CHAPTER 2 - DESIGNER SURVIVAL
“Gawd, I’m so hungry I could crawl up a hog’s butt and fix a ham sandwich.” Mote’s complaint was punctuated by the sound of her guts gurgling.
Her twin sister, Mothy, sat in the backseat next to her; both were strapped in with two buckled harnesses, which was good, because the buggy was bouncing over rough road.
“I have some fishes,” said Mothy.
Mote swiped at her sister. “Share!”
“They’ll spill everywhere.”
“No they won’t! Give!”
The buggy became weightless. They were airborne and Mote felt her stomach lift inside her body. They landed seconds later, rumbled over what felt like a series of logs, and then finally smoothed out into a stretch of clean dirt road.
Mothy stared at the moving nothing through the slit in the buggy’s window armor. “Almost there.”
Mote grabbed at her sister’s purse and dug out the bag of fish.
Mothy warned: “They’re going to spill.”
“We’re on a smooth patch, calm your puffs!” Mote peeled open the bag of dried fish and prepared to dump them straight into her enormous mouth. Then the buggy hit a series of potholes, and soon there were fish all over the backseat and floor.
Mothy picked one of the dried fish pieces from her silky blue hair and slid it into her mouth. Mote, on the other hand, had scooped up a fistful of them along with some lint and metal shavings from the seat cushion. She picked them clean and popped them into her mouth two at a time.
Their papaw, Brickfoot, sniffed from the driver’s seat. He checked the big, leather watch on his wrist. “One of you girls got cooch-rot or something?! Smells like a damn guttery in here!”
“Papaw,” Mothy wheezed and pointed at Mote. “She stole my fishes.”
Mote’s green neck hair bristled up. “She wasn’t sharing!”
“Tits and tarnation, girls, y’all’re twenty-two years old, I sure as shit ain’t finna tell you to grow up; way I see it, by the grease of gawd y’all shoulda done that automatic.”
“Yessir,” the two young ladies said simultaneously.
Brickfoot put a cigarette between his chapped lips and fooled around with a lighter. But he had to swerve to miss a pile of rusted scrap in the road that in one age of human civilization might have been a vehicle. He dropped his lighter to the floor. “Bless it!”
“Papaw, can’t we stop?” Mothy whispered.
“Ain’t no halt in this buggy when she’s convoy leader, bluebird. Get papaw a light, would ya?”
He turned his flabby neck to the side and Mothy leaned forward. Her long, fuzzy finger unfurled and burned bright at the tip. He puffed his cigarette to life and put his eyes back on the road.
“How much longer, papaw?!” Mote clutched her gurgling stomach and squirmed in her seat.
“Take ye a few swallers of this,” her papaw passed a flask back to Mote. “It’ll getcha plumb drunk, but calories is calories.”
Mote unscrewed the cap and sniffed. Her eyes widened and her grin turned sharp. “GUT GREASE!” She tipped the flask back and guzzled down gulps of frothy, alcoholic milk.
“Papaw,” Mothy wilted and leaned away from Mote, “I don’t like her when she drinks gut grease.”
“MOTE!” He boomed, “give it back, now!” His hairy forearm fished into the backseat for the flask. Mote took a few gulps more, then slapped it back in his hand. He shook the flask. “Hale, that’s half gone!” He gruntled (a paternal mix between a grunt and a chuckle) and blew smoke into one of the buggy’s vents. “Fair play, but I figger if she throws that up in this here cab, we’ll all die of ass-fixy-ation.”
The rest of the trip was about an hour of swerves, thuds, and jumps. Behind them, the convoy stretched back about a mile. A plume of black haze followed in the wake of the convoy as it wound through dead highways and broken trail, across the sandy Bleaklands toward the west coast. By the time they came to a stop, Mote had passed out in the backseat.
The Yellow River Motos had their whole lives packed up on this convoy. The convoy itself was a fleet of steel and electronics; scout buggies, armored chargers, gun sleds, two reverse-engineered military mag-tanks, and packed in the middle were the haulers full of civilians, equipment, folded habitats, food, water storage, and contracted cargo.
This trip had them driving to Anjelly, the great urban wasteland. As the sun set over the valley, it cast shadows across the old skeletons of dusty skyscrapers. Papaw Brickfoot set up some fireblocks next to their buggy and popped open the canvas to cover their little campsite. He dragged Mote out with Mothy’s help, shook her awake, and as a family they set about getting comfortable for the night.
