DIRE : SEED (The Dire Saga Book 2) (7 page)

“YOU’VE GOT GOOD NIGHT VISION...” I studied her. The right side of her hoodie was soaked through with blood. “...AND A SERIOUS WOUND. YOU NEED A DOCTOR.”

“No!” She leaned against the van. “Just... can you hotwire a car or something?”

I snorted, and the mask amplified and distorted the flat, razzing sound. “PLEASE. THAT’S SO NINETIES.”

I pulled out the universal remote, waved it around various vehicles until I found a Cadillac that was wireless-enabled, and turned the thing on. It purred to life, and I waved her over to it as I hit the
UNLOCK DOORS
and
START IGNITION
options.

A faint popping of guns, and flash from the level above as the goons peppered the Caddy with bullets. In response I pointed the universal remote up to the gunmen’s level, and started triggering every remote car alarm I could find. Blaring and shrieking, the cacophony threw them for a second, gave us the chance to slide into the car. I pulled out of the parking spot, sent it screeching down the ramp, and into the ground floor.

“The gates—”

“DON’T MAKE HER LAUGH.” I pointed the universal remote at the barriers as we approached, hit
OPEN
. The bar slid up and we bumped out onto the street, scraping the chassis of the long car against the grade of the street.

Two blocks later, at a stoplight I stripped the mask from my face, tossed it into the backseat with my briefcase. I shot Bunny a look, but she was slumped in her seat, shotgun between her knees, clutching her side.

“Adrenaline’s running out, huh?” I’d been there before.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I’m bleeding on the upholstery. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I grinned. “It isn’t Dire’s car.”

She coughed, and there were dark specks on her hand, as the red glow from the light shifted to green.

“You need a doctor,” I said.

“No!” She coughed a little more. “No doctors. I’m dead if... hospital...”

I shifted the caddy back into gear, headed left, and over to stop in front of the Nothing’s Personal.

Of course he didn’t come out. He didn’t recognize the car!

I rolled down the window, gestured at the restaurant. Finally, the doors open, and Martin walked out, looking puzzled.

“That’s uh, that’s not the Fjord.”

“Nope. Get in.”

“Aight.” He started around, and I shook my head.

“Nope. Backseat.”

“What?” He bent over, looked past me, into the car. It was dark enough, but he must have made out enough details because his eyes got wide under the glasses. “Shit. Shit shit shit. What the fuck you do?”

“Not her doing. In! In!”

He folded himself into the backseat, and barely had the door shut before I pulled out, and slid into traffic. Though every part of me wanted to
go go go
, I forced myself to drive slowly. Unlike Bunny, my adrenaline hadn’t crashed yet.

The pulsing itch in my back told me it would hurt like a fucker when I did crash.

“Okay. So who’s the dead guy riding shotgun?”

“Not dead, not a guy. You’re right on the shotgun.”

“S’a fucking hogleg,” Bunny slurred.

“The fuck... wait.” Martin leaned forward. “You’re that Militia chick? What the fuck?”

She didn’t answer.

“She’s hurt,” I said for her. “We need to get her back to the lair before she dies. You know first aid, right?”

“Fuck!”

“That wasn’t a yes or a no.”

“I... shit. Holy fucking shit. Wait. There is a baby seat in this caddy! Why the fuck is there a baby seat in this caddy!”

“Oh. Hm. Is there a baby in it?”

“No!”

“Well, that’s good.”

“Why is there a baby seat in this caddy?”

“Well, Dire stole it from a family she supposes, come on Martin, focus here!”

“We are in a fucking stolen car with a bleeding ganger from the worst bunch out there, and you want me to fucking focus?” Martin was practically bouncing in his seat.

“Yes.” What was his problem?

Martin buried his face in his hands. “I just asked you to bring the car around. That’s all. Shit woman, from now on I ain’t askin’ you to pick up carryout. You’d come back in a monster truck with dead heroes in the back of it.”

I sighed. “Look. We get to the lair, you patch up Bunny if she’s still alive. Then you patch up Dire—”

“What the fuck!”

“—and we call it a night. Fair?”

“This shit is not even remotely fair. One job. Bring the car back. Didn’t happen. What kind of shit went down, woman?”

I brought the car to a screeching halt, right there on the on-ramp to the highway. Martin scrabbled for balance, lurched forward, and I grabbed his shoulder, looked him in the eyes from a distance of inches.

A chorus of horns started up behind me. I ignored them as I smiled, wide and feral.

“Martin,” I whispered.

His eyes went wide. “Uh.”

“She’s had a rough night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Explanations at the lair. ’kay?”

“Yuh-huh.”

I grinned. “Thanks.” I let go of his shoulder, and hit the accelerator, heading up the ramp and out, joining the flow of traffic with only a slight hitch.

Martin was quiet the whole ride back, as was Bunny. Also, when I felt the last of the adrenaline fade and the fatigue hit, the pain wasn’t half as bad as I feared. It was pretty much a win-win situation all the way around.

Even better, Bunny was still breathing when we pulled up to the warehouse gate. I hopped out, undid the locks, and gritted my teeth as the fabric of the blouse flecked and ripped away scabs. Yeah, this was getting old.

I opened up the front doors, after shutting down several defenses, then climbed back into the car and drove it directly inside.

“Bunny, can you walk?”

I glanced over at her. She was out. “That’s a no then,” I muttered.

“Lemme go get changed before I haul her out,” Martin said. “Don’t want blood all over these good clothes.”

I reached over, felt her pulse. It took me three tries, and it was hard to tell if it was good or bad. It was still there, though, so that was something. “Hurry,” I told Martin.

He did, coming back in his prison clothes and hoisting her as gently as he could. Under the lights, her bald head gleamed with perspiration, and the dark stains of blood soaked all up and down her jacket and pants, from where she’d twisted in the seat.

