Veteran (30 page)

The rest I got from Mudge’s recording. His camera eyes were mounted on stabilised balls to compensate for the movement of his head, but even so it was a strange first-person perspective. Mudge was striding forward, Morag just in front to his right and Pagan on the other side of her, walking with the Neons and Mrs Tillwater. According to Mudge, Pagan was on very good terms with the Neons, and Mrs Tillwater had been asked to come along because the Wait respected her all-white gang of serial killers, despite them being Baptists. Pagan had friends. Indeed he seemed to be walking with the lords and ladies of Crawling Town.

I saw Messer gesture towards Mudge’s eyes. One of the skinheads moved forward, holding his hands up to block Mudge’s recording. Mudge grabbed the skinhead’s hand and twisted it, forcing the skinhead to bend forward at the waist. Mudge had his Regiment-issue SIG Full Auto in his hand. He pushed the barrel into the skinhead’s shorn skull and looked straight at Messer. The other skinheads brought their weapons to bear. Pagan and the Neons stopped and Mrs Tillwater kept walking around Messer and the group of skinheads, flanking them. From Mudge’s perspective I could see she was carrying an M-19 ACR, the standard assault rifle of the US Army.

Morag, however, kept walking. She walked right up to Messer and backhanded him hard enough to draw blood from his stained purple lips. Watching the recording I was somewhat taken aback by this. Mudge was chuckling, but when Messer turned round I could see that she’d managed to make him lose his composure. Needless to say there were a lot of gun barrels being pointed at her. So she slapped him again. Watching this played back, I burst out laughing. I laughed so much I threw up blood. Messer’s face was now a mask of rage.

‘You are a disgrace to your race!’ Morag spat at him. I watched his eyes widen and the crystal of his multi-faceted eyes turn red. I realised Morag’s strong Dundonian accent had gone.

Who are you, woman, to come here with niggers and say that to me?’ Messer demanded, his voice shaking with fury. Baby Neon stepped forward but Papa Neon laid a hand on him and muttered something in patois that I didn’t understand. It was an interesting approach to negotiation - not sure I would’ve taken it.

‘We being niggers or not, you need to remember where you are, boy,’ Papa Neon said. A lot of the skinheads were spending their time looking nervously between Baby Neon and Mrs Tillwater. Morag softened and stepped in, running her hand down Messer’s face, causing him to flinch.

‘You are a good soldier, Messer,’ she said and then pointed at me. Mudge glanced up. I was a mess. ‘But that is mine and I want it back,’ she said, and then she became all coquettish. ‘And if I don’t get it you will make my masters very unhappy.’ Then she grabbed the skin on the side of his face and was all authoritarian again. ‘Do you understand me?’ Messer looked over at Mrs Tillwater.

‘Mrs Tillwater?’ It was clear that despite Mrs Tillwater being a member of the weaker sex, according to this guy’s fucked-up ideology, she was seen as a kindred soul. It was kind of pathetic really. It was all the more pathetic that these violent little children had taken me down.

‘Well it’s up to you, Messer,’ Mrs Tillwater said, as if she was addressing a Sunday school lesson. ‘But if I were you I’d do what the nice young lady asks.’ I didn’t like the look on her face though. It was as if she wanted to see something. Messer pointed up at me.

‘That is my gift to God,’ he snarled. That upset me; I liked John Coltrane.

‘The gods have other uses for that one,’ Pagan said. Messer’s head snapped round to look at his fellow hacker. I could sense Messer appraising the bizarre tattooed and pierced figure he saw in front of him.

‘And you are?’ Messer asked.

‘Pagan.’ Mudge did a close-up reaction shot of Messer. I could see the punk Nazi’s eyes widen round the red crystalline lenses. He’d heard of Pagan. Pagan held Messer’s stare. You could tell that hacker patriarch was a role he felt comfortable with. It was a bit like watching Messer get spanked. ‘Your god is coming and when it does all the niggers will feel his wrath,’ Pagan said, though it was obvious he was trying to master his distaste. Papa Neon looked over at Pagan with an expression of amusement on his face.

‘The space niggers as well,’ Messer said, looking up at the sky, though mostly all he would see was dust. He was sounding more and more like a desperate child. Mudge had to stifle a laugh as Pagan nodded benevolently.

‘The space niggers as well,’ Pagan said. This was clearly a ridiculous ideology that Messer had discovered. It was difficult to imagine anyone ever having taken this seriously.

Morag sauntered up to Messer, seemingly oblivious to the guns covering her. She stepped behind him and, smiling, leant forward to whisper in his ear.

