Outrider Read online

  The panels along the interior wall of the office came to life. Their various monitors and displays and banks of lights pulsed and glowed with the rhythm of the city. Or cities, to be precise: Hale was not looking at the New Las Vegas grids alone, but rather he had pulled up an overview of the entire network, some five thousand square miles of Vegas County. There were twelve independent communities, a scattering of loosely incorporated villages, and then the city itself. Technically, all the numbers were correct for 9 a.m.: this many trains were running and that many blocks were being treated with warm air and this many citizens had reported to that many work stations. But sure enough the power consumption was running at a near perilous rate.

  “So we’re definitely being drained. No fucking question.” Hale spoke aloud as if consulting someone else in the room. “Services are stable . . . no individual spikes. . . .” He rose and approached the displays. Hale let his eyes track along each monitor, watching numbers and graphs rise and fall. And it’s in the fields.

  Hale sighed. In the bottom right drawer he knew Dreg kept a decanter of thirty-year-old brandy. It was time for a drink. He retrieved the fine cut crystal vessel and a tumbler and sat back down in The Mayor’s chair. Pouring himself a finger of liquor, Hale reached for the phone.

  “Can’t you walk any faster, man?” Scofield practically sighed.

  “What’s the point?” Sebastian replied wearily. They’d been on the move since just after sunup. Scofield had woken when it was still dark and fed his horse and eaten a simple meal, then roused the leech at dawn. He’d let the man drink his fill, splash water on himself and then, when the prisoner refused food, they’d set out.

  By brief agreement, Sebastian was walking a few yards in front of Reese and untethered. Scofield had the rifle tucked in the crook of his shoulder. Based on the conversation they’d had last night and the man’s comportment the day before, he was hoping against hope he wouldn’t have to use it, but with this fellow a length of rope wouldn’t have changed anything—if Sebastian was going to make a move he would find a way to do it one way or the other. Somewhere in the back of his mind Scofield felt that if he was going have to shoot the bastard, the leech ought to at least have a chance. It would make the paperwork simpler, anyhow.

  “The point is ambling for the next three goddamn miles ain’t gonna change anything, Sebastian. I know you can make better time’n this. Let’s just get it done with.”

  The leech picked up the pace for a hundred yards or so, then came to an abrupt halt, facing eastward, the sun in his eyes. The outrider pulled his mare to a stop and then gently tapped her twice with one heel. Reese backed up a few feet until Scofield let off the reins and patted her neck. Both men were silent.

  Finally Sebastian turned to face the horse and rider. His pupils were mere dots from staring past the morning sun. His clothes were a mix of dusty and damp where breeze had stirred up the loam and where sweat had pooled around his collar and down his chest. Scofield had given him a battered old tin canteen from the outpost and this he now slowly unscrewed. The leech took a sip, and then held the canteen above his head, letting the tepid water flow over his hair and neck. As he poured the vessel out on himself, he never once broke eye contact with Scofield.

  “I figure there’s no way out of this.”

  “This?” The outrider replied.

  “Yes. This.”

  “No. I guess not.”

  Sebastian nodded and turned back to face the east again. Scofield cocked his head to one side, regarding the man curiously. After a while, the leech slowly shed his long jacket. He held the duster at arm’s length, studying the worn garment, before carefully folding it. Sebastian deliberately smoothed out each crease and seam, tucking the folds just so until the jacket was evenly worked into a tight square. Then he carelessly dropped the coat onto the sand.

  “You ever had a cause?” The leech asked, his voice strong.

  “A cause? You mean like . . .” Scofield trailed off, realizing he didn’t know what the man meant.

  “A cause, Scofield. Something you believed in.”

  The outrider ran a calming hand along Reese’s flanks as he dismounted. He slid his rifle into the saddle bag and drew his long barreled six gun, but kept the pistol down against his thigh.

  “You mean to say that riding the fields was your life’s goal?” Sebastian continued, looking away across the miles.

  “I don’t mean to say that. I didn’t say that.” Half conscious of the action, Scofield buttoned his vest with one hand. He’d learned long ago how loose clothing could complicate a fight, and one seemed potentially imminent. “But it beats living in that goddamn city. Or any city. And it suits me. Maybe it is a cause, then.”

  “It beats living in the city . . .” Sebastian nodded, turning, a rueful smile lifting the corners of his thin lips. “It’s better than that so it’s good enough, huh? That’s the exact kind of thinking that perpetuates this mess.”

  “I’m all for philosophy and debate and whatnot, Sebastian. But to be real blunt, I ain’t so much for those things with you. I get that this is hard for you and I’m real sorry for your situation and all that . . . but if you don’t turn the fuck around and start walking east again we’re gonna have to drop the rhetoric.”

