“Hiya, Doc,” she said, brushing long black hair from her angular face. “What’s up?”
“Any luck?” Justin asked, knowing the answer.
“Naw, nothin’,” Erin said. “Some background stuff, probably nearby locals, but other than that? As in, did I raise Dr. Poole and the others? Napes.”
“Hrmm,” Justin murmured. “Well, keep monitoring, I suppose.”
“Will do,” said the other. She paused and then looked him in the eye. “What’re we gonna do, Doc? If they don’t come back, I mean?”
Justin dragged out a smile from somewhere and tried to sound confident. “Let me worry about that. You just watch the bandwidths.”
“OK,” she nodded. “So, uh, how’s the Old Man? Still alive?”
“Oh, very much so,” said Justin wryly. “Let’s just hope we can keep him that way.”
Chapter Three
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The Hunter was angry. He didn’t like his employer, he didn’t like the job he’d been hired to do, and he didn’t like the things he’d had to do in the course of its fulfillment. He would complete the job, of course, because that was how he did things: if you paid for his services, you got your money’s worth. Right now, though, he was considering abandoning the whole thing and maybe even seeking a new line of work, because these poor CDC saps did not, as far as he could tell, stand a snowball’s chance in hell of making it to their destination. And somehow, that made him angry, too.
He was named Jack Shipman, but no one called him that anymore. They just called him the Hunter, and he was hired to do just that, to hunt down anyone, anywhere, and for any reason, as long as the pay was enough to make it worth his time. It was the same kind of work he’d done Before, as an elite bounty hunter; the difference now was that he was one of very few people left who knew how the job was done or had the balls to do it The Fall had really cut down on the competition.
At 5’7, compact and wiry to the point of emaciation, he didn’t look like much on the surface, just another raggedy survivor with a shaven head and face, a perpetually cruel expression on his sharp features, and an assortment of mismatched clothes, but he rarely had any trouble with the more aggressive survies; the look in his eyes told them all they needed to know, and an array of lethal weaponry convinced anyone stupid enough to want to know more.
All in all, for the Hunter there’d been more plusses than minuses to the coming of the Plague, since when the Fall had come, he’d been in prison, serving a five-year bid for manslaughter. It had been a valid conviction, for shooting an unarmed fugitive, and he hadn’t rankled over it, but then again, he hadn’t much enjoyed prison, either. When the Sick first hit, afflicting guards and prisoners alike, the authorities had tried their best to keep things under control, but when more and more screws reported in sick and more and more cons caught it and choked to death on their own blood, things had gotten pretty ugly. Even now, he didn’t like to think about it. Finally, though, one of the guards, with the basic human sense that no one was left to care, had opened all of the cells and gates and sally ports and he and about fifteen other guys (out of a prison population of around 5,000) had walked out the door to freedom.
He’d drifted for a couple of years, getting a feel for this new, degraded, depopulated world and learning to avoid things like chemical spills, zones of death from old nuclear plants, and a dozen other similar perils, not to mention all of those engendered by the starving, crazy survivors. At the same time, he enjoyed the freedom that the post-Fall world offered. With no laws or law enforcement, he could go where he wanted and do what he wanted, and the only person who could say ‘boo’ about it was someone meaner and better-armed than himself. And so far, he hadn’t met anyone who fit that description.
It was an ugly world, by and large, he found in his travels, full of pain and destruction and rust, but it could also be wondrous and beautiful. He’d seen whole cities aflame in the night, like miles-wide bonfires, and new lakes and rivers where cities had once been, their clear blue surfaces filled with innumerable water birds whose flight could block the sun. There was death, yes, and lots of it, but there was new life as well, and things he would never have had the chance to see and do in the world Before.
Recently, he’d been hired by the Governor of New America, a large survie enclave on the site of Lawrence, Kansas (or what was left of it), to find these hapless doctors and bring them in. In other words, he was to make sure that they—and their potential cure for the Sick—ended up in New America, where they could be traded or vended to the highest bidder.
The Governor had learned of the CDC mission through a man who’d been intercepted on his way east from Cali, a scout of some kind sent to meet and assist the CDC group, who, under interrogation, had divulged the whole unlikely plan. But unlikely or not, the Gov had been intrigued enough to hire the Hunter, and, after a very long trip and through a great deal of strife and misery, here he was, closing in on the people he was supposed to find and getting more and more angry.
The Governor himself, a fat, pompous, overbearing sort of prick, had nearly made the Hunter’s skin crawl, sitting there in his little pleasure palace like a bloated spider, but he was very rich, commanded almost 2,000 subjects, and, despite the totalitarian nature of the whole setup, seemed to have the best-organized and most “civilized” enclave around. In short, a good man to work for. Or so he’d thought; lately he wasn’t so sure.
He’d picked up the CDC trail in Minneapolis, where he’d spoken to a gang leader named Kookoo who’d seen the entourage driving out of town in their big, anonymously-colored vehicles. Kookoo hadn’t known or cared what was in the vehicles; like most of the younger survivors, he was shit scared of anyone or anything that represented Authority. But he’d had sharp eyes and a good memory, and that had been enough to send the Hunter south, down the remains of I-95.
He’d first laid eyes on them in St Louis, where they’d been delayed for days in an effort to cross the river on the sole surviving bridge. He’d waited and watched and finally they’d made it across. Apparently they’d come up with enough of some commodity the bangers on the bridge wanted and, having paid the toll, been allowed to pass. When he crossed the bridge, a day later, he hadn’t bartered with the gang; his plasma pistol had seen to that.
He’d lost them, at least visually, for another day or two, but now, somewhere in eastern Oklahoma, he knew that he was once more very close. There had been signs, whispered acknowledgements, fearfully pointing fingers. Yes, they couldn’t be more than a day or two ahead.
But for the moment, the Hunter rested. It was a nice night, calm and moonlit. He’d made camp in a big culvert for the night and now sat at its mouth. When the mood came over him, he ate some of his freeze-dried rations and had some of the water distilled from the nano-suit under his rags. Then he cleaned his weapons and checked his transportation.
The slugthrower, a 45-caliber shotgun/rifle hybrid, was first, as it needed the most care; old-fashioned gunpowder had a way of fouling even the best-made gun. Next he checked the waver, a space-age looking thing like a machine gun tipped with a variegated metal cone, and found it fully charged and ready to use; any hostile machine or bot he might encounter would be in for a world of hurt. Then he checked and tested the plasma pistol, the stunrod, and the selection of throwing knives along his ribs; check, check, and check. All in order and ready for business.