‘Let me have him back,’ she whispered. It seemed to me that Messer actually flinched. I found out why later: the whisper was the signal for Pagan to send him an encrypted message saying that if he didn’t release me they were going to take me anyway and his people would lose all their respect for him. The only thing he could really do was try and save as much face as possible. I could see him looking between Papa Neon and Pagan. They were the two big-name hackers there. He knew he was outclassed.

‘Conflict is good - it feeds Ogu Bodagris - but boy, you push too hard, both here and in the spirit world. You need to calm yourself,’ Papa Neon said. I could see Messer swallow like he wanted to say something but had decided against it. He ordered me to be taken down.

I saw myself being got down, barely able to stand. Mudge was helping me. Somehow I managed to walk aided by Mudge. I didn’t remember this, but as I walked past him I grabbed Messer. I was holding myself up by my bloody grip on his tunic.

‘I’m going to kill every single last one of you,’ I managed to mumble. Messer said nothing as Mudge pulled me off him.

The rest of the viz was me being carried by Mudge and Mrs Tillwater to the back of a pickup truck and driven through the transient streets of Crawling Town. We stopped to pick up Rannu from where he’d been watching my rescue along the barrel of a gun. The ex-Ghurkha glanced at me but said nothing. I noticed that Pagan had fortunately had the presence of mind to retrieve my personal belongings from the Wait. They took me to one of the Day-Glo articulated lorries that belonged to the Big Neon Voodoo. Morag was shaking like a leaf.

‘You did fine,’ Pagan told her. Mudge mumbled his agreement. The back of the lorry they had brought me to was a garishly decorated infirmary. I must’ve been hallucinating by this point because Mrs Tillwater was wearing her mask of somebody’s flayed face.

‘Welcome to America,’ the grinning mask told me. I may have screamed.

19

Crawling Town

It was kind of a baseline nausea. Like the day after you’ve had a lot to drink, and although you’re capable of functioning the sickness in your stomach tells you that you overdid it the night before. It was like that but all the time. Just reminding you that there was something wrong, something corrupt in your body at a basic level. Other than that I felt fine.

In the trucks and land trains of Crawling Town there were stabilised trailers with protein vats and hydroponics farms, but they didn’t provide enough for self-sufficiency so Crawling Town raided and traded. One of its main cash crops was drugs. Ironically they made more from selling medical drugs on the black market than they did selling the cheap and readily available recreational drugs. This was one of the reasons that Papa Neon was a genius. It was also where the initial supply of drugs that was going to keep me functioning until close to the end came from.

In the mirror I looked the same, pretty much. They’d even ironed out some of the creases for me. Was this my face? It had been rebuilt so many times I felt a bit like the broom who’d had its handle and its brush changed. The hair had to go, which pissed me off. It wasn’t vanity. I was vain enough to not want to see it fall out but I didn’t want to end up looking like the bald-headed bastards who’d done this to me in the first place.

It was written all over their faces when they came to see me in the Big Neon Voodoo’s ritual infirmary. By this time my hair had been shorn and I had a bandanna tied round my head and sunglasses on. I felt like I was in the American army. There was that awkwardness you have when nobody wants to mention something awful. Weird really, when you consider that several of the people in the room had probably killed more people than they could remember, but they couldn’t bring themselves to say radiation sickness. Well, except for Mudge.

‘So you’re dying then?’ He’d spent some time looking confused by the forced politeness in the room and apparently become bored. There seemed to be a collective sharp intake of breath. I paused long enough to make everyone uncomfortable and then started laughing as Mudge offered me some vodka.

‘A bit faster than everyone else,’ I said.

‘Sure you just don’t like us all coming to see you in the hospital? I think you like the fuss,’ he said. I was about to drink from the bottle when I stopped.

‘Is there no chance of you ever drinking whisky?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ said Morag and searched around in her bag. She pulled out a bottle of single malt, one from the park distilleries. I was impressed.

"Where’d you get that?’ I said.

‘Found it,’ she replied simply.

‘Spent a long time searching for it,’ Pagan said. To his credit there was only a little bit of resentment in his voice. Presumably she’d been looking for it when she should’ve been doing her God homework.

‘Nice rescue, guys. Not sure that was the approach I would’ve taken,’ I said. I would’ve killed them all.

‘I was scared shitless,’ Morag said, glancing at Pagan.

‘I told you, people like that are always scared of women. If they weren’t they’d respond to people better,’ he said. So it’d been his plan.

