Dead Dwarves Don't Dance Read online

  “Keep this maniac away from me, Grue.” Munk walked off, unlocking the cuffs.

  Grue bent over the body of the man and picked up Earless’ gun. The weapon looked like a tiny toy in his beefy palm. He turned the corpse’s mangled head. “I knew this guy. His name’s Roe. Used to be one of Ipplitz’s men.”

  Earless tapped her foot impatiently, arms folded across her chest. “Well, now he’s meat for the organ grinders. Hadn’t we better dig our gleamers out of this pile of scrap and get moving?”

  Grue rose, and handed Earless her weapon. “You didn’t have to kill him.”

  “What’s one more body?” Earless shrugged. “Hey, he was never going to dance again anyway, not with his legs squashed into soyburger. At least not without expensive vatjob replacements. I did him a favor and now he’s dancing in the sky with Elvis.”

  Grue shook his head slightly. “Just try not to kill anyone else today. Okay, Earless?”

  “Now, I can’t promise that. You know how upset I get at rush hour.”

  Grue did not return Earless’ normally infectious grin. The goon walked around the pile of cars. Things were not going well. Smith’s double-cross, Earless’ mood swings, and Munk’s remorse over the Stiltzkin job, had turned a day that should have been euphoric into something that Grue would have preferred to forget.

  Or maybe he too was regretting the dozens of innocents murdered the previous night. He shook his head. Nope. No way. Genetic engineers had dealt him a raw deal, and he was finally collecting on back dues. He’d lived through a lot, and this was the final reckoning. Payment in full for IOUs he’d collected over decades of oppression and discrimination by humans. The money would finance his retirement, a peaceful retirement.

  He holstered his Ultima, and walked over to the pile of cars that covered their van and Smith. He tugged at one of the wrecks, a small plastic commuter vehicle.

  “You eyeballs going to stand there gawking or help me dig out ten megacreds?” Grue asked through clamped teeth as he dragged the car from the pile. Earless shed her jacket and then the impact vest. A muddy “NecroBob for Secretary General!” tank top stretched tightly over her thin bony torso and a necklace wrapped tightly about her neck. She walked over and tried to help.

  Munk shouted from across the clearing. “Hey! Let’s try this.”

  The pair turned to see him approaching at the controls of a grimy hydraulic loader, its large claws clamping open and closed. The goon and pleaser stepped aside as Munk used the machine to clear the fallen vehicles out of the way.

  9

  Noose didn’t know when he had nodded off, but as he weakly pulled himself from a troubled sleep, he realized he was back in bed. He opened his eyes slowly, and saw that Cori stood beside the bed, staring down at him. Her face was grim.

  “Cori,” he began, but she threw a single piece of paper onto his chest. A dark claw clenched his gut like a vice as he shifted and hesitantly grasped the paper. He didn’t want to look at it, didn’t want to read it, but his eyes moved down the page of their own volition.

  It was hardcopy of a BioTechnix emergency response report. Late last night, the Dekalb F BioTechnix Emergency Response Station registered a ruptured subscriber emergency band seal. A paramedic unit had taken five minutes to reach the proximal location of the band, and medical personnel took another two minutes to find it. The wearer, Pamela Kniginyzky, account number 134-A2R74532-1, was dead from massive trauma to the upper body, likely from close proximity to an explosive blast. The body…

  Noose could read no more, and let the paper slip from his fingers into his lap. He stared down at it, not daring to look at Cori. He noticed that his hands shook.

  “Look at me.”

  Noose heard her whisper, but still could not force himself to raise his head.

  Cori bent over the dwarf. “Look at me, God damn it!” she yelled.

  “Cori…” his voice cracked as he lifted his head. She glared down at him, her face red with anger and her hands balled into fists.

  “Why?” She finally spoke. “Why couldn’t you leave us alone, you damn runt? Why’d you have to pull us into your damn life? You’re just an assassin! You had to know that one day it’d come back at you!”

  “Cori, I didn’t want–”

  “You didn’t want this to happen?” Cori shouted. “Well, it did! My sister’s dead! Because someone you killed had friends and they came after you! You killed my sister!”

