Kade Read online

  I chuckled. “I’m guessin’ it’s something mostly men look for.”

  I saw her favoring the right side of her mouth as she chewed the apple. I reached back into the bag and pulled out a soft plum.

  “Much obliged, Gran,” I said and handed the softer fruit to her.

  I stood up and walked onward, down the street. I may have gotten lucky. One of the most informed people in a Zone would be one who provides pleasure.

  I rounded the corner and headed down the alley. A large building opened on the alley. It was six stories tall and by no means a Scraper. But the one who owned it wasn’t considered poor, either. The door was flanked by two large individuals.

  “I’d like to speak to Rega.”

  “She’s not seein’ anyone,” the larger of the two rumbled.

  “It’s important,” I said. “Ask her to see Mathew Kade.”

  I flashed an Old World coin, and the smaller giant’s eyes widened.

  “I said…”

  The other interrupted him. “I’ll check with her.”

  He turned and entered the door. I stared at the remaining guard, and he stared at me. I pulled an apple from my bag and began eating it. His eyes followed the apple.

  “No fruit, lately?” I asked.

  “Not ‘til the Farmers come back through.”

  I threw him an apple. He looked at me suspiciously, and I shook my head. Generosity isn’t a common thing. I had almost finished my apple before the other guard returned. He stopped and whispered something to his partner. A flash of disappointment crossed the partner’s face, but he nodded. They both started into the street toward me.

  The expression on my face hardened, and I set my bag down. They charged, and I stood up with a pistol in each hand. Two shots thundered in the alley, and a wound blossomed in the forehead of each man. The backs of their heads exploded onto the wall they had been standing in front of.

  “Two more, Blechley,” I muttered.

  I set my bag of fruit behind a crate next to the corner of the building and loaded both pistols. One went in the holster and the other in my waistband. I drew my straight razor from its small pouch and stared at the door a moment.

  Then I kicked it in. The door slammed inward, and I was through it in a flash. A man with a club was just inside, and I flashed by him. He toppled over as my razor crossed his abdomen. I ducked under the arms of the next guy and turned to pull his head back. I drew my razor across his throat.

  I rolled forward as a sword flashed over my head. My razor flashed out once more. I sliced across the inside of the man’s leg, severing the femoral artery. There had only been three guys in the hallway. Standing at the other end was a woman who had been quite beautiful in her younger years. She still had some of that beauty, but the life she led had been rough on it.

  “Rega, I presume?”

  She was staring in horror at the toppling bodies of her men. I stepped forward three steps and stopped. I closed my razor and placed it in its pouch. I cocked my head to the side as if I were listening to someone.

  “I see,” I said, and my hands flashed. The pistols came up, and I fired through the doors on each side of the hall as I stepped forward. A shot boomed from the left, but it hadn’t been pointed at the door anymore.

  The muzzle of the right pistol touched her chest and pushed her backward to the door behind her. She gasped as the barrel burned her flesh.

  “Time for us to talk.”

  “Please don’t kill me.”

  “Don’t beg,” I said. “If I was planning on killin’ ya, you’d be dead.”

  “Anything…”

  “I’m gonna ask you some questions; you’re gonna answer ‘em. Then I’m gonna hurt you for costing seven men their lives.”

  There was a look of sheer terror on her face. Terror is a high commodity in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 10

  Bella and Wilson found me sitting on a stoop near the border of Kort’s Zone and that of Moreau. No one goes into Moreau’s Zone and comes back out. It’s like some black hole that sucks in anyone who goes in. The only ones who do are the Farmers. They don’t talk about Moreau’s Zone.

  “Found out where it happened,” I said.

  “Have anything to do with the gunshots I heard?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Figures.”

  “I saw a local madam brought into the Scraper with a large piece of wood through her shoulder,” Bella said. “Looked like a table leg.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” I said, “but I learned that the Clowns were hit in Overton’s.”

  “The shoulder, eh?” Wilson asked. “That sounds familiar.”

  I just looked at him.

  “I’m just sayin’,” he said.

  “So…Overton’s?” Bella asked.

  “Yeah, he’s a couple Zones to the north,” I said. “He’s a mean bastard. But he’s not stupid enough to hit the Clowns. If it had been him, the Clowns would have already been in and killed everyone.”

  “That sounds about right,” Wilson said.

  “Then we need to go to Overton’s and see if we can find out who hit the Clowns,” Bella said.

  “That’s what I’m thinkin’,” I said. “We need to go north through Jeffrey’s Zone.”

  “Jeffrey,” Wilson said with distaste. “He’s a bastard. A slaver. The Society really doesn’t like this guy, and he doesn’t like us.”

  “Think we can make it through Jeffrey’s without you pickin’ a fight?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know whether we can get through without him pickin’ a fight.”

  “It’s his funeral,” I said. “He picks a fight, he’ll deserve what he gets.”

  “I’m guessing it involves something broken and shoved through his shoulder,” Bella said. “I’m detecting a pattern.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Yeah…sure.”