“Motherfucker,” was Martin’s assessment of the situation. “Uh. This ain’t good.”

“The words ‘no’ and ‘shit’ seem to go together for Dire’s response,” I said, heading to a control panel and bringing a couple of track-mounted arms whirring over above the car.

“She needs a hospital.”

“She said no,” I replied. “Do you know first aid?”

“Yeah.”

“Good, that’s more than Dire does. Take her up and do what you can. If she dies it’s not on us.”

“You don’t know first aid? Supergenius like you?”

“No time to explain. You do that, Dire will take care of the car’s tracker before it gets reported stolen.”

“Oh shit, right. On it.” He adjusted his grip around the thin woman, and moved as gently as he could up the stairs.

Something I’d learned when I’d been on the run, and scavenging components where I could get them, was that most remote-enabled cars came with a VIN tracker. On a regular basis they’d send their signature through the same broadcast channels they drew power from. Their broadcasting patterns varied by the type of car and whether or not the owner cared to adjust it. The more expensive ones checked in every ten minutes. A caddy? Hard to say.

Also, regardless of how often they sent the signal, it didn’t matter much if there wasn’t anyone around to listen to it. Again, for all but the most expensive cars, most owners didn’t care enough to pay the fees to have it constantly monitored. But once this one was reported stolen, the police precincts would start monitoring the frequencies for its VIN broadcast. Once found, they could pinpoint the location with a little searching.

It was a decent anti-theft device, mainly due to the fact that most VIN trackers were either camouflaged pretty well as other internal components, or so embedded into the infrastructure that it’d break the car irrevocably to remove them.

But I was
good
with engineering. And it didn’t take long to locate, remove, and disable the tracker. After which, I commanded the arms to start breaking down the car into parts. It was too distinctive to risk using again, and I could put the raw materials to good use. I checked my still-active scanner, just to make sure, and it reported no activity from the car’s tracker, now or within the last half-hour that I’d been driving it. We were clear.

Before the stripping got too far, I retrieved my belongings, paused, and retrieved Bunny’s shotgun as well. It turned out to be a sawed-off twelve-gauge, more of a scattergun really. I figured she’d want it back if she lived, so I brought it with me as I paced up the stairs, and opened the door to the living area.

I found to my annoyance that Martin had hauled her to my main bedroom area, and put her on the best cot. But I bit back my criticism, as I saw him work, hands stained with blood as he pulled bandages out of the first-aid kit, a laptop open next to him showing a gridsite of medical procedures.

“Hey,” I said, once he looked like he’d reached a stopping point. “How is she?”

“Bad. Lost a lot of blood, I think. She’s pretty pale. Hey, this is the badass one, right? The Militia chick who stuck around to train our guys?”

“And the one who helped Dire take out Stig. Well, sort of.”

I’d done most of the heavy lifting when we’d gone to kill the Black Blood lieutenant. He’d brought an APC to a power-armor fight. But Bunny and her squad had softened his forces up beforehand, and I owed her for that.

She’d also joined in on the final assault against the Black Bloods. She was the only one of her gang who had, when the chips were down. I owed her for that.

Martin nodded. “Okay. Sorry for spazzing out earlier. Yeah, she was cool.”

“Think she’ll survive?”

He shrugged. “Gonna try to soak a rag, get it in her mouth so she gets water. Same for broth in a few hours. You’ve got soup or something right?”

“That can be arranged.”

“On the plus side, looks like the bullet that hit her didn’t get anything vital. I think. If we’re lucky. And the bullet’s still in there.”

I frowned. “Isn’t that bad? Don’t we have to dig it out?”

“Fuck no. That’s some Hollywood bullshit. You dig out the bullet, it starts the bleeding again. Maybe does worse if it’s near an artery or some shit like that.”

“Ah. Going to have to take your word for it.”

He moved to the main bathroom, started washing his hands. I followed, pulling at my blouse. More scabs gave, with a tearing tug, and I gasped a bit. He glanced back, saw how stained my own clothing was. Not much compared to Bunny’s, but the back was a mess.

“Goddamn. Uh. Can you get your blouse off?” He looked sheepish.

I nodded and went back, tugging it off as I went. I grabbed a swivel chair, turned it around, and sat with my breasts pressed against the back of it.

Eventually I heard him come in.

A low whistle. “Wow. They gotcha good, huh?”

“She did, yes.”

“Bunny did this?”

“Let’s just say that friendly fire isn’t too friendly.”

“Alright. Lemme get some antiseptic, see what we’re dealing with.”

I gritted my teeth as the wounds burned.

“Now these, these pellets are close enough to the surface and not near anything big, so we can yank them out. Sorry Dire, this is gonna hurt. Want something to bite on?”

“Do it.”

“You’re hardcore. Sure, here we go.”

Cold tweezers, searing pain, and I thumped the chair repeatedly with a fist as Martin did his work.

“So you really don’t know first aid?”

“Nothing medical related,” I confirmed, through clenched teeth. “At all.”

Clink, clink, went pellets as he dropped them in a jar or bottle or something behind me.

“Thought you were a supergenius? Uh, no offense an’ all.”

“None taken. And Dire is, when it comes to machines, or most matters industrial. But organic effects and medical science? No good at all. Attention wanders when she tries to learn, and she can’t seem to retain any useful procedures. Best guess Dire has is that her past self scrambled that part of her brain to prevent Dire from undoing the surgical alterations.”

Silence for a bit as he worked. A spritz of antiseptic spray later, and I was pounding the chair’s back harder, trying not to scream. But the pain faded to an ache, and I heard paper ripping as he started pressing cloth to my back.

“There. Okay, we’re good.”

I sighed. “Thank you, Martin.”