Bonner left Dorca's as the pale purple light of dawn
began to brighten the broken streets. He had a four- or five-block walk and he moved
quickly, his stride filled with purpose. A few of the street workers scuttled into the
shadows as he passedBonner was known to them and each of them knew that there was
little point in trying to take him.
The night seemed as if it had been unnaturally long
and Bonner felt as if it had been days, not hours, since he had taken Hatchet down. He
rubbed the back of his neck, as if to wipe away the tension and fatigue that lodged there.
He had not had much sleep, and he couldn't be sure when he would sleep again. But he knew
that he had to start now, leave town immediately. Hatchet's message haunted him.
Bonner entered the old bus station on Wabash Avenue.
The crumbling building, a few acres of cracked concrete and splintered glass was littered
with reminders of a shattered past: Welcome to
18
Chicago, The City That Works, proclaimed a sign. Not
anymore, thought Bonner. Now the sign should read: Welcome to Chicago, the city that kills
and steals, but survives . . .
Bonner stopped in the gloom. "Lucky!" he
shouted. His voice caromed off the walls and then, almost immediately, was swallowed up in
the vast space of the waiting room. Bonner climbed a rusty escalator to the second floor,
the heavy tread of his boots sounding metallic and menacing in the silence. Here, there
was more evidence of the dead time, that time that no one remembered. "No
strollers," said a sign next to the escalator, "Children must be carried."
Bonner had stopped wondering why years ago. Whatever a stroller had been, nobody
remembered now and there were hardly any kids these days, not in Chicago, not anywhere. It
was a dying world.
A tattered poster with a picture of the old pre-bomb
buses and a family looking on in rapt admiration, was still pasted to the walls: "GO
GREYHOUND AND LEAVE THE DRIVING TO US." There was a very proud looking driver wearing
a peaked cap and bow tie sat behind the wheel. Bonner had seen the rusting carcasses of
these buses scattered about the landscape like dinosaurs. He always wondered what kind of
power they had put out.
"Lucky!" This time he got a reply.
"What? What you doing up so early, boss?"
Lucky appeared from behind an old ticket counter. He carried an old Colt Peacemaker.
"I heard you walking around, scared the shit out of me."
19
Lucky was a little man, hardly reaching Bonner's
shoulder. His blond hair was so light as to be almost white. His blue eyes so pale that it
was hard to tell where the irises ended and the whites began. His left leg had been
smashed below the knee and it stuck out askew from his body giving him an awkward,
sideways gait.
"I'm headed out. The car set up?"
"Always ready, boss. Cleaned the carbs and the
points. Tuned her a little. New oil toowherever you're going you want to see if you
can find me some more? Don't care what grade."
Bonner nodded. "Will do."
"You are going to need a radiator one of these
fine days. But I think I know where I can lay my hands on one."
"How are the electrics?"
"Good. That battery'll hold you. Watch your
brakes, they're getting crotchety in their old age."
"Seen Seth?"
"Lousy nigger. He owes me for some pipe. Walked
off with a wrench too. I don't know how he keeps that old fire-eater alive . . . Where you
going this time, boss?"
"East."
"No shit? How far?"
"What if I said all the way?"
"Then I would say good luck and watch your axle
because you ain't gonna get anything to fit that chassis in the east. It's the biggest
fucking nightmare,
20
having to replace them axles one day. Or maybe a
half-shaft. Where we going to get bruisers like that?"
"Lucky, you worry too much."
Lucky shrugged. "You the boss."
Bonner's car was all engine. Between the front axle
and the steering wheel was a long, black hunk of metal, an eight-cylinder Lycoming marine
engine. Lucky, the best mechanic going, had found it somewhere and had modified it to fit
the all pipe chassis that he had designed and double welded together himself. The tires
were fat old white walls that he had taken off a pimpish-looking Caddy he had found in
Evanston. Only a whisper of tread remained on them. Light canvas fenders were suspended
above each wheel, they didn't afford much protection, but they didn't add much weight
either.
A single spotlight was posted on the prow. It could
shoot out a blast of white light, lighting a corridor a hundred yards ahead as bright as
midday. Lucky had bargained it away from the guy that ran the slave auctions at the old
Capitol Theatre.
There was no bodywork to speak of. A single leather
seat was placed over the rear axle, positioned perfectly in relation to the steering wheel
to comfortably accommodate Bonner's six foot plus frame. The wheel was black and large and
on its hub was an elaborate filligree design that spelled out a word: De Soto.
"Whatever the fuck that was," Lucky had
said.
There were no instruments, no dashboard, just the
firewall separating the driver from the engine. On the
21
steering column there was a switch for the light and
a button that acted as the starter. "Keep things simple," said Lucky.
A roll bar arched over the driver's seat like a halo.
Attached to it, running lengthwise were an axe and a shovel. Clipped to the top of the
bar, shrouded in canvas, its barrel pointed toward the ground was a 50 calibre machinegun.
