formed veves on his face. Dreadlocks sprouted from his head where they could; the rest of it was either covered by a precariously balanced top hat, or by his military-built and black-market-augmented integral computer.
Papa Neon wore a long purple leather coat that looked heavy enough to be armoured and was again covered in many colourful symbols. As he stepped out of the coffin he leaned on his glowing neon staff. He looked every part the role of the Voudun priest and gang leader that he played so well.
He stepped down and we all relaxed somewhat. He nodded at Rannu, who nodded back and courteously stepped away from the bike and the weapon clipped to it.
‘Does that ever impress anyone?’ I asked as the smoke was clearing, carried away by the dry wind that blew across the wasteland.
‘No, but it is good fun,’ Papa Neon announced in his thick Haitian accent. He looked me up and down. ‘Are you dead?’ he surprised me by asking. Then again hackers tend to see the world differently as a result of their various net-born religious manias.
‘I’m as you see, Papa Neon. In no small part thanks to the drugs you supplied.’
After I was rescued from the Wait I had received medical treatment from the Big Neon Voodoo. This had included a substantial supply of drugs that had enabled me to cope with the symptoms of dying from radiation poisoning. Papa Neon gave this some thought.
‘This is good. I think that the Loa have blessed you. I know this because they have told me. They are pleased that Obatala is now among us in the spirit world.’ I think he was talking about God. ‘I danced when he returned.’ I knew he would. ‘But the devil walks around the sun far out in the night,’ he finished. I looked at him blankly.
‘I think he means Demiurge,’ Mudge suggested.
‘Not my problem,’ I said. Papa Neon regarded me carefully before reaching into the pocket of the threadbare finery that was his waistcoat and producing his UV monocle. He placed it in this eye and looked at me some more.
I was starting to feel the discomfort I always got when hacker pseudo-religious bullshit was brought up. Particularly when it was applied to me. I realised it was how they understood the world around them. At its heart they just had a different but arguably no less valid way of understanding things. It still always sounded like madness to me.
‘Ogun Badagris has had too much fun.’ I glanced at Mudge, who shrugged. ‘Will you not cage his horse?’
‘I don’t know what that means,’ I said, ‘but my fighting days are over.’
He moved in close to me. I tried not to flinch. I could smell rum and stale marijuana smoke. Then something occurred to me.
‘Have you been speaking to Pagan?’ I asked.
‘The Loa and the dead want to speak to you.’
‘Where is he? Where’s…’ I started and then suddenly felt very self-conscious, more about Rannu than Mudge. Though Mudge was reasonably well informed about how pathetic I could be.
‘The Mambo walks in the lair of Anansi’s twisted younger brother,’ Papa Neon told me.
I looked at Mudge again. ‘Anansi’s a spider god, I think.’ It didn’t sound good.
‘Look!’ Papa Neon shouted. I turned to look where he was pointing and could just make out a large copter speeding towards us. Its rotors were folded and it was using its jets.
‘The spider wants to speak to you,’ Papa Neon began. ‘The dead want to speak to you and the Loa have not done with you.’
Fuck. I just wanted a drink and a smoke, maybe some peace and quiet.
‘Is that a black helicopter?’ Rannu asked, a hint of incredulity in his voice. I shaded my eyes with my hands and watched as the copter’s twin rotors unfolded and started to rotate. It was a military cargo model that had indeed been painted black, its windows tinted.
Mudge started laughing. ‘Fucking spooks, man. One cliche after another.’ He shook his head. ‘They actually think this shit is cool.’
I turned back to look at Papa Neon. Maybe he was a cliche too, a stereotype. It was difficult to tell how much was real and how much was show – a bit of theatre and intimidation for those watching, waiting for his fall. Or maybe he’d played the role too long and believed it. Or maybe it was all real, which is what the hackers would have us believe.
‘I think you came here to feed the Baron with those stupid white boys,’ he said. Then it hit home.
‘You were on us from the moment we came into Crawling Town,’ I said.
‘I asked Obatala to watch for you,’ he said. Thanks, God, I thought. But the sense of betrayal was misplaced. This was what we had asked God to do after all. On the other hand, how were we ever going to sneak up on someone ever again? ‘The way those boys killed you-’
‘They didn’t kill me…’ I started. Papa Neon looked at me in a way that made me want to not interrupt him.
‘The way they killed you, you don’t walk away from that.’
‘Those boys are evil,’ I told him. The copter was getting closer.
‘No doubt, but they is our evil. You do not live here.’
I’d decided that the Wait got a pass, but I couldn’t help smiling and playing devil’s advocate. ‘So how long would I have to live here before I could do them?’ I asked.
‘Jakob?’ Rannu said. He had the sniper/shotgun combo in his hand. He unfolded the weapon and twisted the barrel, changing it from a smoothbore twelve gauge to a rifled twenty gauge. Turning it into a heavy-calibre marksman’s weapon. I was aware that the copter was beginning its landing approach. He slid the magazine with the caseless twenty-gauge rounds into the combination weapon.
‘You have to live here.’ Papa Neon emphasised the live. ‘We know the difference. Goodbye, my friend.’ He turned, heading for his pickup/hearse.
The copter was now kicking up a lot of dirt. I reached into the car and slid the assault shotgun out of its scabbard. Mudge already had his AK-47.
‘Goodbye, dead man!’ Papa Neon shouted through the swirling dust.
The copter was heavily armed. I could make out rotary railgun turrets pointed in our general direction.
‘Papa Neon! When the devil comes will you fight?’ Mudge shouted over the roar of the copter’s engines.
I could hear Papa Neon’s deep laughter as the coffin closed and he sank into the back of the truck. Little Baby Neon was already in the cutaway passenger seat, and the vehicle made its way back towards the huge dust cloud that was Crawling Town. The cloud seemed to fill a lot of the horizon. I was sorry to see them go. It would have been nice to have someone as frightening as Little Baby Neon backing us up in a discussion with the inhabitants of the copter.
The three of us spread out. Mudge to my left, Rannu to my right. Our weapons were at the ready, held horizontally against our bodies but not pointing at anything in particular. The dust cloud engulfed us as the aircraft landed. We all switched, I’m guessing, to thermal to look at the copter in the reds, yellows and oranges of its heat signature. This was significantly masked, which suggested it was set up for stealth to a degree.
A door in the centre of the copter opened, stairs extending to the dirt. Three figures came out. We saw them as thermal outlines. They had weapons at their shoulders pointed at us.
Rannu and I had our weapons to our shoulders covering them. We each picked the closest target. I’d been working with him long enough to know that was what he would do. Mudge was a fraction of a second behind us.
‘Drop your weapons!’ they shouted. They were American. We didn’t say anything; we just kept them covered.
‘Drop your weapons or we will shoot!’ The one in the middle was doing all the talking. Still we didn’t reply. We just watched for the tells that they were about to fire. Hoped that we were quicker. Worried about the copter’s weapon systems, which were the biggest threat by far.
This sort of bollocks was typical of some paramilitary types. Had they landed and talked to us we would have talked back to them. Instead they’d probably read in some textbook somewhere the importance of establishing dominance in a power relationship so they could control the situation. The thing is, to us it wasn’t about a power relationship, it was about a threat. If we didn’t respond to having weapons pointed at us this time, then what happened the next time, when someone did actually want to do us harm? People like this never seemed to learn that they could get a lot further by behaving courteously. Would they get scared and back down or would they get