  Noose clamped his mouth shut and let Cori yell and scream. He stared blankly at her. He had no idea what to say. He’d spent his genetically engineered life killing, first for the Peacekeepers, then for the corporations in their shadow-wars, and finally as a free agent, working for whomever would pay his price. In all that time he had never had to deal with a death so close to home, of someone so innocent, of someone he knew as a friend. A death of someone he really cared for.

  “You gonna sit there like a damn slab?” Cori demanded. “Well, you can just get your disgusting freak body out of my apartment! Go on! Leave!” She bent over and grabbed his arm, pulling him.

  “Cori, you don’t want to do this.” Noose resisted. “You have to–”

  “Get your sorry ass out of here!”

  Noose yanked his arm from her grasp. “I’m sorry, Cori.”

  She paused, her face hard and resolute. Then she struck out, connecting a heavy blow to the dwarf’s face. Before he could respond, she was showering him with blows, hitting and slapping him in a wild fury.

  “I want you out of here!” she yelled. “Get away from me! Get out of my life!”

  Noose did his best to protect himself from her assaults, and managed to grab one of her wrists, holding it firmly. She kept hammering with her other hand until he caught it as well. He pulled her down, but she struggled against him, squirming wildly.

  “Cori, Cori,” he said softly. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her. Her struggles diminished and she collapsed in his arms, burying her face in his neck. He felt her body start to heave as grief and anguish washed out, tears flowing freely, dripping onto his shoulder. He held her tightly while she cried, caressing her hair and rocking her gently.

  He looked down past her shoulder, at the hardcopy crumpled on the bed. His eyes narrowed, and he forced back tears. This was not a time for tears. It was a time for blood.

  10

  Douglasville District Manager Julia Braddock-Vyne stared into the camera. “It’s absolutely no way for our citizens to live! How can we justify government spending and operations if we can’t even protect our citizens in supposedly secure zones like Dekalb?”

  Dekalb District Manager Delilah O’Rourke and Gainesville District Manager Pradeep Vanders nodded agreement from the seats around the low table they shared with Braddock-Vyne. Stock market data scrolled across the bottom of the screen, just below the television program’s title graphics: RAM Politics Today! Sponsored by Emetics4U!

  “I agree with Manager Braddock-Vyne,” said Delilah O’Rourke. “This attack occurred in my own district, one that I must note has a crime rate substantially lower than almost all other districts in this metroplex. Many of my constituents have been demanding security tax refunds. They see no reason to remit taxes when they do not feel safe from lunatic Purists gratuitously launching missiles from empty apartments.”

  “Not only that,” Braddock-Vyne intervened, “but the obvious Purist nature of this unprovoked assault against neohumans has sparked plex-wide riots. Unfortunately, Douglassville District has a substantially higher neohuman population, and law enforcement is, I must admit, woefully unprepared to stem the tide of these disturbances.”

  “I can’t believe that Governor Jones-Utu-Rudeholmer-Xin is taking so long to crush these rioters,” O’Rourke agreed. “He should follow Administrator Chauveau’s advice and ask for Peacekeeper assistance.”

  Vanders, aged and bald, leaned forward and glared at O’Rourke. He spoke forcefully. “Hell! Our idiot governor hasn’t even found the killers yet. He
should be scouring the metroplex with conscripted corporate security guards. If I was the governor, I’d have the city turned inside out finding these genocidal scum.”

  “Of course, District Manager Vanders,” interjected the show’s host, yet another bodysculpted facsimile of the old news icon Geraldo Rivera, “all the citizens of Atlanta share your outrage. But what more can Governor Jones-Utu-Rudeholmer-Xin do? He’s mobilized the Regional Police and shut down all public and private airports, tube trains, and metroplex exits. Detectives are rounding up all the usual suspects. He’s even repurposed half the phased plasma cannon on the containment walls for internal monitoring to forestall any attempts to escape by unlawful aircraft. Thanks to the governor, Regional Atlanta Metroplex is now a closed system. He’s doing everything he can.”