"I don't want that thing there," Bonner had
said. "If people start shooting, I want to draw fire away from the car, not toward
it."
"It always helps to have a little
hardware," Lucky had said. The gun had gotten Bonner out of more than one scrape over
the years, so it stayed. A few belts of ammunition lay curled around a pair of heavy
gauntlets in the well where the passenger seat would have been.
Behind the bar was a fifty-gallon fuel tank, and
keeping it filled was the hardest task Lucky had to perform. For all his modification the
big Lycoming sucked up gas"like a baby at a tit," he saidand on the
road, to run out of gas was to take a giant step toward death.
At the very stern of the car, swept up behind, were
two wide-mouthed exhaust pipes. They very nearly deafened the driver when he hit speed,
but Bonner had grown used to the roar over his shoulder and he hardly heard it now.
Lucky looked down at his creation proudly. He wiped
away an imaginary smudge on the steering wheel.
22
"Nothing else on four wheels like her, boss.
You're a lucky man," he said, as if he was a best man at a wedding.
Bonner slid behind the wheel and hit the starter. The
engine exploded into life, filling the cavernous bus ramp with a healthy, throaty roar.
Lucky smiled happily, showing a row of uneven teeth like a broken fence. He swore he could
feel the detonation of each cylinder through the soles of his feet. He waved to Bonner and
shouted over the noise:
"Have yourself a good trip, boss."
Bonner smiled and slammed the machine into gear
roaring off down the ramp. The engine sounded eager for the road. Lucky listened to the
engine for some time, following its rumble through the streets, wincing every time he
heard the brakes squeal.
"That man got no respect for machinery," he
said to the empty room.
Bonner drove along Lakeshore, hardly glancing up at
the bombed-out glass towers that lined the broad avenue. Dorca, who knew about such
things, said that the street had once been Chi's best neighborhood, and that the tall
building that dominated Chicago's skyline had once been the tallest building in the
worlduntil the bomb came along and blew off the top twenty-five stories. The
gleaming, jagged upper edge glinted in the morning sun.
Abruptly, Bonner pulled off the drive and onto the
ramp that led onto the dry lake bed. Stretching off as far as the horizon was the drab
brownness of the dead lake. Bonner narrowed his eyes and looked about
23
him. As the story went, the lake had boiled away,
leaving this great brown saucer. People said that if you got to the very middle of it
there was still some water, but Bonner hadn't been there so he couldn't say if they were
telling the truth. It must have been quite a sight once, he thought, all that water . . .
Now it made a great natural highway and it was a
perfect approach to the city. No force of any size could come across it without being
spotted.
Bonner hit the gas and the car shot. out onto the
road that had been beaten into the earth by thousands of tires. A set of wheel marks
branched off the main track, gracefully curving off toward the north and Canada; they
vanished into the horizon. He passed that turning by and pointed the nose of his car to
the east. He planned his route in his mind: across the lake to the far shore, then across
the peninsula to Detroit. From there he'd get onto the bed of Lake Erie and follow that
into Pennsylvania, just north of the Firelands. That was the point generally acknowledged
to be the beginning of the Slavestates.
The car raced along the lakebed, throwing up a long
cloud of dust behind. An hour into his drive Bonner spotted another column of dust a ways
ahead of him. It was coming toward him. He stared over the heat shimmer thrown off by the
engine, trying to see if he was driving toward a friend or an enemy. He tensed slightly
behind the wheel. Rule of the road number one: everybody was a foe until you found out
otherwise.
Another mile passed and Bonner relaxed a little.
24
He saw now that the party headed toward him was a
raider column lead by Coldchip. Coldchip wasn't that bad, for a raider anyway. Last Bonner
had heard of him he had been headed for the Snowstates, but he was obviously returning
from the wrong direction. Something must have gone wrong.
Coldchip and his men came face to face with Bonner on
the track a few minutes later. Bonner cut his engine to an idle and remained behind the
wheel. Coldchip was in the lead on the big old motorcycle-sidecar combination he always
rode. The sidecar was piled high with boxes marked Campbell's Soup. Behind him were the
members of the raiding party, also mounted on bikes. Bonner knew them all by name. The air
was filled with the sound of throbbing engines.
"Well, hey there Bonner," shouted Coldchip.
"Morning, Chippie. Where you coming from?"
"Never fucking should have left home, man.
Headed out for the Snowsgot blasted. Said fuck it. Headed over to the
Slavesgot blasted again. We took some slavesthey got kilt. Lost two of my men
when we ran into a Stormer patrolblasted again. Used sixty gals of gas, got six
crates of soup. Man, it's getting so a man can't make a living. Shit."
"Where'd you run into Stormers?"
"Scranton. You going Slavestatin'?"
Bonner nodded.
"Hey Bonner," shouted one of the raiders.
"We heard that Leather's put some numbers on your skin."
"That's right, Daniel."
"Ten thousand gold?"
