Seed (10 page)

“Fiorivani.” Doss regarded Rippert across the desk—saw now the same green eyes, the same geometric cheekbones and chin. She leaned forward, ran a long finger around the rim of her whiskey glass. “That his mother’s name?” Rippert nodded once, his face rigid with sudden emotion.

“This mission has high personal value to me, Agent Doss. The pilot of the zep that disappeared. She’s my daughter.”

“I hear you, sir.”

They let the moment settle. Then Rippert picked up his flexpad and tabbed at it.

“You’ve spent time at Fort Riley.”

“A long time ago,” Doss affirmed. “I did my jump certification there.” Twenty-one years ago. She’d been seventeen.

“That’s where you’ll set up ops. Riley’s resources will be at your disposal. You leave in the morning.”

“I’ll need a third,” Doss told him. Someone to watch her back, whom she could trust. Someone good at fucking shit up. “Sergeant Javier Gomez. He was with me in the Middle East. Good soldier. Last I heard he was back here in D.C. working convoy duty.”

“If I can find him, he’s yours.”

“Thank you, sir. I need one more thing. A favor.” Rippert raised expectant eyebrows, so white they were nearly invisible. Doss hesitated, then turned and spoke directly to the woman on the sofa. “My partner, ma’am. Agent Emerson.”

The woman’s lips turned sour, betraying age through the layers of derma sculpting. She’d lit another cigarette. She pulled on it slowly, raised it before her face and squinted at it as though she held there the entire measure of Doss’ worth. Then, very deliberately, she crushed it into a silver ashtray sitting on an end table beside her. Smoke emanated from her nostrils. Doss persisted.

“He’s laid up in a meat locker out on the fringe. He’ll die.”

“I see.” The woman’s voice was as smoky as the whiskey churning hot through Doss’ bloodstream. “He’ll be transferred to the cabinet hospital adjacent to this building. Before the day is out.” A faint smile touched her lips as her gaze settled on Doss. “Will that suffice, Agent?”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Welcome back to the army, Doss.” Rippert slid a hand palm down across the desk towards her. When he raised it, metal gleamed on the dark oak. A silver eagle. “Congratulations, Colonel.” He bit the syllables off, sharp and formal, then stood and extended his hand.

CHAPTER 7

heir ninth day out of Amarillo brought them to the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, little more than a few building foundations and the echoes of giant parking lots etched into desert hardpan, abutting the freeway. They didn’t stop. Angled the wagon off the freeway and north along the trace of an old highway whose number had long been forgotten. Up into the New Mexico foothills, into an expanse of dead junipers baked grey by the heat.

It was quiet, the trickle of snowmelt running in muddy rivulets down deep gullies on either side of the road, the whine of the wagon’s motor the only sounds. There was no grass to rustle in the wind. No small animals scurried out of their path or hid trembling out of sight. No hawks or vultures circled overhead. Tightness gripped Brood’s gut as he worked the tiller. It was a dead forest.

“We’re levitating,” Pollo said. He lay on his back, eyes closed to the sun. A small rattler coiled languidly around his wrist. He’d spread a handful of Satori seed on his chest, mashed into a golden disk occupying the tattooless spot over his sternum. The black hieroglyphs of animals surrounded it. Deer, rats, turtles, lizards, most of which he’d X’d out. Goners. “Satori keeps us floating.” He sat up suddenly, careful not to startle the snake, and let the seeds fall into a cupped hand. “That’s lonely.” He pulled his blanket over his head and folded in on himself. Began to hum, weird and tuneless.

Hondo punched up some Tijuana lounge on the stereo, but it felt wrong, laughter in a cemetery. After a few moments he killed it. He sat down and laid an arm across Pollo’s shoulders.

At dusk they camped on the road rather than risk sinking the wagon into the muddy ditches. They built a fire as the temperature dropped and made a stew by dropping hot rocks into a pot with canned potatoes and the last of Pollo’s snake meat. Nobody spoke.