  We headed to the north. Jeffrey owned two Scrapers and a small plot that used to be a park. He grew a lot of his own food and didn’t rely as heavily on the Farmers as others did. He also had an attitude. Plus his booming slave trade. He wasn’t as severe a blight as the Circus or Derris, but he was, indeed, another blight on the city.

  The city seemed to get a little darker and dirtier as we crossed into Jeffrey’s. It was more of a psychological darkness. We didn’t speak as we strode up the street toward the first of the Scrapers. It was the one Jeffrey lived in. The other housed his slave auction. People came there from around the city to buy and sell their slaves.

  If the girl hadn’t been held by the Clowns, Jeffrey would have been number one on my list of suspects. He would rather bathe in acid, though, than piss off the Clowns. They were some of his best customers. They needed a supply of people to feed through the grinder for the various twisted shows the Circus put on for the rich and depraved.

  I still had a hard time seeing Corporate Guards as Clowns. How far the mighty had fallen. In the old days, Corporate Guard was the best job an Agent could get. Protect the Heads. They rarely traveled, so the Guards were home most of the time.

  The Clowns’ battle skills were much more easily explained by the fact that they were Guards. There weren’t many who could match a Corporate Guard.

  “There are a few, though,” I muttered.

  “What was that?” Wilson asked.

  “Nothin’,” I said. “Talkin’ to myselves.”

  “This place disgusts me.”

  “The world would be better off without places such as this,” Bella said.

  “Very true,” I said.

  “So far, so good,” Wilson said.

  “We’ll get hit.”

  “Damn, Kade,” he said. “Just once, look on the bright side.”

  “That just ends in disappointment.”

  He let out a long sigh. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. The busy street was becoming much less crowded as people began dart
ing out of the way of the group of men that approached us. There were, easily, seventy-five men.

  “Ah, shit,” Wilson said.

  “Disappointed?”

  “Shut up.”

  The man in the lead approached us by himself.

  “Mathew Kade, I presume?” he asked.

  He was a tough-looking, dark-skinned man. Six feet tall and carrying several pistols.

  “I’m guessin’ you’re Jeffrey,” I said.

  “True,” he said. “The Clowns sent word you were heading in this direction.”

  “Guess they caught your interest with the bounty?”

  “No,” he said. “Oddly, the advice I got from the Clowns was to help you in any way I can. They also told me, under no circumstances, should I attack your party.”

  He fell in beside me as we walked north.

  “Really?”

  “If it had been just anyone telling me this, I wouldn’t think much of it,” he said. “But this came straight from a Clown, a high-ranking Clown. Clowns never preach caution, and I felt it would behoove me to listen when one does.”

  “That is a little surprising,” I said. “What are your intentions?”

  “I intend to escort you through my Zone to the next one,” he said. “There should be no misunderstandings, this way.”

  “Did the Clowns tell you what I am investigating?”

  “No, they didn’t.”

  “They’re probably embarrassed,” I said. “Several days ago, a group of their agents was escorting a wagon with various captives toward the Circus. Someone hit that group. Everything disappeared. One of those captives is a girl I have been hired to find.”

  “I can see why they wouldn’t advertise something like this.”

  “The thing is, Jeffrey,” I said, with dead eyes staring into his, “if you had a hand in this, we’re gonna have a conflict of interest. People don’t tend to survive those conflicts.”

  “Number one,” he said, “and I’m pretty sure you’ve already figured this out, I wouldn’t hit a Clown’s agent for all the scrip in the world. My guys are tough as leather, but the damn Clowns are monsters. Anything like that happened in my Zone, I would know. I keep apprised of the groups traveling my Zone.”

  “My information says it happened in Overton’s,” I said.

  “That’s not all that surprising,” he said. “Overton isn’t much. He sits in his Scraper while chaos reigns outside of it. I can tell you one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “This group traveled north through my Zone three days back. It never returned through my Zone. If it was taken in Overton, they traveled another direction from there.”

  I nodded. We were nearing the border into Overton’s. He stopped, and his men waited.

  “Good luck with your hunt, Mister Kade,” he said. “I can’t help wondering why a Clown would warn me about such a small group.”

  “They want to keep doin’ business with you,” I said. “They couldn’t if you were dead.”

  “Very high opinion of yourself,” he said. “That mildly offends me.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “If you’re offended, you’re still breathing.”

  I turned from the Warlord and walked into Overton’s Zone.

  “That was different,” Wilson said. “First the Clowns, then Jeffrey. Who the hell are you, Kade?”

  “Rumors abound in Wilderman’s,” Bella said. “I never thought I would actually be working with him.”

  “I’m just a leftover from a world that fell,” I said.

  My mind wandered back toward the past. The missions, the war, the death and destruction I had left in my wake.

  “A world that needed to fall,” I added. “We brought the Fall on ourselves. It’s not a better world that we have now. Maybe, in time, it could be made into a better one if…”

  Wilson slammed me sideways as I heard the thunder of a gun. His body rocked with the impact, but he kept pushing me to the edge of the street. His body rocked again as another shot hit him. Then we were under cover of the wall. I pulled him behind a wagon parked at the side of the street.

  The shooter was on top of the building we were against.

  “Son of a bitch,” he cursed, “bastard got me.”

