Henty panicked and stood up on the brake. The tractor came almost to a dead halt, the trailer didn’t. It swung around and jack-knifed the horse the other way. The two rockets hit the trailer simultaneously, ringing the cab and deafening Henty.
Henty used the confusion to grab the Trouble Sheila’s gun out of her ear, out of the Sheila’s hand, and to throw it out of the window. The Sheila scrambled for the zipgun the suicidal doped-up driver had left in the cab but the Fist was too quick for her and that went out of the window too.
“What you gonna do without a gun?” the Sheila wanted to know. “Man, you crazy.” With that, she opened the door and jumped.
In the big mirror, Henty saw the Sheila roll, come upright for a moment, then disappear over the side of the road like she never existed.
There was a turnoff and Henty took it, seeing in the mirror the remains of the trailer being shredded and disintegrated against the blacktop.
She punched the large query on the route finder. It told her, YOU’RE ON US-206 HEADING NORTH FOR NETCONG. Then it flashed and beeped her: US-206 NOGO WARZONE NOGO, complete with skull and crossbones.
“Everywhere’s no-go,” said Henty, and put her foot down.
CHAPTER 21
Eastward I go only by force, but Westward I go free. — Thoreau
“This sure ain’t no lonesome road,” Henty told the voice on the radio, which immediately switched to an exhortation to Turn Back to Philadelphia. “Never been to Philly either,” Henty told the voice and ducked instinctively as a katusha blew its ring of rockets to her left. They whooshed overhead and exploded on her right. A voice came on the radio to tell her to get lost and she switched channels to lose it.
“Sister, you’re driving down the middle of a battlefield,” a much more relaxed voice told her on the new channel.
Henty punched the CB alive and waited a moment while it locked onto the voice addressing her. “Yeah?” She peered up through the windscreen but there were too many choppers in the sky to make out which one was interested in her. “Which way is out?”
“You’re right in the middle. Stop the truck and run to your left. Our troops will cover you.”
“Thanks but no thanks. That’s like from the frying pan into the fire.”
“Suit yourself. One casualty more or less isn’t going to bother us.”
Click!
The radio was back on, telling her how they would love her if only she would “come back to Philly”. Henty tried to put her foot harder into the floor. A hovercraft gun platform glided across the road in front of her on its rubber skirts and one of the guns swiveled towards her. Henty turned the steering wheel to head straight for the hovercraft and the driver lost his nerve and accelerated the thing off the road just as the gunner fired, throwing off his aim. Henty ducked again as the tracer headed over the cab.
“Hey! I’m a civilian,” she screamed.
Every indicator-band on the dash instruments was showing red. A stern voice came at her. “This is your truck speaking. You are wrecking me. Please ease off.”
“You wouldn’t understand,” Henty told it. “So I’m not going to argue with you too.”
A big red light on the dash started flashing at her. Henty smashed it with the Fist.
Then, suddenly, just like that, she was out of the battle zone.
The route finder beeped her. US-206 NORTHBOUND NOW CLEAR
“I know, you electronic moron,” Henty snapped at it. She saw the sign and swept the big tractor-unit onto Interstate 80. “This is the way to San Francisco!” Henty shouted.
CHAPTER 22
Henty’s next test came at Portland. Pa. Unbeknownst to Henty, the previous evening a Pittsburgh puddle stopper called Chet Radenoffsky had been calling around his friends, repeating the same conversation with minor variations.
“Yah?”
“This is Chet. Whatya doin’?”
“Nuffin’. They got heavies on the box. One guy just tore the ear off the other guy and ate it.”
“It’s all fake.”
“Yah, so you keep saying. But I already worked my two days this week. You got sometin’ goin’?”
“Whatya doin’ tomorrer?”
“Watchin’ the Yankees. Fuckin’ losers.”
“I got ten credits ’gainst them.”
“All it’s worth. Whatyagot on this woman Runner?”
“Hundred credits says she don’t make it out of Pennsylvania. Whatyagot yo’self?”