The meal’s warmth settled Brood. He lay on a blanket by the fire, watching desert stars blaze, so bright they seemed to sing. They were three days shy of Ojo Caliente. His mind wandered with visions of Rosa Lee. Her bracelets jingling as she knelt beside him in a long furrow, planting. Pollo and Hondo would be there, too. Settled and safe, the road’s long miles vague in their memories. As his thoughts turned to dreams, Brood saw a life long enough to have a baby with Rosa Lee. A girl, with Rosa’s black hair, who would smile and squeal and grip his fingers and call Pollo her
tio
and Hondo her
abuelito
.

He woke to find Pollo standing over him, chest bare to the chill night. Pollo’s little snake wormed slowly over the boy’s knuckles, lethargic in the cold. Brood shivered, glanced at the sky. Orion had set, but dawn had made no overture yet at the eastern horizon.

“Pollo?
Que onda
?”

“Time to go,” Pollo said. His voice was strange, mild but insistent. He stepped over Brood, hopped the gully and disappeared into the woods.

Brood heard whispering. He squinted, glimpsed movement off the road opposite from where Pollo had gone.

“Hondo!” he hissed.

Lightning flashed a few feet away. Everything went white. Thunder pounded the air. The smoldering remains of the fire exploded beside him. Hot ash showered him.

He leapt to his feet. Something hit his shoulder. He staggered. He saw people now, dark shapes running out of the trees. Pain shot down his arm. He screamed Hondo’s name, heard nothing besides an awful ringing in his head.

Another impact, this time against his sternum. It knocked the wind from his lungs. He gasped, wretched. A shadow loomed before him, wielding something over its head. Brood’s palm tightened on the .32. He didn’t remember picking it up. He raised it, fired three times. The shadow staggered back, dropping what Brood now saw was an aluminum bat.

Another strobe of white light. This time Brood felt the concussion in his bones. Dirt kicked up at his feet. He looked in the direction of the flash. A girl stood a few feet way, eyeing him down the barrel of an ancient bolt action rifle. He backpedalled. Three men struggled on the other side of the fire. Brood leapt, driving his shoulder into a body. It dropped. Dreadlocks flew.

“
Cojer
!” Hondo yelled. Brood ducked as somebody swung at him. He pulled the old man up by the arm.

“Sorry!”

Gunfire popped like heat lightning in the trees. Brood grabbed Hondo and yelled into the old rat’s face.

“Run!” And they both did, in opposite directions.

….

He found Hondo the next morning, naked except for his sandals, sitting cross-legged atop a boulder up on a hillside overlooking the spot where they’d camped. He had his eyes closed, his face turned contentedly into the low morning sun. Sweat and dirt streaked his ribcage. Below, the wagon sat where they’d parked it. He nodded as Brood approached.

“You hurt?”

Pain throbbed in Brood’s shoulder, stabbed his chest with every breath. He shrugged.

“Nothing serious. You?”

Hondo shook his head. “Just catching some sun. That your
gringo
?” He pursed grizzled lips at where a body in stained FEMAs lay face down beside the extinguished fire. Brood recalled firing the pistol, which now dangled empty in his right hand.

“Might be. You seen Pollo?”

Hondo smiled, inclined his dreads towards the wagon. Pollo sat there against the water tank. He held his snake in cupped hands and appeared to be having a serious conversation with it.

“Pollo!” Brood called. “
Esta bien
?” Pollo did not look up. He transferred the snake delicately to one hand and with the other raised a thumb high. He continued talking at the snake.

They found everything intact. Brood’s bow and quiver hung where he’d left them on the tiller. He inspected the batteries and motor, checked the food crates, the drive train.

“Everything’s good,” he told Hondo. Hondo wrapped a knuckle along the water tank, checking the seed, then slid under the wagon to check the water barrels. He reappeared a moment later and stood, brow furrowed, picking the scab on his cheek.

“We good?” Brood asked. Hondo said nothing, instead stepped to the spot where he’d slept. He pushed the blanket aside with a toe, revealing the Mossberg.

“
Que pasa
?” Brood demanded. Hondo bent with a long groan and picked up the shotgun, then turned to Brood. Gave him a look like he’d forgotten his own name.

“Think it’s all good,
homito
.”