  “Looks like one in the leg, one in the side,” I said. Something was beginning to boil inside me. I tore my coat from my shoulders and pushed it against the wound in his side. Bella rolled into the spot behind the wagon.

  “Look after him,” I said.

  She nodded, and my eyes went cold and dead. I launched myself toward the wall and upward, my fingers grasping protrusions where you would think none could be found. I scaled the wall. I caught a windowsill and launched myself upward. I shot over the top and took three steps before the gunman even knew I was there. He spun around, and my right foot slammed into his chest like a piston. I caught his rifle as it flew from his hands and spun it around. I shot him three times before he hit the ground five stories below.

  I wasted no time and went over the edge to reverse the path I had taken to the top. I dropped from windowsill to windowsill and landed lightly on the ground below. I reached Wilson.

  “How is he?”

  “The one in his side is rough. He’s not going any further with us.”

  “Neither are you,” I said. “I’ll finish this. You get him to Stiner’s and back to the Society. When I’m through, I’ll meet you there.”

  “What about backup?”

  “They better get more.”

  “They?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “They have no idea what’s comin’. And when I’m done, I’m gonna have a word with Blechley.”

  I handed her a handful of coins. “Hire whoever you need to get him home.”

  “Home,” he mumbled, “Teresa…kill me.”

  “Tell her I’ll be along shortly, Wilson,” I said. “You saved my life back there. You’ve done your job. Now, it’s time for me to do mine.”

  I should have killed Blechley. For some people, mercy is wasted in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 11

  Rage was still boiling just below the surface as I watched Bella and the two guys she had hired to carry Wilson’s stretcher leave to the west. Stiner’s was the next Zone over, so she shouldn’t have any trouble. I turned toward the east. Rega had said the Caravan was hijacked by some freelancers close to the border with Payne. I strode down the middle of the street and people sidestepped as I neared them.

  I stopped as I neared the border. An old man sat on a stoop. He was carving a piece of stone, and there were quite a few chips around him, so I approached.

  “Might you sell me some info?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Ya been out here for a few days?”

  “Been here for weeks.”

  “A wagon and some guys got hit here a few days ago.”

  “Saw what happened, I did.”

  I slipped a coin into his hand. “Tell me.”

  “Won’t do ya no good,” he said. “It was that cult, down south. Moreau, his name is. People go in there; they don’t come back. If they do, its cause they workin’ for him.”

  I nodded. “That’s what I needed to know. Take another coin for your troubles and your silence.”

  He nodded as I slipped him another coin. Then I turned and walked into Payne’s Zone. Moreau’s was the Zone below Payne’s. I’d never been into Moreau’s for obvious reasons. It was unknown whether it was like Derris’ or something else. It was rumored to be some sort of cult. If you went into Derris’ you’d get eaten. It was unknown what happened in Moreau’s if you didn’t choose to join his cult. People just quit going into the Zone.

  The skies were darkening from their normal burnt red to black; night was closing in. Perhaps that was a good thing. A little darkness might be just what was called for.

  I stopped about halfway through Payne’s when I saw a wagon with a fire and a grill. An old woman was grilling mea
t on skewers. I didn’t bother asking what sort of meat it was. It didn’t smell like pork, so it was safe to say it wasn’t pork or human. That was good enough for me. I also saw some sort of bird on the grill.

  “Too small to be chicken,” I said, pointing at the bird. “What is it?”

  “Pigeon,” she said.

  “I’ll take that and one skewer of the mystery meat.”

  She laughed but pulled a skewer from the grill along with the pigeon.

  “Two scrip,” she said.

  I slipped her two of the plastic chits that had ended up with the name “scrip” after the Fall. They were used to buy food from the Farmers and had become the currency of choice years ago. There had been one attempt to counterfeit the chits about ten years back in one of the Zones. That Zone was empty ten years later because the Farmers wouldn’t supply that Zone again. Permanent ban. No one could move into the area for lack of supplies. Neighboring Zones couldn’t supply the Zone, or they would have been banned as well and left to die.

  Never pays to mess with the Farmers.

  I took my meal over to an empty stoop and sat with my back to a wall. I would need to wait for about an hour to take advantage of the shadows as the sun set. Chewing on a piece of pigeon, I thought about what lay ahead. If the girl was in Moreau’s, she had been indoctrinated into his cult or possibly disposed of. It depended on how long it would take to convert someone. There used to be ways to brainwash a person before the Fall, and I expected there were some who remembered the techniques.

  Most of those techniques were pushed aside with the imprint tech. Obsidian Corporation had been the original developer of the tech, but it had spread to the rest of the world fairly quickly. Lots of money changed hands and, suddenly, the world had been a whole new place. Schools were replaced with imprint tech. Who would take the time to learn things, when they could have it imprinted straight into their minds?

  Of course, things went sideways. The cost of imprinting was high, so the rich became the educated. The poor learned the hard way. It was discovered that a lot of the education programs weren’t permanent. The joke was on them, I suppose. Many lost their imprinted knowledge. It seemed that Obsidian had sold faulty tech to most of the world. They, alone, held the permanent imprint system.