He kept shooting, dropping nearly a dozen of them before the last several nearly got close enough to touch him. He holstered his blasters and grabbed them by the throats, crushing their spines before he could squeeze the air from them. He threw the two bodies toward the next closest attacker, the diversion giving him time to shoot two more residents. He charged headlong into them, his left arm suddenly spreading out into six thick tentacles that wrapped themselves around three of the townsfolk, quickly snapping their necks before pulling back and reshaping themselves back into the black arm.

  The sight of it stopped the fight completely, bringing the residents to heel as their fear exploded through his senses, causing Iagorth’s laughter to turn to a satisfied groan. The scent made Marcus feel even more powerful.

  “Wait,” one of them said, dropping her spear. “We surrender.” The others followed suit, quickly discarding their weapons. “Please.”

  “Sheriff Duke,” Marcus said. “Which way did he go?”

  “West,” the woman said. “To Haven.”

  Marcus smiled. “See, was that so hard?” He moved to holster his blaster.

  Kill them all.

  The lust for fear still flowed through Marcus. He didn’t hesitate, turning his guns on the remaining residents and opening fire again, cutting them all down before they could defend themselves. He knew the last resident of Carcity was dead when the smell of fear vanished completely.

  “Are you satisfied now?” he said when the killing was done, holstering his blasters and turning to look over the destruction. He hated himself for murdering so many, and yet he remained high on their fear and his feeling of control.

  It’s a start.

  Marcus turned back toward the open front gates, ready to depart, when he heard a loud animalistic snort from behind the RV and what sounded like a hoof pawing the ground. He stepped over one of the corpses to walk over to the vehicle, coming around the back and finding a horse hitched to the RV.

  It’s a useless creature. Leave it.

  “He’ll die if I leave him like this,” Marcus said. “There’s no one still alive to take care of him.”

  It’s curious that you care.

  Marcus shrugged. “It doesn’t seem right to leave an innocent thing to die. I did what you asked. I want to set him loose in return.

  I’m not stopping you.

  Marcus approached the horse’s head. The stallion snorted again, uncomfortable with Marcus’ approach.

  “It’s okay, boy,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.” The horse calmed a little, and Marcus reached for his reins, pulling them free of the RV and wrapping the ends around the saddle horn. “You’re free to go.”

  The horse turned his head to regard Marcus for a moment before suddenly spinning around and breaking into a run around the front of the RV.

  Satisfied by his good deed, Marcus watched the horse run out the gate. He watched until the animal was out of sight. Then he walked back to the waiting helicopter.

  Sheriff Duke was headed for Haven.

  He would meet him there.

  And then the Sheriff would die, once and for all.

  30

  Hayden

  “We’re almost there Sheriff,” Paul said, turning his head to look over at Hayden in the passenger seat of the vehicle the mechanic had called El Monstro. Paul’s latest creation, the modbox sat on a lifted composite frame mounted to four thick, reinforced APV tires he had lifted from a mangled USSF wreck he’d found a few months back. His efforts to return the huge and heavy tires to Carcity was a story of its own, and the complete tale of the construction of the vehicle had occupied most of the four hours they had already been on the road west.

  The rest of El Monstro fit the namesake as much as the tires and the frame. The chassis came from an electric car, sloped front to back, with a huge windshield partially obscured by the metal cage welded over it. Numerous spikes and spears jutted out from the steel cage. It and the massive grill up front allowed the vehicle to push through any debris that might be blocking the road. Both aided in supporting the big diesel engine Paul had loaded into the monstrosity.

  The entire thing was finished off by a pair of huge oil drums strapped between the rear of the chassis and the cage. Paul had topped them off with added fuel, allowing the modbox to cover nearly two thousand kilometers without the need to stop.

  It was an impressive work of engineering that would have made Natalia proud. A true monstro of a modbox, a Frankenstein’s monster of a vehicle that probably shouldn’t exist, though Hayden was glad it did. Not only did it provide the range he needed, but it offered solid protection against pretty much anything they might have encountered on the journey across the wilds.

