Kent Kelly - Gray Rain Exodus

“Lady, you’re outnumbered. Do the math quickly, mind. Let’s have a look in here-ah, with you all quiet and nay touching that mighty pretty shooter anymore, unless I tell you to set it aside. Bon? Bon. Now. What’s up to the windows behind these drapings, you plumped to the roof with water bottles? What all’s behind the driver’s seat? What else you got in the back there-ah, ‘sides medicinals?”

She didn’t know how to answer.

Instead, in the moment of indecision, the triggerman demanded, “Never you mind all that. I’m thinking out loud, is all. Those medicinals, miss-doctor-you. You show us now.”

“There’s really no need to—”

“You show us now.”

“Not just yet,” said Sophie.

The man raised his head, a coarse and grizzled skull staring her straight in the face. “What did you say?”

Silas, still unseen, was reaching up for her shoulder and it took all of her self-discipline not to give him away by looking down. She blinked. “Not with so many weapons out,” she said. “Not just the fuel tank. The morphine. The vials are very fragile. Let’s—”

“Oh, fuck all this, Zeke,” said one of the younger men, a lanky and limping upstart swathed in brown rags with a leathery scarf-thing tied around his face. “Get her inside and let’s strip this thing.”

“Now, now, my hasty boy. I,” said the triggerman, a gentle threat spoken back over his shoulder to the other, “prefer to be known as Zachary.”

The other men shifted, huddled in an uneasy line just inside the fuel bay, under the door and out of the wild wind. The upstart strode in, right up past Zachary, smacking a claw hammer into his bandaged palm. Zachary’s line of sight to Sophie was blocked again for all of two seconds.

As the young one strode nearer in toward the H4’s door, Sophie calmly took up the submachine gun in both hands and leveled its mouth, centering on the dead point between the oncoming upstart’s eyes.

The youth swallowed, open mouthed. His eyelids fluttered wide. He dropped the claw hammer with a clang on the concrete, and held his bloodied palms out in a shaky miming of submission. He backed away past Zachary, somehow quickly and very slowly all at once.

“See what hasty bring you, now? Half rations tonight for you, young master Rollins,” said Zachary, never taking his eyes off Sophie’s weapon. “Back to square one. Let’s start afresh, ma’am. I’m sorry for all that. Morty scared you, I understand. But you don’t want to do that, love.” Zachary carefully lifted out his splintered baseball bat, and handed it back behind him. “See? All gentleman-like.” A lean black man with splinted fingers leaned in and took the bat from him gingerly.

“There we are. Fewer weapons.” He grinned at Sophie without fear. “That’s as far as we go. You can-no get us all, you know.”

“I can get you,” Sophie replied. “Perhaps even the young master Rollins.”

Zachary considered this. Then, of all things, he shrugged. He even took one step closer in toward Sophie.

“Life. Not exactly precious, darling,” Zachary was saying. He covered the mouth of the gas tank with his side. “Not any longer. And I want to get you inside with me. You appreciate? Get to know you. First is procurement, you understand. Now lower your buzz-saw, kindly step away from your grand, mishandled routier here-ah, or misery, I’ll blow the ever-loving shit straight out the back of you.”

She had no choice. She lowered the gun once more and stepped to the right, away from the open passenger’s side, and Silas’ shivering fingers — the hand without the pistol — trailed and reached up after her.

There was a gasp from eight voices. Silas had been seen.

“Zeke!” One of the younger derelicts called in warning. “Get back!”

But Zachary only stood — his head tilted in that somehow lupine, predaceous way — and whistled through his teeth.

“Holding out on us, darling?” Zachary tsk ed at Sophie. “I know that stink, you know. Eau d’Vieux Carré .” His face soured, his lips twisted over his teeth. “Barely can move now, can he? What kind of pet you hold dying back in there-ah, no kennel or none? Let’s put it out of its misery, ai . Woman, is that a nègre ?”

Sophie refused to answer. She had lowered her gun a little, but only to avoid getting herself shot. And what are they planning for you? What if that would be better, after all?

But in that face, she saw the first arising evening star, the twinkle of fear in Zachary’s wulfen eyes. What is he going to do now? she wondered. He’s as afraid as I am, but he can’t back down in front of him men. He doesn’t dare. Alpha wulfen, first bite of everything. The triggerman was difficult to read behind the goggles, the dirt, the shotgun itself. Any mistaken calculation would probably get Sophie killed.

“Silent on the nègre , eh?” Zachary, aiming, steadied his shotgun in both hands. “Let’s see just what pet-filth you’re riding around with, how about we?” He backed one step away. “Jakey, Rob,” he said over his shoulder, “be ready to disarm. Jakey front. Now lower your gun all careful-like and step back slowly, darling. Rob, you cover her while I take a look-see.”

Two of the men — ones motionless until now, bruised and swathed in leather and bandages — moved nearer. One clutched a half-handled sledgehammer in gloved hands, the other carried an old Magnum revolver of some kind. That one was a fool, or panicked, Sophie could see: it looked like the revolver’s cylinder lock hadn’t even been clicked fully home, he couldn’t fire a single shot until he did so. And the eyes of both men were doubtful, strange.

Neither of them want to kill me, Sophie realized. The man with the half-sledgehammer was staring at the back of Zachary’s head.

He wants to kill Zachary. Sophie processed this. He doesn’t believe I’ll be so stupid as to open fire this close to fuel. He wants me for his own.

How many miscues were there to interpret here? Did it matter? Very soon, the situation was going to explode and any chance of Sophie’s interference in her own foreordained Fate would shunt off into a grisly end. It was time to act.

Making certain that Zachary was still watching her while he turned his body to let Jakey and Rob slide by, Sophie lowered her own gun completely, again into the utility pocket of her armored suit. She showed her outspread hands, but while she did so she moved back away from Silas to stand behind the H4’s open driver’s door. Perhaps due to the sudden crowding, Zachary did not question this.

He told me to back away.

Zachary held out a hand, one again off the shotgun, and Petey ran into it his arm. Rob ran into Petey.

“What you want, boss?”

“Wait. We’ve two, now. Thinking aloud, see. Changed my mind.” Zachary pointed his barrels at Sophie’s gun. “Not in the pocket. Don’t you sheath that buzz-saw away and think we’re grand again, darling. You put that thing far away right now.”

He doesn’t know exactly to handle this. The men, they’re doubting him.

“All right,” she replied. “Where should I put the gun?”

“Inside the routier .”

“Then watch me. I’m going to pull it out by the cord. My fingers are going nowhere near the trigger.”

“I’m watching.”

Sophie made a delicate, slow-moving show of lifting the gun back out of the pocket, with two fingers on the handgrip. She handled it as if it were a time bomb, one she didn’t know how to defuse.

And isn’t that exactly what it is?

Bending into the H4, she lowered her gun onto the driver’s seat and detached the cord from the suit.