“Hundred she don’t make it outta Noo York.”
“You done your dough already.”
“Howzat? She ain’t started Running yet.”
“My father-in-law has this cousin with the Families and he says they’ll never let her into Noo York.”
“Yah?”
“He says they never do.”
“Yah? So how come every once a while a Runner gets what’s coming to him in Noo York, did he tell you that, the wiseass?”
“Yup. He did. They let one in every ten loose in Noo York and they get killed there. The other nine they take straight from Liberty Island to Noo Jersey. You done your hundred credits.”
“Uh-huh. We’ll see tomorrow.”
“Sure. But instead of just hangin’ aroun’ infronta your box getting’ a beergut, why doanya do sometin’ about your lost hundred credits?”
“Like write my congressman?”
“No, knucklehead, like grabbing this Runner and sharing in ten million smackers.”
“She’s gonna come pose in my backyard so I can take my wife’s carving knife to her? Or maybe hang aroun’ while I clean my twelve-bore? Chet, you’re off your rocker. She could go anywhere. Anyhow, the professional bounty hunters’ll get her ’fore we do.”
Chet sighed heavily. “Lissen, you wentaschool same as any other citizen. What’sa border ’tween here’n Noo Jersey?”
“The Delaware River. But she can come in from Noo York state which has a long-long-long border with—”
“No, she can’t. You wanta watch the newscasts sometimes insteada all-in-wrestlers. That whole long border is closed tighter’n a play-monkey’s ass.”
“So, all right. But that’s still twelve-fifteen bridges.”
“Lissen, are you bored shitless watching the box or what?”
“I sure wish we haddena shot all those ducks’n’geese’n’deer.”
“And your fair share of other hunters.”
“They were accidents. So how do you pick your bridge?”
“The obvious one. Interstate 80.”
“So obvious, olla other hardhats hunting her’ll be hanging round like a steelworkers’ convention. You wanna do sometin’ useful. Brace the man to give us another day’s work.”
“Maybe next week,” Chet said. “It’s getting tough. Letting guys work more’n their share is not only agin’ union rules but agin’ the law too.”
“Yah!”
“Yeah. Lissen, waiting for her on 80 is like a double bluff. The other guys will think it’s too obvious and wait somewhere else, huh? You comin’?”
“Anybody else in it?”
“Justabout alla guys on our shift.”
“Okay, I’m in any little fun you think up, Chet, you know that.”
“Bring plenty of beer.”
“You bet!”
CHAPTER 23
Henty leaned forward to peer up through the windshield at the sky. The bridges over the Delaware were where the bounty hunters would try to pick her up. The sky was clear. She saw no other traffic on the road but that was no big deal — the road only led to and from a battle zone.
She held the Fist up and wondered exactly what the range of its built-in transmitter could be. The New York capo had told her it broadcast to The Caring Society’s Watcheyes, but in what range? All she knew about radio transmissions was that FM waves travel in a straight line and are no good over fifty miles while the others follow the curve of the earth.
She scoured the earth on either side of the bridge but could see
nobody. She had to get across that bridge. She had slowed the truck down. Now she speeded up. “Que sera sera,” she told herself aloud. She had the truck back up to its normal cruising speed of hundredtwentyfive milesperhour when the hardhats rose over the sides of the bridge and shot out both the front tires with shotguns at pointblank range. Henty didn’t have a chance even to swerve and it was just as well, or she might have crashed the truck over the side of the bridge and into the river which is wide and fast-flowing. Henty had been a track star in high school, not a swimmer.
The truck dug its nose in and somersaulted over it. Henty held on for dear life. The truck slid on its roof for quite a way, slowing its mass and momentum with friction. Henty stared at the parapet coming up fast to the windshield and wrestled with the safety belt to release her but it had locked fast.