  Not that Hayden had been happy to leave Zorro behind. He had considered sending Vazquez back to Houston with him, but he needed every hand he could get, and Zelda had promised to take good care of him until he returned. Paul’s insistence on being the driver for the trip from Lavega to Haven had convinced him he would need to go back to Carcity anyway. He had a responsibility to do his best to keep Casey’s brother safe. That promise had been made a long time ago.

  “How far?” Hayden asked, keeping his eyes on the horizon ahead and remaining watchful for any marauders, outlaws or other problems that might make themselves apparent in the badlands. Like goliaths.

  He found it strange they had covered nearly four hundred miles and he hadn’t spotted a single large silhouette in the distance or spotted any of their tracks pitting the landscape along the road. The last time he had been this far west he hadn’t been able to travel between settlements without at least a hint of the creatures. Then again, maybe it wasn’t that strange at all. The trife were the goliath’s primary food source, and they were gone. Maybe the creatures couldn’t survive without them.

  But then, where were the corpses? Where were their skeletons?

  “About fifteen miles, Sheriff,” Paul replied. “We should reach the outer gate by nightfall. Do you have any idea what we’re going to do once we get there?”

  “I know I need to find the next link in the chain,” Hayden replied. “The one that’ll lead me where I want to go. How I’m going to do that is still up in the air.” He pivoted his body to look back where Fairy, Thomas and Vazquez were seated. “I thought my new Custodian friends might be able to help me with that.”

  “Separation of concerns, Sheriff,” Thomas said, repeating his common refrain.

  “Pozz, I get that. You might not know the specific footsoldier, but maybe you know how your people think, how they work, and how they relax.”

  “Relax?” Vazquez said.

  “That’s right. You can’t tell me you’re on the job one hundred percent of the time. You might be from another planet, but you’re still human. You need to unwind, gossip, maybe make vague reference to things you aren’t supposed to talk about.”

  “I hear you, Sheriff,” Thomas said. “It didn’t happen much in the Southern Reach. Our operation was too small and the populated area of the city wasn’t much to speak about. We never wandered far from the lab. That’s not to say we didn’t have downtime, and the recruits were usually good for a game of cards. But the kind of scuttlebutt you’re referring to? Not in my experience.”

  “What about you, Maya?” Hayden asked. “You were primarily stationed in Haven, right?”

  “Yeah,” Vazquez replied. “The Western Reach is nearly four times the size of our base in Houston, and we’re much more integrated into the population. We don’t advertise as offworlders. As far as the people are concerned, we’re the Governor’s militia.”

  “Same as with Ruger,” Hayden said.

  “Pretty much. I know a place that’s popular with the clones. We might be able to pick up a lead there.”

  “Only the clones?” Fairy asked.

  “Yeah, I told you how it is. Where naturals go, we don’t. Or can’t sometimes. That’s just the way it is.”

  Fairy shook her head. “I can’t understand segregation like that. Like you’re subhuman or something.”

  “We’re better than human. I think that’s why the naturals put us down. They feel threatened because we’re genetically superior. There’s always some asshole out there claiming we’ll take over Proxima the first chance we get. It’s ridiculous, but you can always find suckers to believe that shit. I just want to live my life with the people I love and not have to deal with that crap.”

  “For the record, I don’t have a problem with clones,” Thomas said. “Except Stackers, but that’s because most of them are assholes.”

  “The head of New Eden is a Stacker,” Hayden said. “And a good friend of mine.”

  Thomas paled. “No offense intended, Sheriff. I didn’t say they’re all assholes. Just most. Jason disobeyed direct orders to try to kill you all by himself. He was such a jerk.”

  “I hear you. Maya, when we get to Haven can you steer me in the right direction?” Paul asked.

  “Yeah,” she replied. “There’s a hotel a couple of blocks from the saloon. I can get you there from the front gates.”

  “You have security on the front gates?” Hayden asked.

