Krokodil's fingers sank through the durium-laced carapace of the crab, and she felt circuit-boards crunch. The Killer Crab sparked, and its legs hung useless. She tossed the piece of junk away.
They were out of the grass and on a highway again. And there were other ve-hickles in the game. This was moonshine country, and the GOB would need souped-up machines to keep up with the moonrunners. Fifty yards back was a wedge-shaped racing tank with a rear-mounted cannon. Krokodil put a line of slugs across its window, turning the supposedly shatterproof white glass to powder. The tank flipped up and over and exploded.
Elvis was slowing down. Krokodil looked up front. There was a block across the road. The kind of block the Op wouldn't drive through.
Krokodil swore. Her hair had come loose, and was streaming around her face in rat-tails.
If the GOB had parked a couple of trucks across the road, and set fire to them, then laid down a hundred yards of minimines and caltrop spikes, then Colonel Presley would probably just have cruised on through and trusted the Cadillac's defences.
The Cadillac rolled to a halt. Krokodil slipped a new clip into her M-312, but held her fire.
Strung across the road was a human chain. Men, women and children in ragged work clothes. They must be indentees. They were chained at ankle and wrist. There were one or two white-ish faces in the chain, but the overwhelming majority were black.
A couple of Good Ole Boys with pumpguns were riding herd on the indentees. There was a small gentleman with white whiskers and a big hat in charge. Krokodil wondered where she had seen him before.
He took off his hat, and swept the floor with a bow.
"Howdy, ma'am," he said. "Always a pleasure to meet a lady."
She sighted the red dot on the crotch of his tan pants. He had an automatic pistol in his hand. It was pointed at the head of a sullen, big-eyed little girl.
"Now, if you would kindly cayuh to lay down your weapon, then I won't have to spread this pickaninny's brains all over the interstate."
Krokodil didn't have time for this. But the Op was already out of the car, without a visible gun and. with his hands up.
"Back off, Chamberlain," he was saying.
The pursuit ve-hickles were drawing up around the Cadillac, and Good Ole Boys were pouring out. There were one or two hoodheads left, but most of them had been wasted in the air.
Krokodil kept her sight steady. Her business was too important for this distraction.
"You could be singing soprano," she said to the Southern gentleman.
The automatic kicked, and the little girl screamed, pressing her hand to her head. Chamberlain had just nicked her ear.
"Next one will be two inches to the right."
Krokodil knew why the Good Ole Boy seemed familiar. She had seen his face recently, but not in the flesh.
"Krokodil," said Elvis, "please…"
She let the dot fall to the ground between Chamberlain's feet, and set the M-312 on the car roof. Two Good Ole Boys snatched for it, and immediately started arguing over the bone.
Krokodil stood tall on the Cadillac, feeling the slight breeze in her hair, letting her body relax.
Inside her, the Ancient Adversary stirred.
III
Shiba's bites were itching badly. He knew he shouldn't scratch, but he lacked the willpower not to. The backs of his hands were worst. Dotted red with bites this morning, they were covered with nail-tracks this afternoon. The scratching didn't help, of course. If he got the time, he would ask Mary Louise Blaikley if there was anything he could do.
He was having to spend the day with Visser, which was not a thing he much relished. There had been another break-in, and a whole stretch of the compound fencing was down. Visser had some of his Good Ole Boys out in the swamp with rifles, tracking whatever large predators were out there. The ground by the fence had been suggestively trampled by something big. Some of the indentees were missing. Shiba wasn't sure whether they had been taken by the intruder or simply taken the opportunity to run away.
There was a work gang seeing to the fence now. The indentees worked slowly. Shiba noticed that there was an apparent epidemic of grogginess among them. One woman had just spent five minutes trying to loop a piece of wire around a pole. It was hard to watch. Shiba felt a compulsion to step in and perform the simple action. But that was not done. He was in administration. It was his job to administer. The woman acted as if she were drugged, or struck down with a swamp fever. Shiba would check to see that the indentees were being fed and medicated correctly. GenTech knew how to treat a workforce to get the best out of it.
There was a thumping sound, and he turned. Two indentees had been carrying a roll of wire, which was now quarter-sunk in a mudpatch.
"Hey, boys, that there's 'spensive," Visser shouted, slapping his truncheon in his hand.
One of the indentees bent down to get a grip on the wire, and a Good Ole Boy planted a kick on his buttocks. The man took a nasty fall on his face.
Visser laughed. "Get him one o' them mudpack beauty treatments, eh?"
"This is ridiculous, Captain," Shiba snapped. "How can you expect these people to work if you treat them like this?"
'"Denties are lazy, sir. You gotta give 'em a couple o' asskicks a day or they fall behind."
The fallen man got up, and a mask of mud fell from his face. Shiba noticed that mere was something wrong with his cheek muscles. His lips were pulled away from his teeth in a sardonicus grin.
"C'mon, Smiley, git back ter work," sneered the asskicker, administering a light tap with his truncheon.
The indentee pulled the wire out of the mud. There was a sucking sound, and it came free. His mouth grinned, but hatred glowed in his prominent eyes. His eyelids were drawn back, too. And his tight skin had a grey-greenish pallor that didn't look healthy.
"Skeeters got ya?" Visser asked.
Shiba realized he was clawing at his hands. Some of the bites were leaking a milky pus.
"Yes."
Visser rubbed his belly. "Me, too, chief. Ain't a place for a natural man, this ain't."
Shiba was inclined to agree, but didn't want to question the decision of the GenTech committee that had established the research compound, and sent them all here.
"The work can only be carried out under these conditions, you know that."
Visser slapped a bug off his shoulder. "I suppose so. Tell me, chief, don't you ever wonder just 'zactly what the gol-dang work is?"
Smiley was unwrapping the wire like a bale of silk, and the other indentees were languidly stretching it out.
"That's Dr Blaikley's department. Captain. I am not qualified to follow it We're doing medical research. Important biomedical research."
"That, as my ole Daddy used to say, can cover a whole multitude of sins."
Shiba's hands felt as if they were on fire. He also had pains at the base of his spine and the joints of his jaw. They couldn't be mosquito bites.
"You don't look too chipper, chief."
Shiba left Visser with the fence crew, and walked away. He wanted to get his hands under some cold water.
Suddenly, it was as if a hot poker had been shoved into his belly. He doubled up, and leaned against a wall. His mouth filled with warm water. There was a drainage sluice in the ground. He vomited neatly into it, feeling the hot pain surge up through his pipes. There was blood in his chyme.
Shiba straightened his tie and stood up. He patted his hair into place, and walked towards "A" block. His head was pounding now.
Reuben was outside, getting some feed sacks from the concrete bins. He said something, but Shiba didn't hear him properly.
The flaring pain at the corners of his mouth was making him grind his teeth That was most unhealthy, Shiba knew.