Reluctance, Part 12
by Martin H Slusser

“Off and on. Guts stink, and that’s what I remember best. That, and the saw you used to cut the bones. That stinks real bad.”

“Kid . . . Don’t tell anyone –”

“About what?” Benny scowled. “I ain’t no squeak. Shoot, you know who wants me.” When Jim nodded, Benny boasted, “Old bim VanTur thinks I got the right stuff. She’s so smart she’s dumb. All she sees is a Nobel Prize for solving the war problem. She figgers my kids will have the Orenda, the sacred power, and she’s dumb enough to think they’ll listen just because she’ll put a collar on ‘em.” Voice dropping low and bitter, he said, “Nobody cares what a stud bull knows.”

He lay back and rolled away.

Jim took him by the arm and gave it a squeeze. He was silent for a long while.

Mike and Creel sat in an armored car, a small deluxe rental from the South Philly Regal Clunkers! Auto Agency. The seats were hard, and even the heavy iron and plastic sheeting the car couldn’t account for that. Creel started squirming again until Mike cut him down with a glance.

Glaring at the windshield, Creel said, “I can’t help it.”

On the edge of the Dead Zone, they were near the area Benny had been last reported. Already the building held an air of neglect. Raiders were stealing the glass for greenhouses, the furnishings taken for other homes or for fuel. Creel was still acting like a sullen little boy.

“Why do we have to sit here like a couple of pinheads?”

Mike took a sip of coffee and thought about the doughnuts laying in the back seat. The box once held a dozen, now only one or two. Creel ate most of them. Mike turned, then frowned. Just the thought made his belt feel a little tighter, and Mama Cindy did not like her boys on the chubby side. That agent, what’s-his-name, the one Benny tried to spilt in two after he murdered the Longs. Cindy blamed it on the man’s weight. Mike grimaced.

“This is where the kid was at, back when you were supposed to pick him up.”

Creel scowled, but it was touched by fear. He leaned back to open the box, but Mike stopped him.

“Redskins tend towards diabetes, don’t they?”

Slowly, Creel nodded.

“So where are they getting the pills from?”

“Most got their shot in the pancreas. That treatment the Aussies developed.”

“That was twenty years ago. They can’t get it anymore. It takes an animal to produce the treatment.” Mike reached back, took the last doughnut, and smiled at Creel. “So?”

“Here . . . Last week, anyway. Now . . . I don’t know.” Creel watched as Mike devoured the doughnut, and his throat moved in a convulsive swallow.

Mike drank the last of his coffee. Brewed at the Project’s offices, it was the real thing.

“Find out.”

Frowning again, Creel gave a slight nod.

Mike watched as furtive individuals stole from the apartment building loaded with abandoned doors. Hungry people in an act of desperation wrecking the only places left to them. It was an excuse, nothing more.

Before Mike could stop him, Creel rolled down the window to toss out the empty box and paper cups.

A shot struck sparks off the doorframe. Creel yelped, leaning on the button that controlled the window. The windshield wipers slid up from their hiding place. A second shot chipped the armored glass.

“Cop killers. My god, they’re shooting at us with cop killers.”

Creel shouted as the radio and video both came on, blinding them as the windshield turned into a screen and the radio shrieked with Killers of the Rye. Cursing Creel and Philadelphia in general, Mike turned the key on. Then everything died. He tried again.

The window rasped and ground its way up. An explosion rocked the rack, but they scarcely heard it, the car’s insulation was that good. The flash temporarily blinded Mike. Shouting now, he closed his eyes, then began to blink to rid himself of the glare.

When he looked again, a pack of armed people were moving from all directions on the car. They were dressed in rags. Some appeared gray from the drugs. Others looked all right, but their eyes glowed red. Most were little more than bags of walking bones, covered with sores and matted with filth.

“Raiders,” Creel said in a whisper. He threw a glance at Mike.

One man stared in the windshield and gave then an evil grin. He held up a double handful of putty-soft plastic and lay that on the hood. Next came the timer, and Creel began to softly weep.

©2004 StoriesByEmail.com

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