‘Ever done any psy-ops, Pagan?’ I asked. Pagan said nothing.

When are we going to kill the Wait?’ Mudge asked once the silence had got kind of awkward. I was touched that I could see Rannu nodding.

‘That will not happen,’ Papa Neon said. Mudge’s head didn’t move but I saw one of his eyes rotate to look at the gang leader.

‘They’re going to die before my friend here does,’ Mudge assured him. ‘I’ll film it and everything. We can show you after, if you like.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Pagan said. ‘Papa Neon has helped us out a hell of a lot here. Can you not show a bit of respect?’

‘I thought we’d be doing him a favour. The Wait didn’t seem to have anything nice to say about him and his people,’ Mudge said. I could see him getting irritated now. I took a sip of the whisky. It was good, a smooth burn. I watched Pagan and Papa Neon. I was beginning to see why Mudge and Rannu hadn’t gone in shooting when they came to get me.

‘They are Crawling Town, you are not,’ Neon said.

‘What I’ve seen of Crawling Town amounts to a small fucking war going on,’ Mudge said.

Papa Neon shrugged. ‘Several wars. We are a city; like all cities we have social problems. Though our biggest killer is traffic accidents rather than gang warfare. But it doesn’t matter. We can wipe each other out. If it gets out of hand then steps are taken, but we will not tolerate threats from outside,’ he said with a sort of laid-back finality.

Mudge looked around at everyone else. ‘You’re kidding right?’

‘Mudge,’ I said softly, ‘Pagan’s right. Papa Neon’s done right by me. He’s done a lot of shit he didn’t have to and we’ve probably been a huge pain in the arse to him,’ I said, looking at Papa Neon. He just smiled. ‘Besides, he’s one of Pagan’s little conspiracy of God builders, yeah?’ Pagan started; Neon didn’t show any reaction. Morag looked up at Papa Neon as if seeing him anew.

‘It is true. I would see Obatala brought back into this realm and I will dance for him,’ Papa Neon said.

‘You were one of the robed figures in Dinas Emrys,’ I replied. Papa Neon nodded.

‘Could’ve maybe mentioned this before, Pagan,’ Mudge said.

‘He didn’t want to risk exposing his contact, did you?’ I asked.

‘With good reason,’ Pagan said.

‘Pagan’s right,’ Morag said.

‘How’s that?’ I asked, trying to decide how pissed off I should be. If Pagan had contacted Papa Neon in the first place this would’ve gone down very differently.

‘Crawling Town is being overflown almost constantly by recon drones,’ Pagan said.

‘Fortunate Sons?’ I asked. Pagan nodded. ‘We are pretty close to the US,’ I said.

‘There’s more to it than that,’ Pagan said and looked at Papa Neon.

‘You’re not the only ex-special forces type that’s been picked up in town recently,’ the gang leader said.

‘Rolleston’s people?’ I asked.

‘They’re XIs,’ Rannu said.

‘You sure?’ I asked.

‘The two that broke were, before they were broken down into their constituent parts,’ Papa Neon said. I could see Rannu shifting uneasily at this. ‘And this isn’t New York,’ he added. He meant that he couldn’t or wouldn’t protect us like Balor had. I didn’t really blame him. I climbed out of bed and started getting dressed. I didn’t feel too bad, except for the nausea.

‘Dude, should you be out of bed?’ Mudge asked. I looked at him and grinned.

‘I’m gonna need a lot of drugs.’

Mrs Tillwater would not shut up but I was a little too disconcerted to ask her to be quiet. She was interspersing the most banal day-to-day conversation with descriptions of sadistic violence. Some people would do that just to try and freak you out, but I wasn’t getting that from her. She genuinely seemed ill.

I was riding shotgun with her. Papa Neon had asked her to act as our native guide to the white-trash element of Crawling Town. She had gently scolded him and agreed to do it. I’d chosen to ride with her because I’d been getting tired of seeing the look of sympathy on Morag’s, Pagan’s and even Rannu’s faces.

I’d been right: Gibby and Buck were riding with one of the cyberbilly gangs, the biggest and most powerful one, the Hard Luck Commancheros. Mrs Tillwater was taking us out to see them. Apparently they’d left the town and driven into the ruins of Trenton. We were all suited up. Mrs Tillwater’s hazardous environment gear was lilac, which appeared to be her favourite colour. It had scalps hanging off it. We were in her armoured, four-wheel drive station wagon. Morag was following on the low rider with Rannu, Pagan and Mudge in the muscle car behind her.