25
"That's what I hear."
"Mind if I try to collect?"
"Per Chrissake, Danny boy," shouted
Coldchip, "don't be a king size jerk-ass. I already got two men dead."
"Hey, Coldchip, who are you? My mother?"
"If I was your mother I would have put your head
in a bucket when you were born."
"Come on, Danny," said Bonner, "let it
ride ..."
"Yeah, next time, Bonner."
"Right, next time." Bonner pushed the car
into gear and maneuvered around the raiders.
Coldchip watched him go a long time, the other
raiders revved their engines. "Hold it," shouted Coldchip. "Danny, did you
say ten thousand?"
Danny grinned. "Gold, boss."
Coldchip rubbed the stubble on his chin. "I
dunno."
"Fuck it, man," shouted one of the other
raiders. "We got six lousy crates of soup. Yeah, Bonner's good, sure, but there are
five of us. He can't beat the odds . . . Not all the time, anyhow ..."
Coldchip considered a moment longer. He narrowed his
eyes and watched Bonner get smaller and smaller on the horizon.
"Okay, let's take him down." He turned his
big machine around. "Let's go."
The raiders gunned their engines and howled as they
chased after Bonner. Far ahead they saw Bonner's car drop into a depression in the
lakebed. The pounding sound of the five engines did not penetrate into
26
the brains of the raiders. They all had one thought
on their minds: ten thousand gold. Each was already planning how to get rid of the other
four as if Bonner was already dead.
In the basin of the depression Bonner stopped, cut
his engine and listened. There they were, the sound of the raiders' bikes, getting louder.
He figured he had a minute or two before the first of them came over the rise. Quickly, he
stripped the canvas cover from the machinegun, clipped in a belt of ammunition and waited.
The engines grew louder with every second.
Danny was the first over the rise. Bonner let loose a
short rip of bullets and shot Danny out of the sky like a bird. The bullets pounded into
his chest, the whole front of his dirty shirt spilling open like an obscene, bloody
flower.
Three more riders flew over the rise. They had seen
Danny fall but were travelling too fast to stop. They rode straight into Bonner's
murderous fire. With shell casings spurting around him, as if he stood in the middle of a
brass fountain, Bonner chopped the raiders down. Their bodies hit the ground with
sickening thuds, the bikes crashing to the ground, spokes snapping, engines racing hot and
screaming.
Coldchip slammed on his brakes just before the rise
and stopped. Hot bolts of fear pounded through him and he swore under his breath. How had
he got involved with Bonner? He went his way, you went yours. He wouldn't mess with you,
if you didn't bother him. Those who tried to take him died. It was
27
that simple. Bonner always found some way to rip you
apart, always coming at you. The man was marked, he had something that the rest of them
couldn't find. Coldchip swore again and hoped to God that Bonner had blown Danny boy away
because he was one dumb fuck who deserved it. Coldchip could feel Bonner, just over the
edge, waiting. Coldchip considered turning around and running hell for leather for Chi.
But Bonner would come back some day . . . Better get it over with. Maybe Coldchip would
get a break, maybe he would win ... He doubted it.
He slipped off his bike and rooted around in his
saddle bag for a plate bomb. It was a simple device. Two metal dishessomeone had
found thousands of them at the old prison in Jolietheld together with stiff metal
bands. Packed inside, around the explosive charge, were nuts and bolts and jagged pieces
of metal, which scattered when the powder was detonated. The idea was that the force of
the bomb hitting the ground would trip the spring inside which would set the whole damn
thing off. That was the theory, anyway . . . Sometimes a bump in the road would trigger it
and kill the rider and anyone else in the neighborhood. A lot of guys wouldn't travel with
men carrying plates.
Coldchip hefted the weight of the bomb in his hands.
He only had one, so it had to count. He took a deep breath and curved his arm around it
like a discus thrower. Summoning up all his strength, he reared back and let fly.
Bonner hit the gas and roared up the side of the
28
ridge, passing the plate bomb in midair. He left the
depression in the lake just as the plate bomb claimed it. It exploded, a blinding blast
perforating the already torn bodies that Bonner had left behind him.
It seemed to Coldchip that Bonner applied the brakes
to his car while he was still airborne. The car hit ground and skidded to a halt. Coldchip
looked at Bonner, sitting there behind the wheel, his Winchester pointed right at him.
Coldchip cowered behind his crates of soup.
"Bonner, fer Chrissake . . . Please!"
Bonner pumped two shells into the cases, sending
gouts of soup skyward. Coldchip grunted and sagged to the ground, falling into a sticky
pool of soup, his blood swirling into it.
Coldchip died almost instantly. "You were right,
man," said Bonner, "you should have stayed home."
Bonner put the car in gear and drove off. The sooner
he found Leather, killed him, and got this damned price off his head the less trouble he
would have. He hit speed again and watched the horizon, the old eastern lakeshore becoming
more distinct as he ate up the miles.