Kade Read online

  “Not many people,” I said. “This way, people know what they’re about to get into.”

  “With one of the local Warlords pissed at you,” he said, “maybe you should try not to stick out.”

  “What makes ya think Simon is still pissed at me?”

  “You did break his collarbone.”

  “He’s still alive.”

  “You made the man beg, Kade.”

  “No,” I said. “He chose to beg. I didn’t plan to kill him. He begged on his own.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think he sees it that way, Kade.”

  “His boys shot me three times,” I said. “I killed a lieutenant for each bullet. Now, why would I do that if I didn’t plan on letting him live to learn from the lesson? He can’t blame me for the begging.”

  Wilson chuckled. “I guess he should have studied a little Kade logic before he shot you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You see the guy on the right?”

  “Yep.”

  I flipped open the straight razor and started cleaning my nails with it as I passed under the streetlight. The form slid back into the shadows, silently.

  “I really need to get me one of those,” Wilson said.

  “Very handy tool.”

  “No doubt,” he said.

  He tapped the two-handed sword across his back. It was enormous. “This tends to make them think before starting a ruckus.”

  “Not as useful in close quarters,” I said.

  “If they get in close quarters with me, they deserve what they get.”

  “Ya gotta point,” I said. I had seen Wilson lift the side of a car before. If they got close to the man, he would break them in two…or three.

  We were nearing the border of Derris’ Zone.

  “Gotta head north on Twelfth,” I said. “Don’t feel like takin’ on Derris’ bunch.”

  “One of these days, someone is going to have to do something about that place.”

  “True,” I said. “I don’t think I wanna take that on tonight, though.”

  “I don’t want to either,” he said. “When you decide to, make sure to let me know so I can go on a vacation. Somewhere far away.”

  “Shit no,” I said. “That’s at least a two-man operation.”

  “I would hesitate with two thousand men.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe she likes you this much.”

  “She’s always trying to help the ‘special’ ones. She’s got too big of a heart. She loves puppies.”

  “We talking about the same woman?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Teresa Manora…beautiful…blonde…great big…”

  He looked at me with the look he gives those that may be broken in half soon.

  “Heart…I was gonna say heart. Where’s your mind at, Wilson?”

  “Sure, you were,” he said. “Teresa Manora, Matron of the Society of the Sword. She has iron in her blood, steel in her bones. The Warlords tread lightly around her.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” I said, “and she loves puppies.”

  “How are you not dead?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “You would have to be.”

  We made the turn up Twelfth Street. This would bring us into the Zone of Zane Palmer. He wasn’t the nicest guy, but there were far worse. His guys were a bunch of punks, but most of them were held in check by Zane. One of his standing rules was, if one of his guys picked a fight and lost, he wasn’t worth the money he was earning. He didn’t tell them not to pick fights, just not to pick fights they would lose.

  The only problem with such a rule was that a lot of punks had overinflated opinions of themselves. If we were lucky, there wouldn’t be any incidents.

  “Think we can get by Zane’s guys without one of ‘em being stupid?” Wilson asked.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “Ya know how they travel. In packs. Their stupidity feeds off each other’s.”

  “A guy can hope,” he said.

  “Always expect the worst,” I said. “You’ll never be disappointed.”

  “That’s a pretty crappy outlook on life, Kade.”

  “Rarely am I disappointed,” I said. “Look to your three o’clock.”

  “Yeah, I see ‘em,” he said. “I was hoping for the best.”

  “Now, you’re disappointed.”

  “Shut up.”

  “I’m not disappointed.”

  “Shut up.”

  We spread apart to give ourselves room to move. There’s a time to try to talk your way out of a fight, and there’s a time to just prepare and let things run their course. The one rule we had to follow was simple. They attack, we kill them. If we attack, the whole Zone becomes hostile.

  There were only ten. I decided I wouldn’t need to call up any reinforcements. I waited patiently as the crowd of punks swaggered across the open ground between us.

  “Mathew Kade.” The one in the lead stopped about ten feet from me.

  “You know who I am,” I said and looked past him. “And you only brought nine others?”

  “I won’t need no help for the likes of you, Kade.”

  “You really want to try by yourself?”

  “I want that bounty all to myself,” he said.

  “Your funeral,” I said. “Wilson, hold back unless anyone else decides to join in. I would hate for this idiot to have to share his bounty.”

  “You got it, Kade.” He drew the huge sword from his back and stepped to the side.

  “Go for it, boy,” I said, my razor resting lightly in my right hand.

  He lunged forward with a gleaming blade in his hand. I stepped by him in a flash, and he continued his lunge and landed face-first on the cracked cement. He tried to push himself to his hands and knees, but there was a wet splash as his intestines hit the concrete under him. There was a whimper, not from the dying punk, but one of the others facing me. I stood there with my head cocked to the side, as if I were listening to someone.

  “Who would like to try to earn that bounty, next?” I asked. “Or would you like to try to earn a nine-way split…well…more like a four-way. I’ll definitely get five of you. Of course, my friend will get the rest. So, it’s really a lose-lose situation for you boys.”

