Tim Pratt - Sympathy for the Devil

Places where most of the aircraft weren’t parked in tidy rows, poisoned birds lined up beside poisoned runways, hot enough that you could hear the dosimeters clicking as you drove past.

A runner’s contract was a hell of a lot cheaper. Even when you charged the way Patch charged.

Sunlight glinted off the Colorado River so far below, flashing red and gold as mirrors. Crumbling casino on the right, now, and the canyon echoing the purr of the sleek black bike. The asphalt was spiderwebbed but still halfway smooth-smooth enough for a big bike, anyway. A big bike cruising at a steady ninety kph, much too fast if there was anything in the road. Something skittered aside as she thought it, a grey blur instantly lost among the red and black blurs of the receding rock walls on either side. Bighorn sheep. Nobody’d bothered to tell them to clear out before the wind could make them sick.

Funny thing was, they seemed to be thriving.

Harrie leaned into the last curve, braking in and accelerating out just to feel the tug of g-forces, and gunned it up the straightaway leading to the checkpoint at abandoned Boulder City. A red light flashed on a peeling steel pole beside the road. The Kawasaki whined and buzzed between her thighs, displeased to be restrained, then gentled as she eased the throttle, mindful of dust.

Houses had been knocked down across the top of the rise that served as host to the guard’s shielded quarters, permitting an unimpeded view of Boulder City stretching out below. The bulldozer that had done the work slumped nearby, rusting under bubbled paint, too radioactive to leave. Too radioactive even to be melted down for salvage.

Boulder City had been affluent once. Harrie could see the husks of trendy businesses on either side of Main Street: brick and stucco buildings in red and taupe, some whitewashed wood frames peeling in long slow curls, submissive to the desert heat.

The gates beyond the checkpoint were closed and so were the lead shutters on the guard’s shelter. A digital sign over the roof gave an ambient radiation reading in the mid double digits and a temperature reading in the low triple digits, Fahrenheit. It would get hotter-and “hotter”-as she descended into Vegas.

Harrie dropped the sidestand as the Kawasaki rolled to a halt, and thumbed her horn.

The young man who emerged from the shack was surprisingly tidy, given his remote duty station. Cap set regulation, boots shiny under the dust. He was still settling his breathing filter as he climbed down red metal steps and trotted over to Harrie’s bike. Harrie wondered who he’d pissed off to draw this duty, or if he was a novelist who had volunteered.

“Runner,” she said, her voice echoing through her helmet mike. She tapped the ID card visible inside the windowed pocket on the breast of her leathers, tugged her papers from the pouch on her tank with a clumsy gloved hand, and unfolded them inside their transparent carrier. “You’re supposed to gas me up for the run to Tonopah.”

“You have an independent filter or just the one in your helmet?” All efficiency as he perused her papers.

“Independent.”

“Visor up, please-” He wouldn’t ask her to take the helmet off. There was too much dust. She complied, and he checked her eyes and nose against the photo ID.

“Angharad Crowther. This looks in order. You’re with UPS?”

“Independent contractor,” Harrie said. “It’s a medical run.”

He turned away, gesturing her to follow, and led her to the pumps. They were shrouded in plastic, one diesel and one unleaded. “Is that a Connie?”

“A little modified so she doesn’t buzz so much.” Harrie petted the gas tank with a gloved hand. “Anything I should know about between here and Tonopah?”

He shrugged. “You know the rules, I hope.”

“Stay on the road,” she said, as he slipped the nozzle into the fill. “Don’t go inside any buildings. Don’t go near any vehicles. Don’t stop, don’t look back, and especially don’t turn around; it’s not wise to drive through your own dust. If it glows, don’t pick it up, and nothing from the black zone leaves.”

“I’ll telegraph ahead and let Tonopah know you’re coming,” he said, as the gas pump clicked. “You ever crash that thing?”

“Not in going on ten years,” she said, and didn’t bother to cross her fingers. He handed her a receipt; she fumbled her lacquered stainless Cross pen out of her zippered pocket and signed her name like she meant it. The gloves made her signature into an incomprehensible scrawl, but the guard made a show of comparing it to her ID card and slapped her on the shoulder. “Be careful. If you crash out there, you’re probably on your own. Godspeed.”

“Thanks for the reassurance,” she said, and grinned at him before she closed her visor and split.

Digitized music rang over her helmet headset as Harrie ducked her head behind the fairing, the hot wind tugging her sleeves, trickling between her gloves and her cuffs. The Kawasaki stretched out under her, ready for a good hard run, and Harrie itched to give it one. One thing you could say about the Vegas black zone. There wasn’t much traffic. Houses-identical in red tile roofs and cream stucco walls-blurred past on either side, flanked by trees that the desert had killed once people weren’t there to pump the water up to them. She cracked a hundred-and-sixty kph in the wind shadow of the sound barriers, the tach winding up like a watch, just gliding along in sixth as the Kawasaki hit its stride. The big bike handled like a pig in the parking lot, but out on the highway she ran smooth as glass.

She had almost a hundred miles of range more than she’d need to get to Tonopah, God willing and the creek didn’t rise, but she wasn’t about to test that with any side trips through what was left of Las Vegas. Her dosimeters clicked with erratic cheer, nothing to worry about yet, and Harrie claimed the center lane and edged down to one-forty as she hit the winding patch of highway near the old downtown. Abandoned casinos on the left-hand side and Godforsaken wasteland and ghetto on the right gave her back the Kawasaki’s well-tuned shriek; she couldn’t wind it any faster with the roads so choppy and the K-rail canyons so tight.

The sky overhead was flat blue like cheap turquoise. A pall of dust showed burnt-sienna, the inversion layer trapped inside the ring of mountains that made her horizon in four directions.

The freeway opened out once she cleared downtown, the flyover Patch had warned her about arching up and over, a tangle of long banked curves, the crossroads at the heart of the silent city. She bid the ghosts of hotels good day as the sun hit zenith, heralding peak heat for another four hours or so. Harrie resisted the urge to reach back and pat her saddlebag to make sure the precious cargo was safe; she’d never know if the climate control failed on the trip, and moreover she couldn’t risk the distraction as she wound the Kawasaki up to one hundred seventy and ducked her helmet into the slipstream off the fairing.

Straight shot to the dead town called Beatty from here, if you minded the cattle guards along the roads by the little abandoned towns. Straight shot, with the dosimeters clicking and vintage rock-and-roll jamming in the helmet speakers and the Kawasaki purring, thrusting, eager to spring and run.

There were worse days to be alive.

She dropped it to fourth and throttled back coming up on that flyover, the big one where the Phoenix to Reno highway crossed the one that used to run LA to Salt Lake, when there was an LA to speak of. Patch had said flyover’s down, which could mean unsafe for transit and could mean littering the freeway underneath with blocks of concrete the size of a semi, and Harrie had no interest in finding out which it was with no room left to brake. She adjusted the volume on her music down as the rush of wind abated, and took the opportunity to glance around a bit.