  “You think this is rhetorical?”

  Scofield took a few steps toward the leech. Less than five feet separated the two. Again the outrider noticed the fine spider web of veins crisscrossing the man’s forehead; his tiny pupils set in gray, watery eyes. The patchy spots of his beard. Somewhere in that face’s past Scofield could imagine a handsome man—an everyday man sitting at a desk drinking coffee, even—but it was a hard face staring back at him. Sebastian wore the look of a man fully committed to something.

  “Yeah. This is rhetorical. Turn around. Walk.” Scofield said quietly. Sebastian shook his head. “I answered your question. There’s no way out of this.”

  “You only answered my first question. And you answered it wrong. There is a way out.” His eyes flitted down to the pistol.

  “I’m not gonna kill you. Not because you ask me, anyway.”

  Sebastian sank to his knees. He tore at the buttons of his gray shirt, practically ripping it open and exposing a pale chest.

  “Fucking hell man!” Scofield spat as the leech spread his arms.

  “Do me the last favor I’ll ever ask of anyone, Scofield. Just do it!”

  The irony of the gesture not registering, Scofield trained his revolver on the man. “Get up!” He shouted, his voice cracking with a mix of rage and fear. “Get the fuck up!”

  “Do it!”

  Sebastian slumped back to sit on his heels, his hands dropping onto the sand. For a painful moment the two were still and silent, Scofield’s pistol trembling in the air between them. The outrider saw it coming only a breath before it happened: Sebastian gathered a handful of sand and sprung forward, hurling the dusty earth at the outrider’s face. Scofield wheeled and covered his eyes, firing a shot deliberately far to one side. He spun round again, lashing out with his left fist, and landed a textbook jab on the leech’s nose. He slashed the gun barrel across Sebastian’s temple and then sank a savage kick into the man’s guts. Before he’d even fully gotten his feet under him, the leech staggered and then collapsed onto the soil.

  “Stupid fuck! I didn’t sign on for this shit! I give you respect! I give you water! And you keep trying to fucking take me out? You want to die so bad, just kill yourself! It ain’t fucking hard! Kill yourself you want to die so bad!” Scofield panted for breath as he loomed over his fallen foe, weapon aimed.

  Sebastian gasped for breath, coughing and wheezing. There were flecks of blood on his lips and a gash above his left eye. He held a hand skyward, palm out to ward off any more blows. It was clear that despite his fervor, his body was weak. Scofield backed up a few steps and holstered his pistol, too worked up to be holding a firearm at the ready. Despite everything, for some goddamn reason he had a grudging respect for this man.
He wanted to understand him.

  “Is this . . . this is really your cause, Scofield? Your calling?” the leech gasped.

  “Jesus, man. Enough with that.” Scofield reached down and grabbed Sebastian under the armpits, hauling him to his feet. He stepped back again, resting a palm on the pistol grip. “What’s your fuckin’ calling? Stealing electricity?”

  “Taking power.”

  “Well cause or not, I got a route to patrol and a paycheck to think about, so let’s just walk, goddamnit.”

  “Is Boss Hutton there?”

  “What?” the voice on the other end of the line shouted. The background was a din of blaring music, rowdy voices, and glasses slammed against tables or clattering off one another. This was the third bar Hale had called. There was only one more place he knew to try if he couldn’t locate Hutton here.

  “Boss . . . Hutton!” Hale said loudly. “Is Hutton there?”

  “Who’n the hell is this?” the man spat back.

  “This is Timothy Hale from Mayor Dreg’s office.”

  “From where?”

  “Mayor Dreg! Jesus, man! Just tell me if Hutton is there!”

  “Sit tight, cityboy.” It sounded as if the phone had been unceremoniously dropped onto the floor. Hale pressed the button for the speakerphone and leaned back in Dreg’s chair, the clamor of the tavern filling the office. It’s fucking 11 a.m. . . . they have nothing to do but drink at eleven in the morning? Hale shook his head in disgust, looking out the bank of windows to his left.

  When nearly five minutes had passed the secretary was sure that once again his call had been forgotten and he’d need to re-dial, re-dial again, and get nowhere. By the afternoon he figured he’d be travelling to each of these dives in person. Hale sighed and reached for the handset to hang up and end the call when a different voice crackled into the room. Hale grabbed the phone and held it up, switching off the speaker.

  “Who’s this?” The voice was deep and gravelly, shaped by a life of shouting and smoking and too much inhaled dust. It was Hutton.

  “Boss Hutton?”

  “Who’s this?” the man repeated.

  “This is Timothy Hale. Executive General Secre—”

  “I know who ya are Hale, you don’t gotta get all fancy with me.”

  “Right.”