  They turned and fled, leaving their erstwhile companion lying in his own intestines.

  She’s a cold bitch, this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  “You didn’t even get anything on your coat,” Wilson said.

  “I try not to,” I said. “These are expensive. Hard to find.”

  “No doubt,” he said. “No one else wears anything so useless. It has to get in the way with all the floppin’ around your legs.”

  I just stared at him.

  “Sorry,” he said. “That must be one of those rules of yours. Kade’s Rule, Number Twelve. Don’t insult the useless coat that will probably get Kade killed at some point.”

  “I see how you wanna be,” I said. “You’re just jealous. You can’t have one. They don’t make ‘em big enough to make a circus tent.”

  Wilson got very quiet.

  “Pre-Fall nonsense,” I said. “Sorry, I find I have random knowledge of the world before the Fall. Nobody wants to think about the Circus.”

  “There was a Circus before the Fall?”

  “There were a lot of ‘em,” I said. “Not like this perverted version we have now. It was a place where people had a fun time, watching others do tricks and things. Did you know that clowns were even funny things back then?”

  “My God,” Wilson said.

  We lost a lot when the Old World fell. Many of the things I have random memories of simply didn’t exist anymore.

  “You’re young, Wilson,” I said. “What? Twenty?”

  “Twenty-three,” he said. “I don’t remember any of the world before the Fall. I was a baby when the Corporate Wars hit their final climax. The nuk
es took out so much of the world.”

  “There aren’t many cities left,” I said. “We got lucky, here. There’s the Rad Zone to the north. If the nukes had hit fifty miles further south, there wouldn’t be anything left here.

  “Sometimes, I think it was for the best,” I added. “The Corporate War had consumed everything in its path. I’m not sure they even knew what they were fightin’ for anymore.”

  “How the hell do you know all this shit?” Wilson shook his head. “You’re not that old.”

  “You’d be surprised how old I am,” I said.

  Wilson looked off to our left. “You see ‘em?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Only two of ‘em.”

  “Some people are better off left alone,” a voice said from the pair of shadows.

  “Come on out,” Wilson said, “and we’ll talk about it.”

  “I’ll keep my distance for a moment yet,” the voice returned. “It has come to my attention that Kade is traveling tonight. I felt it would be easier to escort you through my territory than it would be to lose as many men as it would cost to collect a certain bounty.”

  “You must be Palmer,” I said.

  “Zane, if you please.”

  “Ok, Zane,” I said. “I’m just passin’ through. There’s really no need for violence. Your boy back there was determined.”

  There was a sigh, and Zane stepped out into the light. “I hoped I would get here before any of my idiots.”

  “You sound disappointed,” I said.

  “Not this again,” Wilson said.

  Zane looked at us with one eyebrow raised.

  “It’s one of his stupid rules,” Wilson said. “Expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed.”

  Zane chuckled. “That is a sad outlook on life, Mister Kade.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Wilson said.

  “Who, here, is disappointed?” I asked. “Not me.”

  Wilson sighed.

  “You’re welcome to join us, Zane,” I said. “You can come along, down to Yamato’s, if you want.”

  “I’ll have to pass on that,” Zane said. “Yamato is a little upset with me at the moment. Something of a romantic nature has occurred between my son and his daughter. These sorts of things tend to cause a little bad blood.”

  “Hopefully, you can work it out,” Wilson said.

  “Expect a full-scale war,” I said. “You won’t be disappointed by whatever ends you may reach.”

  “You travel with him willingly?” Zane asked Wilson.

  “My boss ordered me to.”

  “That would explain it.”

  I shrugged and continued walking.

  There was some activity around the Scraper as we came nearer to the center of Zane’s Zone. It wasn’t any of his men; it was merchants setting up stalls along the foot of the Scraper.

  “Farmers comin’ in tomorrow?” I asked.

  “That they are,” Zane said. “Should be a prosperous day for me. We’ve done well this month, and I should be able to buy extra stores this time.”

  For those in the Scraper, I was sure. Those on the street had to do the best they could. But the Farmers were a boon to the street dwellers, too. They sold to all and were protected by all.

  If the Farmers quit coming, the city would starve. They kept their own militia and guarded their Caravans quite well. There was, occasionally, an idiot who would try a run at a Farmer Caravan. The roads would be littered with dead, and the Farmers would roll on through. Whatever Zone they were in when attacked would not be visited that month, and the neighboring Zones would be rationed to barely enough to get by.

  It was in everybody’s best interest to leave the Farmers be. Anyone caught messing with the Farmers would be dealt with, severely.

  Eight years past, one of the Farmer’s daughters had been kidnapped from the Caravan. The Caravan had stopped and sent word home. Half a day later, five hundred seasoned Farmer warriors had descended on the Zone. The search that ensued ended after they found her raped and murdered.

  That was the only time I had ever worked for the Farmers. They had sent a representative and hired me to find out who had done the deed. During my investigation, I had found a pearl that belonged to her in a crack in the floor of the room of the head of the Warlord’s Guard.

