stuck with it.
Quincannon strode up. He had the Cav walk down pat: sort of an easy lope, with lots of shoulder action, belly pulled in. It was just the right side of a swagger.
'What's the situation?' he asked.
'Unidentified casualties, sir,' Tyree replied. 'We came upon them as they are. There were birds but I shooed them off with a miniscreamer.'
'This deadfella's been gone less'n an hour,' put in Burnside. 'The other bit the cold one three – four ticks earlier.'
'Careless driving costs lives.'
'This wasn't careless. Whoever roadkilled these hombres made freakin' sure they did a snazz job.'
Quincannon wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. A minute out of his air conditioning and he was sweating. Flies swarmed on the corpses. Soon the atmosphere in these parts wasn't going to be too pleasant.
'What do you reckon, sir? Maniax?'
The Maniax were supposed to be off the big board in the Western States, but there were enough rogue chapters of the gangcult rolling around pissed to do a pretty sight of damage before their file closed.
'Could be, Leona. Or Gaschuggers, KKK, Razorbacks, Masked Raiders, Psychopomps, Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, DAR, Voodoo Bros, any one of a dozen others. Hell, the Mescalero Apache ain't been no trouble for a hundred years, but this is their country too. Killin' people is the Great American Sport. Always has been.'
The Quince got like that sometimes, mouthy and hardbitten. Tyree put up with it because the sergeant was a top op. After Howling Paul McAuley, probably the best all-round op in the Cav. If she wanted to advance herself off her cyke into a cruiser and then up the chain of command, she'd need his recommendation.
She'd been a trooper a month or so too long as it was. Put a tunic on her and she'd make a dandy lieutenant. Then captain, colonel. It could happen. Her mother had told her it was important to have ambition.
'What do you reckon to their outfits?'
The deadfellas were dressed square, in black cloth suits. No glitter, no frills.
'Don't rightly know, Burnside. Let's take a closer scan.'
Tyree had hoped he wouldn't say something like that.
Without too much evident distaste, Quincannon examined one of the corpses, slipping gauntleted fingers between material and meat. He unpeeled a section of jacket from the crushed chest. The dead man wore a simple black suit and a shirt that had been white once but was now mainly red. The shirt was fastened to the throat but there was no tie.
'Funny thing,' said Quincannon. 'No pockets. No belt. And, scan, no buttons…'
The dead man had fastened his coat with wooden pegs.
'We found this.' Burnside handed the sergeant a broad-brimmed black hat.
'He wasn't with any of the usual gangcults, that's for sure,' the Quince said. 'The ratskags who zotzed him might have taken his weapons, but they'd have left holsters or grenade toggles or something. This damfool wasn't even armed.'
'Do you reckon he was an undertaker? All in black, like. Or a preacher?'
'Second guess is more likely, Leona. Though what the hell he was doin' this far into the sand is beyond me.'
'Preachers these days pack more firepower than Bonnie and Clyde,' Burnside put in. 'Take the Salvation Survivalists.'
'The other is dressed the same,' Tyree observed.
'Just a gang of pilgrims, then. Looking for the Promised Land.'
'The Amish don't use buttons,' she said. 'Or the Hittites.'
'As far as I know, the last Amish were wiped out in '93. But that's a good thought. Plenty of religions about these days if a man has a fancy to pick a new one. Or an old one.'
Quincannon stood up and dropped the hat over the dead man's face. He observed a private moment of silence and made a gesture that could either be the sign of the cross or the hoisting of a last drink.
'What should we do?'
'Bad news, Leona. You found 'em. You gotta scrape 'em up and bury 'em by the roadside. I'll call it in to Valens. Burnside, break out the entrenching tools and give the lady a hand. Then we'll go up the road a ways, following the tracks. There
Tyree nodded. After the pilgrim-flattening session, the killers' tires would be bloody enough to paint a trail for three counties The white strip down the middle of the road was a solid red.
'Thought so. Anyway, we see who's at the end of the trail. If we're lucky, we get to kick badguy ass before suppertime. If not, we ride through the night and head 'em off at sunup.'
The Quince saluted. Tyree and Burnside returned the salutes, and pulled neckerchiefs up over their mouths and noses. They'd had all the infection lectures about handling suspect deadfolks. At an adjustment, the bandanas shrivelled onto their faces, functioning as filters.
'Remember, disease is your worst enemy,' Quincannon said, 'so check the seals on your gauntlets before you interfere with these former citizens Snap to it, men.'
IV
The girls were loitering around the Virtual Death Unlimited Arcade, a roof on stilts raised over a platoon of credit-machines. The games centre was attached to Arizona-Wonderworld, a failing mall out in the Painted Desert. In the stores, all goods were on massive discount. Jazzbeaux had glommed a pair of snazz boots on American Excess, a card she intended to pay off when Dracula got a suntan. She even found a stall specialising in ornamental prostheses and tried on a selection of eyepatches, none of which took her fancy.
Jazzbeaux,
She popped a cold can of Pivo, the new Czech beer currently benefiting from major marketing muscle. A mouthful was antidote to the subliminal brainwashing in the jingle. She squirted the vile stuff onto the ground and tossed the can in the air, drawing a killing bead on it with her finger as it arced towards asphalt.
There weren't many other customers kicking around. Solids stayed away from the sand. The mall was covered in dog-piss spray tags that marked the place as Maniak Territory. Since T-H-R took down the Western Maniax in a joint action with the United States Cavalry, the backbone of Ariz-Wonder's custom was kicking around the Reformation-Confinement Environments the newsies elaborately didn't call concentration camps. Without its status as a major Maniak drop, this place was headed for ghostville. Unless some new, hungry faction stepped in and took over the patronage.
Let's face it, girlie-girl, a power vacuum invites initiative. As Acting WC, it was her place to think ahead a month or two. Without the Grand Exalted Bullmoose and his Merry Marching Morons, Utah and Arizona – at least – were up for grabs. A nice piece of territory, and a chunk of change. She'd seen stats; it was a profitable patch, and someone had to provide the services the Maniax had been delivering. Some things might not exactly be legal, which meant corps had to filter products through street execs.
Andrew Jean, her trusted lieutenant, had opened talks with the Winter Corp and even the Mighty GenTech. If the corps had things (like drugs and guns and virtual porno) that solids wanted, why should feebs in government stand in the way? Wasn't the Prezz supposed to support Free Enterprise? The Psychopomps were notionally communist, if only because the reds had better uniforms and songs. It was better for all conce if alternative enterprise was handled by a gangcult with broadly commie principles rather than a rabidly capitalist krewe like the
