Burnout by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant

Author:Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sterling & Stone

Chapter Ten

Four days later, after he was back to living in the small, unheated shed inside Titan’s truck yard, a kid rode up on a bicycle and asked for Mr. Cutter Dunn.

“You Dunn?” The kid couldn’t have been older than ten and had a dried-out, street-smart body that reminded Cutter of beef jerky.

“Yeah.”

“Letter for you.” He pulled something from a satchel around his neck, threaded through one armpit.

“Who sent you?”

“Corps.”

“Prove it.”

“I got your letter, ain’t I?”

Cutter extended a hand.

“Two bucks,” said the kid.

“For a letter?”

“Hey, you want cheap, get a real address.”

Cutter reached into his pocket. While fixing up his future ride, Cutter had also picked up a few chores around the yard and hub, for which Gord paid him in comforting cash.

The kid and Cutter traded cash for paper with a fast snatch that looked more like a hostage swap.

As the kid pedaled away, Cutter turned the envelope over with a mix of trepidation and excitement. Four days wasn’t bad time for the convoluted route of the ghosts’ improvised postal service. A reply either meant great news about Dorothy and home or the opposite.

But the letter was Cutter’s original. The hand marks suggested it had made its way to Amenity before being returned for reasons unknown.

He was staring at the letter, wondering what it meant and how those back home were getting on, when Gord walked up.

He looked at the truck behind where Cutter was standing with his paper enigma. It was similar to the truck on which Cutter had learned to drive when he’d been at Gord’s place before, but that one was in decent shape, whereas this one was a dump. Cutter was in a rush to check on Amenity, especially now, but he couldn’t in good conscience take a decent truck. Gord was a good man trying to get along, and right now, he needed anything that burned diesel without hacking.

“You get this fuckheap running?”

“Purrs like a very heavy kitten.”

“No shit?” Gord frowned and half-circled the thing, touching its sides. “I figured she was terminal.”

“I just have good hands, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Gord said. “About those hands …”

He nodded, then reached into the cab. Cutter had known he’d be coming down today and had made Gord a promise. All idealistic reasons to uncover Hollander Sitwell’s GPS fraud had vanished in a bonfire of artifice and within a minute of picking Cutter up in Vegas.

“You know, I’ve been thinking while I’ve been driving, and fuck it.” Gord hadn’t explained which it was being fucked, but Cutter knew from context and saw evidence later. Gord had already mentally added GPS cheating to his company’s toolkit and was counting dollars. They’d know shortly if only Hollander would have that particular power.

Cutter removed a device he’d fashioned from garbage. The size of a hotplate and looked a little like one, but it served a very different function.

He turned knobs. The thing came to life with a red and a green diode (wired clumsily and taped to the side) and a low hiss of static.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.