Thank God it was a branch they’d hit and not the ball of plasma. Either case, they wrecked, but at least after hitting the tree, Remy woke up in a smoking heap on the dusty forest floor and not at the Pearly Gates. When that day finally would come, he doubted the gates he would see would be very pearly at all.

  Remy stood on shaky legs. He had been thrown a dozen yards from where the skiff’s remains piled in mess of twisted metal, wood, and caustic dust. He took a step and had to catch himself on one of the petrified redwoods. His knee roared in protest.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, sucking his teeth. “Josie? Jose!” He called out. Above, skiffs roared past, echoing off the lake’s containment wall and the distant Ghostfence.

  Moving gingerly, Remy limped toward the wreck. The skiff had hit a branch while dodging plasma, and Remy had blacked out soon after. The craft was partially buried in the earth, small flames dancing on pools of fluid or along exposed wires. Josie was no where to be seen.

  “Damnit, Josie, where are you?” He said.

His face felt sticky from blood and dust mixing into his stubble, but otherwise thanked his lucky stars that he could walk away from this thing. Well, mostly able to walk, anyway. He could ignore the throb in his knee for a time.

  Remy limped around the wreckage to find Josie.

  “Josie!” He called her name again. The sounds of the Beltrider faded into a dull, unmistakable thrum. It didn’t take long to find her.

  Josie had also been thrown from the wreck-Thanks for the seat belts, Jack-but remained down at the end of short ditch dug by her body’s impact.

  “No!” He cried, staggering to her side. His knee raged as he dropped to the ground. Remy lifted her head and tapped her cheeks.

  “Hey, Josie, wake up. Come on, we gotta get out of here. Wake up, Josie. Josie!”

  She didn’t react. Her jacket was badly torn from where it scrapped against the ground and a large mess of bruises, jagged cuts, and blood covered her left side.

  “Fuck’s sake, Josie, come on.” He leaned her back and placed fingers to her throat, fumbling to find a pulse. There! It was faint, but there. It had to be there.

  Gritting his teeth, he rose to his feet and removed his leather jacket, itself torn in several places from impact.

  “You owe me a new jacket.” He told Josie as he dragged her onto his jacket. With a sigh, he held onto a leather arm and tugged, dragging her behind him along the dusty ground.

  Each step was agonizing. His knee throbbed, surely laced with torn ligaments at best, and his lungs ached from the effort.

  “Okay,” he muttered to Josie as he took a break against a fallen tree. The skiffs above them raced between the highest branches on their final lap. Remy hoped they all crashed. “Okay, you’re right. I should lose a little weight.” There had been a time he could run for hours had he needed to. Now, bum leg aside, he’d be lucky to make twenty minutes without huffing like a vacuum. He leaned over and wretched bile, his stomach long empty of anything of substance.

  He wiped his face on his shirt, grimacing as sweat ran into his own wounds. His fingers shook from Vasc withdrawal but they couldn’t do anything about that now. Remy grabbed the duster’s edge and dragged her further.

Just a few more steps. Let’s get to that tree and we can stop. He lied to himself over and over. Cutting deals with himself was the only way to get to the next marker. Eventually, even the wretching stopped, his stomach simply cramped like a rag wrung too tightly.

Stolen story; please report.

  Josie woke just as they reached the intact edges of the undercity where streetlights still occassionally flickered.

  “Whas’ going on?” She murmured. Remy dropped the leather sleeve and turned to her, wincing at the sudden movement.

  “You’re awake!” He croaked. His throat was dry from the forest’s dusty floor and there hadn’t been any water along the way. “Feel okay? Don’t move, you look like shit.”

  Josie staggered to her feet, leaning against a broken wall for support. She looked him up and down and spat.

  “Well, you shouldn’t talk. People in glass houses and all.”

  She was okay, alright.

  Josie glanced back where they had come, the towering skeletons of the redwoods obscured in the shadows. She looked down at the jacket, now bloody and even more torn.

  “Sorry,” she said, trying to stand straighter. Her breath caught and she nearly fell once more but caught herself on the wall. “Thanks. For not leaving me there.”

  Remy limped to her side and ducked under her arm for support.

  “Don’t mention it. Thanks for not getting us killed.”

  They staggered onward, leaving the ruined jacket behind. Neither spoke much, saving their energy for fighting whatever was broken within their battered bodies. Once they reached New Madison, everything would be fine. They passed folks on the street, but no one bothered them. Folk in the undercity minded their own business and strangers covered in blood would only invite trouble.

  Turning onto a busier street, a sleek black skiff with tinted windows slowed to a stop next to them.

  “So you lived. Boss will be pleased to hear that. Get in.” A thin woman, with a grim face, and a scar over her left eye leaned out the passenger window. The rear passenger door swung upwards.

  “Bout time,” Remy muttered, stepping toward the skiff. If Jack wanted to kill them, he could go ahead. Anything was better than another full day of this. He helped Josie in, breaking open some wounds that had dried during their walk.

  “Mind the seats, now.” The grim woman growled. Remy eased up next to Josie and she slumped against him as the skiff took off.

  The meeting with Jack was mercifully short. He met them in the garage, not wanting their blood to stain any of his carpets. Grinning broadly, he passed a padded envelope full of credit chips, and a half-glass of old world bourbon to Remy. It burned like hell, but he drank the entire glass in one pull to wet his dried throat.

  “My word, Remy, you sure do look like you’ve seen a better day. It’s not for nothing, now, it showed me that you and I, we can get along just fine if we understand each other. I helped you, and then you repaid the favor. Why, that’s awfully gentlemanly now. I think a couple old dogs like ourselves can play nice from now on.”

  More favors. Remy thought. He didn’t care to think about what future favors might be foisted upon him. Josie nodded off to sleep in the backseat of Jack’s skiff and Remy used that as an excuse to get the hell out of the undercity.

  “Oh, Remy? One more thing. There’s a document in that envelope that I think you’ll appreciate from all them papers you brought us. Mighty helpful, that. You have a real good one now, you hear?”

“Gotta stay up, Josie, stay up.”

  She groaned in protest, muttering something he couldn’t understand.

  On the surface, he called for an ambulance and for the second time in as many weeks, Josie was stitched back up at New Madison General. He had a nano-laced brace placed around his knee and a few stitches along his face, and sat in a secluded waiting room waiting for Josie to get out of surgery. He grimaced, watching a news report on the carnage of the Beltrider. Remy switched channels to a bloodsport rerun.

  Watching the wrecks on the news report made him worry about Josie all over again. Remy settled into his chair, fingers itching for a glass of gin but he settled for a mug of instant coffee, and sliced open Jack’s envelope.

He dumped credit chips onto the coffee table and brushed them aside. Jack certainly had paid handsomely for their performance, even though they’d wrecked. He tried not to think how much money Jack would earn as a consequence and how little of that money it would take to have him killed if he wasn’t helpful any more. Never get in bed with gangsters or easy women. Just a nugget of wisdom his dear old dad had passed on to his boy.

  Remy brushed the credits back into the envelope. He’d count them later. That envelope, along with anything else he received from Stefanie, could maybe buy a way out of this town. He loved New Madison, but his welcome seemed to be wearing awfully thin with too many people who had proven capable of making him bleed. Remy fished for a folded up piece of paper at the bottom of the envelope, pulling it free around the chips.

  He unfolded it and swallowed his coffee in a single gulp after reading what it said.

  What an awful day.