  Vanders waved a dismissive hand at the host. “That’s what Xin’s paying you to say, you simpering lapdog. When’s the last time this station ever said anything negative about the governor? Huh? When’s the last time you even mentioned all the boondoggles he’s gotten us into? He’s got you and every other plastic reporter in this town under his thumb so I wouldn’t expect you to–”

  “And we’ll hear more from our three District Managers, Braddock-Vyne, O’Rourke, and Vanders,” the host interrupted as the camera zoomed from his guests to his smiling face, “after we return from these messages from our sponsors. Emetics4U! If you absolutely, positively need to lose five pounds today!”

  11

  “Ten to one says Vanders is gone when they get back,” Grue said, draining a beer box. It looked tiny in his huge hand. He immediately ripped the tab off another.

  Earless snickered. “Why do all the newsbiffs look like that Rivera guy? Why can’t the plastic surgeons use some different historicons? What about Steve McQueen? He’s major subzero.”

  Munk walked up to the floor-to-ceiling vidwall and thumbed down the volume to avoid the blare of the Emetics4U commercial. “So, Grue, any bright ideas yet?” he demanded

  “Not yet.” Grue lounged on the low sofa in Munk’s pre-fab modular apartment. The goon’s long thick legs stretched out across the room, right up to the vidwall.

  “Not yet? Just freaking wonderful!” Munk threw his drink against the wall, beer splattering over the German blastband Rotvogel singing their Emetics4U endorsement. “You better come up with a plan. How the hell are we supposed to get out of here with the Reggies, Global Marshals, Peacekeepers, and every other government agency this side of Mars looking for us?”

  “Dog catchers ain’t looking for us,” Earless noted. She sat on the kitchen counter, tugging her bracelets farther up her forearm.

  Munk glared. “Oh, well, I guess we’re safe, then.”

  “Freeze, bud, we ain’t caught yet.” Grue smiled and stood up. “And we’re millionaires!” He pointed at Smith’s case on the dinette table, admiring the bright cashcards stacked inside.

  “A crapload of good ten meg’s gonna do three corpses,” Munk muttered, sitting down at the table.

  “Relax, Munk,” Grue said, ducking into the kitchen and grabbing several more beers from the fridge. “Nobody even knows who we are.”

  “Yet,” the human said, watching Grue drain the beers. It hadn’t taken long for the goon to slip back into his booze-chugging ways. “Smith didn’t get the idea to smear us all by himself. Whoever he’s working for is gonna be looking for us just as hard as the Reggies.”

  “That’s why we’re fading out of RAM.”

  “And how’s that?” Munk frowned, throwing up his hands. “Sure as hell those passcards Smith gave us are worth crap.”

  “We’ll snag some new passes from Ulric. He’s the best forger in Atlanta, and with all the loot we’ve got, he’ll be able to knock off three skates that could fool Minisoft’s smartest verifiers.”

  “And then?”

  “We fly to Arizona, of course.”

  Munk shook his head. “Not likely. Hartfield Pan-Global’s snapped shut like a vice, just like all the other skyports. Ain’t nobody getting through except nuns and newborns.”

  Earless took a beer from the goon. “I don’t like flying, anyway,” she said.

  “We don’t have to fly outta here.” Grue shrugged. “We can drive.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Munk argued. “Plex exits are closed, too.”

  “So are the Trans-Regional Tube Trains,” Earless added.

  “So, we wait until they open. They don’t even know who we are,” Grue said firmly.

  “But they’re going to be checking passcards.”

  “And why should that be a problem?” Grue asked. “They don’t know anything about us.”

  “Unless Smith’s boss tells them.”

  Grue didn’t respond. What if Smith’s unknown boss betrayed them to the Reggies? It wouldn’t be hard to anonymously give their names and descriptions to the police. Smith kept his employer’s identity professionally secret. But, the unknown employer definitely knew Grue, Munk, and Earless, and it was doubtful that he, or she, would stop trying to kill them.

  “We can’t stay here,” Grue realized. “Smith’s boss will be after us. Probably find this place soon enough. We can’t stay at any of our normal dumps.”

  “I don’t like my place, anyway,” Earless said. “Too many breeders around.”

  “What then? We try and run the containment wall?” Munk smirked.