“You girls fetch water,” said Papaw as he grunted down into a lawn chair. Mothy pulled out the fridge rack on the bottom of buggy and brought him a frosty Road Soda so he could get good and drunk. Mote already had their cooking pot over her head and was wobbling toward the water trucks.
“Sugarpuff,” said Papaw Brickfoot, as he sipped his Road Soda.
“Yessir,” replied Mothy.
“Keep an eye on yer sister, she ain’t got her skates on.”
Mothy wrinkled her button nose. “She’s grown, like you said, Papaw.”
“Sisters gotta look after each other even when they’re grown.”
“I wanna go see the music truck.”
“Go and do that once the water’s fetched for supper.”
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Mothy pouted like she did when she was little, in the vain hope it might change his mind. But Brickfoot’s back was aching and there was a long drive ahead of them yet. “Don’t you give me that look, you ain’t four years old anymore,” he shifted his bulk and pointed toward the water trucks, “now git, before you go and make me real red-aced about it.”
Mothy knew he meant business when he was talking about being red-aced, so she tucked into herself and mumbled “yessir” and fluttered to catch up with her sister. Mote was muddling along in her simian way; the girl didn’t have proper feet but grasping footpaws meant for tree branches.
Though the girls were called twins, they were alike only in being about five feet tall, having the same heart-shape faces, and similarly lanky proportions. Mothy’s compound eyes didn’t blink like most people’s; instead, they shuttered like a camera, which is why she always wore goggles.
“If it ain’t the mutie cuties!” A woman’s voice hollered from a perch on one of the looming vehicles as they walked down the convoy.
“Howdy!” Mote popped the pot off her head and grinned upward.
The woman on her perch was a tanker, and the perch was the gunnery nest of a tank. She smoked from a pipe and had an ammo belt slung over her shoulder. In that moment, Mote thought she was the coolest person on the face of the planet.
“Honey come look at these two!” The tanker banged on the hull with a wrench. The hatch popped open and a man with black grease under his eyes popped out.
“Shoot!” He beamed. “The blue one glows in the dark!”
Mothy wilted under all the attention and half-hid behind her sister. This intense feeling of self-awareness only made her glow brighter in the dying sunlight.
Mote puffed up with pride. “Mothy has all kinds of cool tricks! She’s the fancy one, I’m just a monkey. But you gotta watch out because I know kong-fu!”
“Mote don’t—” Mothy was too late.
Mote tossed the pot into the air and cartwheeled into a handstand. She caught the pot with her handfeet, held the pose, even spun the pot around on one foot while balancing on a single hand.
The tanker couple applauded and whistled.
Mote flipped down into a somersault and intended to catch the pot on her head. She did, but it bonked her a lot harder than she expected. “OW!”
“Mote, we gotta get papaw the water, he’s gonna be red-aced.”
Mote pulled the pot off her head. “Did he say red-aced?”
Mothy nodded.
Mote waved farewell to the tanker couple and hurried along. “Shoot, I shoulda brought my skates!”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Takes too long to put the dang things on!”
They eventually got to the water truck. The quartermaster was a scrawny old-timer with a goatee and cloudy eyes. A pocket of dark tobacky chew bulged his bottom lip. He turned on the pump and timed it for their pot; the girls were sure not to spill a drop.
“You kids watch yourselves now,” said the old quartermaster. “We’ve got a guest just arrived on convoy by way of Anjelly.”
Mothy nodded and didn’t much care to find out more, but Mote all but shoved her sister aside to get an earful. “Whoa, a guest? What kind of guest we gotta be careful around?”
“Well,” he leaned down from his spigot controls up top. “You ain’t heard it from me, but some kinda Synner spook; real jeepers-creepering type. I think we’re haulin’ something valuable.”
“Syndicate…” Mote whispered to herself. “The super cyborg spies?!”
Mothy’s antennae twitched. “They’re so romantic. I heard their cities glow at night.”
“And one Synner agent is so smart and so high-tech, they can take on an army!”
“They have the best surgeons and the best medicine in the whole world…”
“They can keep you alive forever and everybody’s rich!”
The old-timer spat into a dented coffee tin, then wiped his whiskers. “They’re devils. Honest Moto-folks call ‘em Synners for a reason.”
“But they’re so cooooool,” Mote whined.
The water spigot reached rations limit and cut off. Their pot was half full, so Mote stuck her face into it for a gulp, then popped back out and licked her chops clean. “Can we get more?”