  “There’s a checkpoint, yeah. A guard station and a moveable barrier. Plus a squad of the governor’s militia.”

  “You mean the Custodian militia.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Might be a good opportunity for you to turn me in,” Hayden suggested.

  “It would be,” Vazquez agreed. “But there’s only one squad, they aren’t in combat armor or carrying CSF rifles, and you’re the Sheriff.” She smiled. Apparently, his actions at Fort Hood and Carcity had earned her respect.

  El Monstro continued over the uneven roadway, the vehicle’s suspension absorbing most of the imperfections while occasionally bouncing them hard in their seats. They had gone another few kilometers when the road turned, beginning to dip below the grade of the landscape as it cut through a few low-lying hills. Coming out of the turn, a blockade of wrecked cars became visible a short distance ahead, filling in the space beneath an overpass. A handful of people gathered above the debris, and Hayden watched as one of them lit a molotov cocktail and dropped it into the barrier.

  “Ambush,” Hayden said, at the same time the entire barricade went up in flames, quickly obscuring the people on the bridge in thick smoke. “They knew we were coming.”

  Bullets began pinging off the metal cage around them a moment later, a couple of rounds skipping off the windshield and leaving scuffs in the glass, the attack coming from the raised roadway on both sides.

  “Son of a bitch,” Vazquez said, shifting her rifle from between her legs in order to shoot back. Fairy did the same.

  “If we were your standard scavvies riding in a standard modbox, this might have worked,” Hayden said, remaining calm. “I chose this ride for a reason. Paul, you know what to do.”

  “Yup,” Paul replied. His foot dropped on the accelerator, El Monstro roaring as it picked up speed.

  Fairy and Vazquez began sending plasma bolts out the windows on either side as the modbox raced toward the barricade. Hayden pulled one of his revolvers, keeping his eyes fixed forward, watching for action from the group on the overpass. He got it a moment later, in the form of a dark, round puck tossed from the bridge, destined to land in front of the vehicle.

  Hayden recognized it right away, and he leaned out the window, getting a bead on it and firing, needing three rounds before he hit the falling land mine. It detonated a few meters ahead of them, the explosion sending a wave of fire and shrapnel at El Monstro. Hayden barely managed to get his arm back in the modbox before it could be shredded by the explosion.

  “Shit!” Paul cried, hands tense on the wheel as he struggled not to swerve away from the detonation. “Brace for impact!”

  The modbox slammed into the barricade, the huge front grill lifting the cars in front of it and pushing them to either side, the cacophony of rending metal echoing beneath the overpass as flames from the wrecks licked at the lower part of El Monstro.

  As they powered out the other side, Hayden shifted in his seat to look out of the rear window. A couple of the attackers pointed guns at them but held their fire as El Monstro pulled away.

  “That was awesome,” Fairy said, smiling and laughing as they left the ambush behind.

  31

  Hayden

  The perimeter wall that surrounded Haven was larger, higher and more advanced than any of the other barriers Hayden had encountered anywhere else, save for New Eden. Composed of concrete and steel, it rose nearly ten meters from the ground and was wide enough for guards to stand on top of the wall to monitor both the interior and exterior of the settlement.

  Located centrally to the massively populated sprawl that had existed prior to the arrival of the trife, the newest iteration of Haven occupied nearly a dozen square kilometers of the downtown area. Parts of it had been spared from the bombardment and firefights which had laid so much of the planet’s infrastructure to waste. Hayden knew from experience that the three block area in the center of Haven remained fully intact, stuffed with high-rises that showed plenty of wear but little sign of intentional damage.

  He had last been to the city nearly four years ago, during his original efforts to continue the expansion of the United Western Territories beyond King’s prior reach. There had been a huge trife nest south of the city that had taken nearly a hundred well-armed deputies and some innovative explosive charges Natalia had designed to clear out the workers and kill the queen.