  “No. But we need to be mobile, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t want to be stuck in that van for hours or days,” Earless said. “And I sure as hell don’t want to use trams to avoid the Reggies. They pack you in like skuzzy breeders.”

  “Yeah.” Munk glanced down at Earless. “You skuzzy pleasers are so fragile.”

  “You’ll never know,” Earless replied, smiling widely.

  “Just ease off, you two.” Grue stepped around the sofa. “No reason to go for each other’s throats.”

  “Yeah.” Earless rubbed at the bandage at her neck. “Mine hurts enough already.”

  “We need to get some good transportation, a motor home or camper, something like that,” Grue said, wiping beer from his lips. “That way we can hole up in any parking lot and be ready to sneak outta the plex when they open the gates.”

  “Why don’t we just hire some pilot,” Munk suggested, “like Joystick or Smeg? We could have them fly us outta here just like that. Right over the wall.”

  “Yeah, let’s get Joystick,” Earless shivered. “He’s a topnotch anarchist who knows how to party. They don’t call him Joystick because he flies aerodynes, you know.”

  Grue shook his head. “Nope. Reggies are doing their best to shut down the whole metroplex, and that means they’re going to squeeze anyone that could get us out of here, especially the good ones. I don’t think any pilot’s gonna want to try and jump the wall with all the plasma batteries manned and waiting.”

  “Wonderful!” Munk shook his head.

  “We shouldn’t use any of our normal contacts,” Grue said. “Smith’s boss probably has them watched. We’ve got to use strangers, people we’ve never met. People that aren’t even in the biz.”

  “Like who?”

  “Any car salesman will do.”

  “Car salesman?”

  “Whatta we want with a freaking autopimp?” Earless asked.

  “We’re gonna get some big wheels and lay low for a day or two. Wait for the heat to cool off.”

  “What kind of wheels? Can we get a Ferrari?” Earless suggested.

  “No. We’re getting something off-road. But, since we don’t have to worry about price,” Grue smiled, “the sky is pretty much the limit.”

  “I’ll check the listings for a heavy vehicle dealer,” Earless said, then addressed the vidwall. “Vid! Directory, recreational vehicles.” A quarter of the screen blinked away from the news to show a list of business names and phone numbers.

  “Look for a used car lot,” Grue said.

  “What? I thought you just said price didn’t
matter.”

  “It’s not price I’m worried about. Used dealers are a little more lax with their contract and licensing standards. No need to get caught buying a vehicle.”

  “Right!”

  Munk stood up. “We leaving soon?”

  “Soon as possible,” Grue nodded.

  “Then I think I’ll rig a little surprise for anyone that comes looking for us.” He walked off down the hallway.

  12

  Noose found a fresh shirt in Cori’s closet and donned it slowly and quietly as she slept uneasily on the bed, eyes red and swollen. It had taken her over an hour to fall asleep; he had eased himself from her grasp, and pulled the blanket up over her. Anguish spread across her face even in sleep, and Noose grimaced in contemplation of what she was feeling. Having no sister or brother of his own, or any family other than countless unknown vatgrown siblings, Noose was not sure he could conceive of her pain. He’d been careful not to let anyone get too close to him over the years of his freelancing life. In the biz, friends were liabilities just as much as assets.

  In fact, though, Noose had both friends and lovers. The latter far outnumbered the former – his standards for friends were far higher than his standards for lovers. His friends, few and far between, had taken years to prove themselves worthy of his trust and loyalty; in return, they had his trust and loyalty. In the biz, such traits were rare: precious commodities that one did not easily relinquish.

  Noose’s prerequisites for lovers, on the other hand, were simple and easily fulfilled: human, drop-dead gorgeous, and very un-curious. He didn’t like questions, didn’t like long-lasting romantic attachments, and preferred his women be around only when he needed them. Some of his acquaintances, such as Socket, the bartender at Diablo’s Bar, were always razzing him for his insatiable taste for human women instead of dwarven women. His ability to satisfy his desires, however, was never questioned: his one-nighter exploits were renowned. But when it had come to Cori and Pamela, Noose’s normally undefeatable one-liners, obvious confidence, and humor had failed. Oh, he’d gotten to be friends, good friends, but it had never gone beyond that.