The old-timer brushed off the twins. “Git outta here waterbug, y’all know road rations’re strict.”
They hauled their water pot together, taking a handle each between them. Papaw had the firebricks set up by the time they got back. They set it out and he got a good flame going. Mote and Mothy knew their duties and tore open some vacuum-packs of mushrooms, daikon, greenpill, and mystery meat.
“Papaw,” said Mote as she tossed a bouillon cube into the pot. “Is it true we got a Sinner agent here?”
Papaw belched and poured the rest of his Road Soda into the soup. “That old coot jawing off again?”
“Well, is it true, Papaw?” Mote asked. “Do ghosts walk among us?”
Mothy didn’t say anything, but her antennae were perked.
Papaw squinted at the last red rays of the sunset. “Now look here. Even if there was, there ain’t no good reason for respectable young ladies like yourself to go looking for trouble.”
“We were just curious, Papaw!” Mote stirred the soup and played at being the doting daughter.
Papaw took the ladle from her and wasn’t fooled. “I see that evil glint in your eye, girl.”
“I don’t like that glint,” whispered Mothy.
“Whoa!” Mote threw up her hands. “I’m not gonna do anything! I just wanna go for a walk, and, if I might happen to run across some super cool secret agents along the way…”
“You ain’t gonna!”
“You don’t know that!”
Old Brickfoot gave Mote a most consternated look. She grinned her biggest, most innocent grin, which just showed off her sharp cuspid teeth and wasn’t convincing at all.
The old man stirred the soup and grunted back into his chair. “Hand me another can and git.”
Mote leapt to the buggy cooler and leapt back to slam a Road Soda in his hand. “Thanks Papaw! Mothy, help me get my skates on! Please, please!”
Mothy ran after her sister and helped her open the buggy’s trunk. Mote sat on the edge of it and wiggled her monkey feet, while Mothy pulled out those big skates with the GYOTA label on them. The skates themselves were Syndicate tech, and Mothy knew how to interact with it.
Mothy calibrated the biomon and guided Mote through the wetware integration with the nerve ports. The skates activated once they integrated with Mote’s natural metabolism and powered on.
“Okay,” said Mothy, helping Mote hop down from the trunk. “Your batteries are low; we need to get some sugar in you.”
Mothy opened a crate of glucose gel and tore the cap off one pack, then stuck it in her sister’s face. Mote grimaced. “I hate tangerine!”
“It’s all we have left, you big baby.”
Mote sucked down the glucose pack and kicked her heels together. The skates powered on, and now she hovered frictionless an inch off the ground. Mothy shoved three more glucose packs into Mote’s little belt satchel and slung her own medic bag over her shoulders.
“Ready?” asked Mothy.
“Ready!”
Mote slid over the dirt road without kicking up dust. The hoverskates impacted the gravel and sand, pushing it down without disturbing it, leaving smooth tracks wherever she went.
Mothy just walked, but smiled at her sister’s figure eights and tight, spinning circles. “Music truck?” Mothy asked. “We’ve got an hour until supper.”
They set off down the length of the convoy, toward the rainbow searchlights and pumping bass of the music truck; they didn’t notice the Ghost sitting in the branches of a dead tree nearby.
The Ghost, however, watched them.
The Ghost remained cloaked, as it was scouting for the convoy as a Syndicate escort. It was momentarily distracted, however, by the appearance of the twins. It dictated thoughts to its livestreamed audience, back in Syndicate cities around the Pacific:
Chat, get me a report on what I’m looking at.
It didn’t take long. The feed was unanimous and cross-referenced with Syndicate crisis databases:
The twins were Taipei Fairies – illicit entities from a dark chapter in Syndicate history. The agent sitting in the tree could not disguise his exasperation.
Formally requesting backup. FML. I literally just got here.
The Syndicate operative watched the twins through the snoopers built into his exosuit. He sifted through the cassettes of magnetized ammo on his bandolier and pulled his rifle up from the base of the tree by the cord he’d attached to it. He settled into his perch in the old oak tree and ordered a fresh MRE from the cache hidden along the Anjelly hillsides.
Within fifteen minutes, a ZON drone flew up from the nearby canyon. As nothing more than a shimmer in the air, the drone dropped off a fresh thermos of hot water, a triple-ration of StakeOut! brand dry coffee, and a vegan MRE optimized for alertness (with a complimentary bag of maplebeef Stim Jims).
Consolidated orders from chat were to keep the twins in sight until the arrival of a containment team.
It would be a long night.