Citizen by T.K. Malone

Author:T.K. Malone [Malone, T.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

11

Zac’s Story

Strike time: plus 2 days

Location: Sendro Verde

They came across the first one ten miles from Christmas, face down, half in, half out of the road’s storm runoff: a male body dressed in an orange jumpsuit with the words “Black City Correctional” written across his back. Loser skidded to a halt, tapping on the steering wheel nervously while Billy Flynn kicked the body over. The man’s face was covered in scrapes, the front of his suit torn.

“A banger, no doubt about it. Thrown from a truck or something. One shot to the back of the head. Execution, I’d say,” but Zac’s mind was racing, and so he’d hardly heard a word. Black City Correctional, the liberal name for a hellhole. It was the very first and the very last place he should have forgotten about.

“Shit,” he muttered, and fished for a smoke. “Now, that’s an army we haven’t accounted for.”

Billy rounded the truck and leaned on Zac’s door. “Dare I ask if the old man’s still alive?”

“Mine?” Zac managed a rueful smile. “No, that psycho must have been ghosted long ago. What we have here, I’d imagine, is a bunch of lags running around the countryside, wondering what the fuck has gone down. Add to that some score settling, and you have what we have, mayhem. Spritzer!” he called.

Spritzer ran up to the truck’s cab. “What’s up, Zac?”

“Any of ours in there at the minute?”

“Black City? Only Switch, I think. Recently, anyway, he got caught outside one of the tunnels and was hauled off, but by a bunch of feds not stiffs, so we couldn’t get to them.”

“Feds? Why didn’t I know about this?”

“Charm’s jurisdiction doesn’t run to the feds, so we didn’t bother you. Grimes was reaching out to them from the inside, making sure he’d be comfortable while we worked out what to do next.”

“Shit,” Zac again said. Billy punched the truck’s side.

“You know what this means,” he muttered.

“Yep. Loser, you know the way to the lockup?”

“Never had the pleasure, but I’ve spied it on my way to Christmas. They’re going to be armed, disorganized, no doubt drunk, and looking for fun. What are you thinking?” but he had the look of a man who knew perfectly well, but just didn’t like it.

“I’m thinking we need to take a look. This one obviously got away early but had a falling out.”

“Like I said,” Loser muttered, “high and crazy; a lethal cocktail. Guess the power went off and the EMP blast took out the backup.”

“A few thousand in there, I heard,” said Noodle. “Mostly code violations and ninety percent gridders—well, half-gridders—bit like you, Zac. Bastard gridders; that what they call you all?”

“I actually prefer carnie to that, but there ain’t none of those left, either.”

“You can call anything anything, you can build your utopia, and guess what, you still get the same percentage of nutters living in it,” Noodle went on to say, his voice tapering off in direct relation to the intensity of Zac’s bemused stare.

“You done?” Zac eventually said.

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