The windshield smashed. Henty threw up her arms to protect her face. The thumb of the Fist hooked into the recalcitrant belt and snapped it like it was cotton thread. Henty fell onto the roof lining of the cab, among the glass shards. Below her she could see the water, far, far away. The truck was see-sawing sickeningly half over the water, half on the road.
Henty reached hurriedly for the door handle — with the Fist. But she had forgotten the strength of the thing and instead of pulling the door handle it ripped it bodily from its fitting.
“Damn!” Henty looked at the door handle for a moment before casting it from her through the hole where the windshield had been. Even that small movement tilted the truck towards the water. Henty dived for the window in the door. The edge of the window hit her in the knees and for a moment it seemed as if she would be dragged down with it, then she rolled on the blacktop, towards the middle, away from the water, until something stopped her.
When she opened her eyes, she was staring at the biggest pair of boots she had ever seen. Her hand reached around the back of her neck to feel what the pressure there was. It was most definitely a gun barrel.
“Twelve bore,” a rough voice said above her. “Get up nice and easy, Huh?”
Henty was still pushing herself onto her knees when a hard hand grabbed the back of her collar and hauled her unceremoniously erect. Other rough hands grabbed her elbows and pinioned them behind her. The one in front of her with the shotgun did no more than breathe on Henty but she flinched from the warm beery gust. They were all wearing their hard hats and were red eyed, sunburned and drunk.
The one in front of her jammed the shotgun into her stomach.
“Lissen, you can take it nice and easy and we’ll let you live. Or you fight and get it with this first.”
“How can I fight so many big men?” Henty asked, smiling.
“Okay. Where’s the saw?” he shouted at some men who were running up from the end of the bridge.
In reply, one of the men pressed a button on the implement he carried under his arm and. just as they came to a halt in front of Henty, the chainsaw buzzed angrily into action.
Henty reared back in desperation but she was no match for the large solid men who held her. Two of them grabbed her left arm and by main force pulled the Fist away from her to straighten the arm.
“Hold her still, dammit!” the man with chainsaw shouted. “Give it to her in the elbow,” said the one who appeared to be in charge. “But get on with it before somebody comes!”
Henty was struggling frantically but they held her and the saw buzzed nearer and nearer, the man wielding it putting his tongue between his lips to concentrate on cutting her arm off right in the joint, obviously oblivious to her screams.
So intent were they on cutting the Fist from Henty, none of them heard the chopper until it was almost on them. The skids were almost on the ground and the man sitting in the open hatch had already jumped down before any of the hardhats caught on. The man with the shotgun turned it towards the newcomer, then saw the zipgun pointed towards him and stopped the transverse of the barrels so that they pointed halfway between Henty and the man from the chopper.
In their surprise, the hardhats slackened their hold on Henty and she jerked free, in the process grasping the wrist of one of the hardhats. He screamed and looked in disbelief at his crushed wrist.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Henty said feelingly. “I really got no control over that thing.”
The newcomer laughed hollowly._ “Don’t feel sorry for them; they were going to operate on you without anesthetic.”
Henty recognized him. The cold young man from the Chaser Bank. She had signed her organs away to them. He had said they had a bounty hunter of their own. “Hi. You didn’t say you were the Chaser’s bounty hunter.”
“Best part of my job.” He smiled twistedly, then raised the zipgun to aim at her.
CHAPTER 24
Henty ducked instinctively but the man with the shotgun was also acting: he swung the shotgun towards the man from the Chaser. The young banker deflected his aim marginally and zapped the hardhat, then turned back to Henty, the slight sneering smile still on his face.
“She’s ours!” the man with the chainsaw shouted but, stupidly, instead of attacking the man with the zipgun, lunged at Henty with the saw.
Henty stepped back but the slow heavy bodies were still behind her. Desperately, she grabbed in front of her with her hands and the Fist dosed on the brutally whirring teeth. There was the sound of machinery in extreme pain, then the saw stopped. The hardhat, surprised into immobility, let go. Henty stood, holding the chainsaw by the chain.