  The current wall was a new addition, provided by the Custodians through the Governor, ostensibly to earn the accolades and goodwill of the residents, not only within the city limits but beyond to the farms and factories that had been springing up around the periphery. More likely, it had been erected to provide protection for the growing army inside the walls, the length and breadth of it expanding under Custodian rule.

  The argument existed that the Custodians had done more good than harm for the people under their rule, up until their apparent desire to follow through with Grimmel’s plan to return the Hunger to the planet.

  At least, that’s how it seemed from outside the wall.

  Thomas and Maya were two reminders to Hayden that not every Custodian was on board with the plan. In fact, most of them would probably be against it if they were aware of what the plan really was. The Grand Custodian might call separation of concerns a good thing for keeping their designs secret from outsiders, but it was equally effective at keeping secrets from one another and obscuring the truth.

  Paul brought El Monstro to a stop at the front gate, where they were blocked from entry by a reinforced steel barrier even the powerful machine couldn’t plow through. A guard station sat just in front of the wall, a single guard inside, while four more flanked the road leading to the entrance. They converged on the modbox, rifles held across their chests, apparently not expecting trouble from them despite the ambush.

  “Nice ride,” the guard on the driver’s side said, looking up at Paul. “Never seen nothing like it before.”

  “It’s custom,” Paul replied. “Built her myself.”

  “Governor’ll pay a pretty penny for her, I reckon. If you’re interested.”

  “I’ll think about it. How much to get inside?”

  “Hundred notes or five tokens.”

  The guard on the passenger side grabbed onto the ladder from the frame up to the chassis and climbed to Hayden’s level, looking in at him.

  “Good day to you,” Hayden said.

  The guard didn’t reply, turning his head to look into the back seat, eyes narrowing when he saw Maya in her flight suit. “You’re one of ours, ain’t you?”

  “I am. Captain Maya Vazquez. This is Specialist Thomas. We have orders from Lieutenant Colonel Rasha to report here from the Southern Reach. These three are Couriers under Ruger’s employ. We’re their delivery.”

  “I see,” the guard said. “I’ll radio base, let them know you’re here.”

  He reached for a two-way radio on his hip, but Hayden reached through the open window of the modbox to stop him. “That’s not necessary, pardner. They’re not due in until tomorrow, if you know what I mean.”

  The guard smiled and nodded, moving his hand from the radio. “I know exactly what you mean, sir,” he replied. “Looking for a little extra R and R before you report back?”

  “Exactly,” Vazquez said. “I’d prefer to keep our whereabouts quiet until then.”

  “If you ain’t officially checking in, I still need to charge the gate fee,” the first guard said.

  “It’s no problem,” Hayden replied, reaching into the pocket of his duster and removing a small canvas bag heavy with UWT coins. He picked out five and handed them over to the second guard. “Here you go.”

  The guard laughed. “Must be nice, being a Courier. Freedom to go wherever you want, do whatever you want. How many folks have you killed?”

  “I’ve lost count,” Hayden replied.

  “I’d love to become a Courier,” the guard continued. “How’d you get into it?”

  “My parents were War Dogs. They trained me to fight. I got in good with a warlord back East. He started offering me work. Simple as that.”

  “I wish I could get the Governor to notice me,” the guard said. “I think I have what it takes, and manning this gate is boring as hell.”

  “Forget it, Lin,” the first guard said. “He don’t want to hear about your grepping wet dreams.”

  The other guard laughed. “Sorry.” He patted the sill of the window before jumping off El Monstro. “Open up!” he shouted to the guard in the gatehouse, who pressed a button to activate the gate mechanism. The barrier opened inward.

  Paul started the engine again, revving it to the delight of the guards before pulling through the gates and into the city. The streets immediately surrounding the wall were clear and clean, the debris and garbage long removed. The buildings all had power and many of the high-rises around the street market were occupied, with silhouettes visible through backlit windows. A sign further up the road offered parking for incoming travelers, while the road beyond it had been taken over by carts and stalls offering an array of goods both scavenged and newly produced. Residents and visitors alike perused the inventory.