Brood scanned the dead trees on either side of the road. Fat black flies had begun to gather on the body beside the fire.

“
Que
Coño
?”

“We chased them off,” Pollo explained, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. Hondo thought about this for a moment, then his naked ribcage puffed out like a lizard’s throat. He placed a hand on a hip, showed Brood slick black gums.

“Course we did.”

“
Sale vale
.” Brood found his sandals beside the fire where he’d left them, slipped his feet inside. “Ain’t
La Chupes
, though.
Chupes
would’ve had us.”

“True.” Hondo sobered. Propped the Mossberg on one shoulder, eyed the surrounding forest. “Who you think then?”

“
No se
.”

….

Brood killed the motor, let the wagon coast to a halt. He leaned across the water tank, squinting at an intersection a half-mile down valley where their road crossed another, barely more than a game trail. A small band of people had broken camp there and now trudged slowly east in the dusty wake of two grinding trucks, one water and one cargo.

“
Cuantos
?” he asked.

“
Cinco
.” Hondo stood at the wagon’s bow, scoping the intersection through binoculars. “They got a dog,” he said after a moment. Brood squinted again, saw a dog trotting beside the second truck.

“They our friends from last night?”

“You seen anyone else out here?” Hondo pushed back dreads and gravely sucked a thumbnail. “They look hungry.”

“Hide or roll?”

“Roll,” Pollo sang. He sat on the wagon’s edge, feet dangling. He stared out at where cloud shadows scudded like apparitions across the valley floor. The last stretch of desert before the mountains. “They got a dog.”

Brood and Hondo exchanged a look. Hondo shrugged, picked up a flak jacket off the wagon’s deck and tossed it to Brood.

“
Chale
,” Brood muttered.

They met the group just east of the intersection. A girl with aviator shades and a rifle slung over one FEMA-clad shoulder spotted them, yelled something to the others. The trucks jerked to a halt, heaving on their chassis. Motors spooled down.

Brood pulled the wagon in a long curve through the brush and hardpan, parking across the trail behind the small caravan. He killed the throttle, kept the motor switched on. Gripped his bow, an arrow already nocked.

The lead truck consisted of the teardrop of an ancient helicopter cockpit cobbled atop a heavy tractor chassis. Welded, bolted, tied with wire. Its door cracked open, caught for a moment on rusty hinges, then swung wide as someone inside kicked it. The unmistakable fuzz of a Ham radio issued forth.

A
gringa
stepped out. Brood saw grey hair pulled back tight, a sleeveless denim vest over FEMAs. She raised a tentative hand in greeting, her face pinched in the morning sun.

“See?” Pollo whispered urgently. He pointed at the small dog, which wiggled, skinny and nearly hairless, around the woman’s shins. It spasmed with pleasure as she leaned down and scratched it behind the ear.

“Who the fuck got a dog?” Brood wondered. Hondo shook his head.

From the other side of the truck emerged a tall man dressed all in denim. He stood there, a pistol held partly visible behind one hip.

The girl with the aviator shades said something to the group. They idled for a moment, wrapped against the sun in filthy canvas blankets. Then, one by one, they sat, exhausted heaps on the broken road—all except the girl and a square-jawed boy with corn-rowed hair. They unslung rifles.

“Where you out of?” Hondo called.

“Baja.” The woman’s voice sounded choked, as though dust caked her throat. She coughed, stepped slowly forward, palms open. “Baja,” she repeated, narrow jaw thrust forward, vibing defiance, determination, need. Brood guessed her to be a little older than Hondo, maybe fifty.

“First we’ve seen from Baja,” Hondo said. The woman swallowed hard, clutched her throat with fingers thin and gnarled as a raven’s claw. Her face stretched as she did this, outlining her skull. “You try to rob us last night,
chica
?” Hondo asked.

The woman glanced at her small troop. They watched with hollow faces, their eyes fevered and unfocused. They had the look of people with few miles left in them. The woman gave Hondo a frank look.

“Sorry about that,” she said. She eyed the wagon’s water tank. “Spare any water?” Hondo looked her up and down, head tilted speculatively to one side.