Henty stared dumbly at her hand, expecting the palm and fingers to fall one way, the chainsaw to drop straight down, and her truncated arm to start spouting blood at the wrist. For several long seconds nothing happened.
“Show’s over,” said the banker. He raised his weapon. If he had not spoken gloatingly just then, he might have bagged Henty immediately. But the words unfroze her and she flung the chainsaw from her as if it were a red-hot iron. In midair the chain started whirring again as the superior restraint was taken off the motor.
By accident rather than design, Henty threw the chainsaw in the direction of the man from the Chaser. The screaming, biting chain went straight for his knees and, as he dived clear, the open door of the chopper behind him beckoned.
Henty was too desperately frightened to need two invitations. While the hardhats still stood like the wife of Lot in their wonder at how she stopped the chainsaw and then flung the heavy machine as if were a softball, Henty was away and running, jumping over the hurdle of the banker, rolling through the helicopter door.
Inside the helicopter, Henty kicked the door shut on its runners and turned to—
“Hey!” said the pilot. “You can’t come in here. My contract is only to carry you once he’s zapped you.” He looked in vain behind Henty for the young banker. Then he saw his boss rolling over and up right underneath his perspex bubble. “What've you done to him?” he accused Henty.
Henty was less interested in the pilot’s sense of the fitness and proper arrangement of Runner-hunting than in the zipgun the banker was even now pointing at her past the pilot. The perspex would not stop it.
“Up!” Henty shouted at the pilot. “Up!”
The pilot saw the muzzle of the zipgun; it appeared to be pointed directly at him. He took them straight up and then away in a hurry. His urgency was much enhanced by the holes that appeared in the bubble, so much so that he pulled the throttle/pitch lever so far back that it broke clear of its mountings. He looked distractedly at the lever in his hand, then threw it on the floor.
“This chopper belongs to the Chaser Bank,” he told Henty severely. “The Chaser Bank is a registered Organ Bank and therefore a part of The Caring Society. Hijacking it is an act of piracy and punishable by Eternal Sleep.”
Henty was lying against the rear bulkhead, where she had been flung by the pilot’s sudden, violent evasive maneuvers.
“I should care,” she said bitterly. “The Caring Society is trying to kill me.”
“You sold your organs to the Chaser Bank, didn’t you
?” the pilot demanded, twisting round in his seat to stare incredulously at her. “You can’t welsh on the deal now.”
“I said they could get my organs when I’m dead. They didn’t bother to tell me until I signed that they were going to kill me for my organs.”
“Caveat emptor.”
“Huh?”
“Latin for Let the buyer beware.”
“Well, Mr Smartypants, I hope that piece of the chopper you threw on the floor isn’t necessary for landing this thing again.”
The pilot looked at the console between the seats from which the lever had been torn, then scrambled frantically on the floor for the lever and foolishly tried to press it back. It fell back to the floor. “I— I— Oh my god, what are we going to do!”
“Pray?” Henty suggested tentatively.
“You stupid woman, you got me into this.” The pilot pulled his safety belt loose and walked over to the door and jerked it open to look out. “Better to squash than to burn,” he said to Henty and stepped into the void.
Henty rushed over to the door with her hands outstretched and nearly fell out herself in her hurry to save the pilot. But he was gone. At the very last moment Henty grabbed the doorpost and pulled herself back from that awful never ending hole through the sky all the way to the hard earth. She held on for a moment until she caught her breath, then slammed the door firmly and turned to sit in the pilot’s seat.
The first thing Henty saw was the fuel gauge, which read three-quarters full. Next she saw the rev counters, which both had needles in the red. There were other dials, several with needles in the red, including one that was labeled “Oil Pressure”.
“Tch!” said Henty. “I've had my share of crashes for today.” She looked around the instrument panel but the route finder was a lot more complicated than the one in the truck. All the same, she punched up the query mark.
“What do you want to know?” a voice asked her.
“How do I get this thing to slow down?”
“You mean the chopper.”
“What else?”
“Just answer yes or no.”