  The Farmers had left with two heads on pikes. The heads of the guard and the Warlord’s son. The Warlord was told he would be left alive to prevent any other transgressions against the Farmers. If he failed to prevent even a minor transgression, his head, and the heads of every member of his family, would join the son’s.

  No one messes with the Farmers.

  The days when the Farmers are in a Zone are usually the most peaceful days a Zone ever sees.

  “It’s a good day when the Farmers come to the Zone,” I said. “I think they’re scheduled to come to our Zone next week.”

  “True,” Wilson said. “Sure to be a very good week.”

  Truer than he might think. The Farmers were the only ones I could take a large amount of Old World coins to and sell them. They, as a rule, kept every transaction secret.

  We continued onward to the west. We were nearing the boundary of Zane’s territory.

  “Can I ask a question?” he asked.

  “You can ask.”

  He chuckled. “This bounty on your head. Is it true you killed three of his men and broke his collarbone?”

  “Fairly close to true,” I said.

  “It sounds like there’s more.”

  “He was looking for a Society kid,” Wilson said. “He found where they were holding him. It was a couple of Blechley’s lieutenants. When he went to retrieve the kid, he was shot three times by Blechley’s men.”

  “He took the kid and hid him. Then he went to Blechley’s Scraper. He cornered Blechley and killed three of his lieutenants, right in front of him. One for each bullet. Then he took a two-foot spike and hung Blechley from the wall of his throne room by the right shoulder, thus breaking the man’s collarbone.”

  “Jesus, Kade,” Zane said.

  “Then he fetched the kid and returned him to our Zone.”

  “After being shot three times?”

  “He’s hard to kill.”

  “It would be easier if people would just do the right thing,” I said.

  “You have a better chance of Dynamo granting free power to your Zone.”

  “That would be something for the record books,” Wilson said.

  “True,” I said. “Nothin’ is free from Dynamo.”

  Dynamo was the guy who had gotten control of the old electric plants in the center of the city. His Zone supplied a great deal of the city’s power. There were some Scrapers with windmills and solar cells, but they couldn’t supply enough power to run a Scraper in comfort. So, every Warlord paid their tax to Dynamo. You could get by without his supplied power, but no one in the Scrapers wanted to give up the comforts of running water or climate control.

  We reached the edge of Palmer’s Zone. He turned to me. “Good luck, Kade. Watch your back; that bounty is a hundred K.”

  “He really wants me dead,” I said.

  “You should have killed him.”

  “If I’d killed him, he wouldn’t have learned anything.”

  “Seems he didn’t learn the right lesson from his last encounter with you,” Zane said.

  “He may need another lesson.”

  Zane shook his head and held his hand out. “Good meeting you, Kade.”

  I grasped his hand. “Same here, Zane. Take good care of your people, and you’ll do well.”

  He nodded and strode into the darkness. Several shadows that had been tailing us converged on the track he had taken.

  “I must be slipping,” Wilson said. “I only saw two. There were four.”

  “Five,” I said. “And they were good. Probably some of his lieutenants.”

  “Damn, I really am slipping.”

  “I barely caught on to the fifth one,�
�� I said. “She’s slick.”

  “She?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She smelled like roses.”

  “Damn it, man.”

  We headed back to the south on Seventeenth Avenue. From there, we would pick up J Street once more. J Street led straight to Yamato’s Scraper.

  “A hundred K is pretty high, Kade,” Wilson said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we run into a lot of trouble over the next few days.”

  “You plan on workin’ this whole case with me?”

  “I wasn’t until I heard about this bounty,” he said. “I don’t think the boss would appreciate it if I left and you got all killed and shit.”

  “I can take care of myself,” I said. “But don’t think, for a second, I don’t appreciate the help. It certainly helps to have someone I trust at my back. The problem is, I don’t know where this is goin’ before it’s over.”

  “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “We’ll run into another bounty hunter before we reach the Scraper,” I said.

  “Plan for the worst?”

  I scowled as a group of bounty hunters strode into the lighted street from the shadows ahead of us.

  “Not disappointed.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Do we have to wait for them to attack?” Wilson asked.

  “Hell no,” I said. “That’s Corso and his pack.”

  Corso was a well-known figure. He made a business of hunting those with bounties on their heads. He usually stayed out of the more respected Zones, but a hundred K must have been more temptation than he could stand. A pity.

  “Good,” Wilson said and pulled his massive sword from his back. “I was getting bored.”

  I thought about reinforcements but chose to handle this one myself. Who needed reinforcements when you had Wilson? I glided toward the group with my razor in my right hand.

  I think they had planned some sort of threat session or something, because there were a lot of surprised faces when a six-foot-tall tank slammed into their midst, with four feet of sharpened steel, covering a six-foot arc in front of him.

  They tried to scatter, but Wilson pulled his blade through an equally devastating backswing. Several tried to get behind him, and I glided by them. The first tripped as his hamstrings were severed. The other didn’t have time to react before I was behind him, and my left hand snaked around his neck to pull his chin backward. The right made a lightning slice across his windpipe.