I merged onto the expressway, heading north to Rockford. I hadn’t seen him in a few years and hoped he still had the same address.
The three-hour ride was grueling. I was in considerable pain. My arm still wasn’t fully operational from when Sata hit me. The skin left on my knuckles kept scabbing over and bleeding every time I moved my fingers. The hole in my arm where I dug out the chip had clotted, but unless I cleaned it out and took some meds I was sure to get an infection.
The worst pain of all came from my ribs. After a selfinspection I felt two that were wiggly. The stop-and-go traffic, while sitting on a biofuel bike, wasn’t quite torture, but if I’d had to endure it for more than those three hours, I would have gladly confessed state secrets to make it stop.
McGlade’s house was as I’d remembered it; run-down and ugly, his front yard covered with junk, half-buried by weeds. Rockford had a lower biofuel tax, and McGlade apparently paid it in credits rather than foliage, because he hadn’t done any gardening here since Mary-Kate Olsen was elected president.
I parked the bike and limped to the front door, giving his videobell a ring.
His face appeared. Unshaven, sweaty, with what looked like dried egg stuck in the corner of his mouth.
“C’mon in, Talon. Been hoping you’d drop by.”
The door buzzed, and opened.
Apparently, McGlade really had been hoping I’d drop by. He was standing right there when I walked inside, pointing an antique. 44 Magnum between my eyes.
EIGHTEEN
“Is that a real gun?”
McGlade scratched himself in an unattractive place. He was in his midthirties, wearing a dirty undershirt and a bathrobe, both of which were too small for his pudgy body. “Fuck yeah, it’s a real gun. I just saw you on the news. You know what kind of reward I’m gonna get from bringing you in?”
“There’s a reward?”
“I dunno. Lemme check.” McGlade pinched his earlobe. “Hello? I’m calling about the fugitive, Talon Avalon. Is there a reward for his capture?” He frowned. “Excuse me? Why not?… What?… Fuck no, I haven’t seen him. Find him yourself.”
He lowered the gun, scowling at me. “You’re worthless,” he said.
“Sorry about that.” I hadn’t been too worried about McGlade shooting me. At least, not with an illegal weapon. Not unless he wanted to share a prison cell with me. “Where did you get a gun? I thought they rounded them all up after CWII.”
“It was my grandfather’s. I ever tell you he used to be a cop? Then he went private. Just like me. They made movies about him.”
“We’ve had this conversation, McGlade. Several times. My grandmother and your grandfather used to be partners. Remember?”
“Of course I remember. Who are you again?”
“Cute. Lemme see the gun.”
He handed over the revolver, butt first. I’d never held a real gun before, and was surprised by how heavy it was.
“Don’t shoot it,” McGlade said. “The bullets are worth a fortune, and impossible to replace.”
“If it even fires anymore. You could go to jail forever for having this.”
“Fuck ’em. I’ll flee to Texas.”
When the US outlawed guns, Texas refused to give up its firearms and tried to secede from the nation, which lead to Civil War Two. The only person who died during the war was a Texan named Earl Stampton, who barricaded himself in a bunker with more than two hundred guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition and then accidentally set the compound on fire while cooking some bacon. All they found of his body was a finger.
The remainder of CWII was fought with blockades and sanctions. Texas finally gave up after four years because they weren’t getting the latest Hollywood movie releases.
I returned the gun to him. “I need your help, McGlade.”
“I figured you did. Can you pay?”
“Eventually. I’m having a little chip problem at the moment.” I held up my arm, showing him the hole.
“An IOU from a lifer ain’t worth much.”
“I won’t be a lifer. They’ll kill me in prison. I’ll make sure you’re a beneficiary on my insurance.”
He brightened at that. “Okay. C’mon in.”
The interior of his house was much like the exterior, except for fewer plants. McGlade’s decor seemed to be of the let it lie where it dropped school of design. Dirty clothing, food wrappers, and assorted garbage competed for space amid the mismatched discount furniture. For art, McGlade plastered his walls with posters of old pinup girls. I’d asked once, and these were indeed paper. His favorite seemed to be someone named Heather Thomas, who boasted several different swimsuit poses. It was oddly quaint, because people hadn’t worn swimsuits in decades.
“Have a seat in my office. I’ll get some P and P.”
“Nothing too heavy. I have to keep my wits.”
He snorted. “What wits?”
McGlade veered off. I continued on through a hallway, and stepped in a small pile of shit.
“McGlade!” I called. “You have a pet?”
Boy, did I hope he had a pet.
“Yeah. His name is Peanuts. Don’t step on him.”
“I stepped on something else.”
“Smells awful, doesn’t it? They don’t tell you that at the genipet store.”
I scraped my shoe off on the carpet, figuring he’d never notice, and found Peanuts in McGlade’s office, curled up on the floor. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. Brown and hairy and lumpy, about the size of the raccoon I’d fed earlier. Then it looked up and me, shook its floppy ears, and gave me a deep, loud trumpet.
Peanuts was a genetically modified African elephant.
It trumpeted again, its tiny trunk sticking out like a bugle, and then padded up to me on little round feet. When he reached my leg he bumped my shin with its head. His tusks were capped with cork.
“Hello, Peanuts,” I said. I crouched down-an act that brought tears to my eyes-and gave the elephant a scratch on the head.
“Not Peanuts,” McGlade said, walking in behind me. He scooped up the elephant and held him at eye level. “Penis. Check out the size of his junk.”
The elephant did, indeed, have impressive junk.
“It’s like a second trunk,” McGlade marveled. “You want to touch it?”
He shoved the elephant in my face, its lengthy dong flopping around and threatening to take out one of my eyes.
“No thanks.”
“He’s a bonsai elephant.” McGlade set the pachyderm down. “That’s as big as he gets.”
“He’s…” I searched for a word that wasn’t derogatory.
“Very elephantish.”
“Yeah. I gotta get him a mate. Problem is, they’re so freakin’ expensive. I tried a few nonelephant surrogates. A cat and a poodle. He killed them both.”
“His tusks?”
“Naw. Slipping them the high, hard one.”
“Nice.” Wasn’t sure what else to say to that.
“They both sounded like they died happy. The poodle especially. Vet said it was a heart attack.”
“And the cat?” I asked, wondering why I cared.
“Internal bleeding. Here, take these.”
McGlade handed me six pills.
“What are they?”
“Morphine, hash, and valium.”
“There’s enough here to kill me, McGlade.”
“The other three are speed, so you don’t lapse into a coma. Take them and go shower. There’s a robe hanging in the bathroom.”
I noticed his apparel, which had more stains than there was space available. “Is the robe clean?”
“No. But after the pills, you won’t care.”
I took four of the pills, then hit the bathroom. The warm shower was both invigorating and painful, and then the drugs began to kick in and I was able to scrub my wounds with soap without crying for my mother.
I stepped out of the shower, pleasantly buzzed and feeling no pain, then toweled off and slipped into a robe that wasn’t too badly stained, though the fabric was a bit stiff in parts.