Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,7

British accent, Pops had once said to the OMWs, “The world is changing, lads. We have to adapt. We have to evolve. To remain static is death.”

“Pops,” I had said from the front row, where I was watching his speech. “Even corpses change.” I knew. I’d seen enough of them.

Some of the warriors had laughed. Pops hadn’t.

And then Little Mama had died. And I had been swarmed by bicolors. And we had done the unthinkable, a lot of unthinkables. And Pops had started dying, slow bit by slow bit as the Parkinson’s ate his body and his brain. I had tried but been unable to save him. Nothing had saved him.

I slammed my feet into cute, heeled boots and ran a finger up the seal. Crammed a clean hat, with a wide brim and a faded silk rose, on my head. I snatched a nail file out of the flowerpot that had once held Little Mama’s orchids, wiped two insulated bottle keepers, and plucked two iced drinks out of the fridge, wiping them as I raced out of the office through the first and then the second airlock doors. Sealing both airlock doors on the cold air inside, I walked out to meet the rider. The heat hit me like a wrecking ball and fresh sweat broke out all over.

“Activating perimeter defenses,” Mateo said.

“You never deactivate them,” I said.

“True,” he said. “But the road along our front border and the drive stay at DEFCON four unless we expect trouble. Now we’re at DEFCON three.”

“Why DEFCON three?”

“Because something smells.”

Since Mateo no longer had a real nose, I knew he meant figuratively.

“You aren’t armored up,” he stated.

“I’m going for Little Mama’s defensive tactics,” I said, setting the icy bottles in their holders in the shade, not that the shade offered much protection from the summer heat.

“Ahhh. Poor guy.” It wasn’t easy to tell, but Mateo sounded almost happy about the coming carnage. “ETA sixty seconds.”

I knew that by the sound of the bike. There were muters on the engine, the soft snore familiar for a wartime One Rider Harley in infiltrator mode. I missed the full-throated war-bike roar, the wind in my hair, the road thrumming through my body. I missed that freedom.

I pulled a chair into the shade of the AG Grabber; the seat was padded and so hot from the scalding sun that it burned my butt through the cloth of Mama’s pink pants, but there wasn’t time to cool the seat or baby my butt. I slid the converted, inverted shooting table in front of me and I propped my booted feet on it. Unlatching the thumb-lock on the table, I made sure it would invert in its usual half second if I dropped my feet, exposing the prewar M249 Para Gen II Belt-Fed Machine Gun, currently mounted on the table’s other side. The weapon was hidden by the heavy-duty, honeycombed composite sheeting that was actually a pretty good shield for most small arms fire. I had repurposed it from mid-grade-quality space scrap. If an enemy assassin riding a bike had found me, there wouldn’t be enough left of him or his bike to send home in a box.

The burn inside the Tesla had superheated the desert hot-as-the-entrance-to-hell air. Sweat was trickling down my spine.

If the OMW had found me, I didn’t know what would happen. I was supposed to be dead. If two groups had found me . . . I was well and truly screwed.

The muted engine noise grew closer and changed trajectory as it slowed and turned down the drive.

“Company’s here,” Mateo said. “All systems go.”

Sweat slid between my boobs and soaked into my clothes across my back and belly. The sun beat down around me like nuclear fallout, forty-five degrees C in the shade. Water boiled at a hundred, so I was halfway to scalded. I popped the top of one drink and took a long pull, set it aside, pulled off one glove, and flipped the nail file up. I was as ready as I was going to get. The bike went silent. I gave it a good five-second pause before I called out, “I’ve got a cold drink with your name on it if you come with cash to buy.”

Five more seconds went by as the rider either got into a better position to kill me or tried to decide how to proceed. Mateo didn’t update me, so I was betting my death wasn’t intended. Yet.

Another five seconds went by. And another.

I caught