had a neural activated cy-bot replacement, obtained by me, and surgically attached by Jolene. The arm was jet black, and had built in weapons. Like Amos, he wore no kutte. This wasn’t club business. This was personal. This was for fun. But he looked me dead in the eyes as if he was furious.
Bengal was bloody petrifying on a good day. Right now, his face was a thundercloud of fury. If I hadn’t known he wasn’t angry at me, I’d have quaked. But Bengal owed me. Even better, he liked me.