  Hutton must have held the phone away to cough. Or to have a coughing fit, more accurately. Over the background noise Hale heard him mutter “Jesus Christ” and hack once more. Then his voice came through again.

  “Well?”

  “I wanted to ask if you’d had any problems out there. Out in the field?”

  “Any problems? Anything at all? Sure. We got all sorts of problems. Sick horses and sunstroke and shit for pay for my boys. Sure. Care to be a bit more specific, Hale?”

  “Um . . . yes . . . have you noticed any . . . increased activity? Increased leeching activity?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing unusual at all?”

  “Hale if I gotta repeat every damn thing I say this call is gonna take a while.”

  Timothy nodded as if Hutton could see him and leaned forward, resting an elbow on the desk and pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He closed his eyes.

  “Well, allow me to come to the point then: we’re being drained.”

  There was a long pause. “Hold on,” Hutton muttered. A loud clatter took Hale by surprise as the bar’s phone was again dropped. He heard Hutton shouting: “Shut up! All of you shut the fuck up! Quiet! Don’t make me start shootin’, goddammit! Pipe down!” After a few seconds, relative calm set in on the other end of the phone line. Hutton came back on the line.

  “What did you say, Hale?”

  “We’ve got drainers.”

  Boss Hutton turned away from the open floor of the bar, facing the knotted wood of the back wall. He could feel the eyes of the dozen or so other outriders upon him and he didn’t want his face to display any of the emotions beginning to seethe within him. He kept the phone pressed to his ear, though neither he nor Hale spoke for a long time. Finally, his voice a mere whisper, Hutton asked: “You’re sure?”

  “There’s no doubt. None.”

  Hutton sighed. In all his sixty-seven years he had never felt the mix of anger, confusion, and abject fear now taking hold of him. When next he spoke, the gruff edge and even the twang were all but gone from his voice, drawl replaced with a measured, even timbre.

  “OK. How bad is it?”

  “We’re at double usage. It started just at night—we were tapping into the reserve salt every few evenings. But for the past week it’s been during production hours, too. And the numbers just keep rising.”

  Hutton sighed and pressed the palm of his left hand against the roughhewn wall. He could barely feel the grain and splinters of the wood through a thick layer of callous. “Has there been any system failure yet? Or any overloads?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s a pretty even drain, then.”

  “Is that good? I mean, is that less bad?”

  “No. It’s worse. It means whoever’s fucking with us is spread out. Organized.” Hutton’s mind was racing. A slew of questions, theories, and doubts clattered off one another. His first concrete thought was that he needed to get the message out to his boys. If they could buy a few days, though . . .

  “Hale, can we make it four more days without doing anything?”

  “What!” the bureaucrat yelped, his voice jumping an octave.

  “We got Round Up in four days. I’ll have ninety percent of my riders in one place and I can brief ’em all. We can put together a plan and implement it uniformly. Otherwise . . . word gets out too early . . . my boys are gonna start turning up dead.”

  “We can’t wait, Hutton!”

  “I know the way these things run. If the drainers find out we’re onto them, they’ll either disappear or start shooting. We have to come at them in force. Organized.”

  There was a pause and Hutton could hear the secretary muttering something to himself. Then he asked quietly: “How do you know ‘the way these things run?’ We’ve never had an issue before. Ever.”

  “Not us and not here, no. But Lensk did. And the Australian Field. And Madrid. Ephesus.”

  “OK . . . I get it.”

  “Give me four days. If the city can keep running for that long, then give me that long. We’ll be in touch; I’ll be here same time tomorrow. Check in. Or actually . . . you know, don’t do that, just be reachable.”

  “I take it you understand the gravity of—”

  The business done, the outrider chief dropped all pleasantries, reverting to his old self. “I get it Hale! Not sure you do, but don’t go and question me. I been riding these fields since before you were born. I was here before the fuckin’ fields, alright? I get it.”

  “I just—”

  “I’ll call you back, Hale,” Hutton interrupted. “What do I do, just call Main and ask for The Mayor?”

  “Yes.”

  Without another word, Boss Hutton hung up, gently returning the phone to its receiver. He checked twice to make sure the handset was evenly placed in the cradle, awkwardly tapping it from side to side. He ran both hands through his coarse gray hair and then smoothed the front of his black vest. One of the cuffs of his checkered shirt was damp where he’d rested an arm on the bar. He sniffed at the fabric. Stale beer. Turning to face the bartender, Matteson, Hutton mustered as much calm and confidence as he could and said: “Pour me a bourbon and a water.”

  Matteson nodded and turned away to comply. Hutton walked out from behind the bar, limping ever so slightly—as he had since being thrown from a half-broken colt three decades back—and sat on a stool, facing the room. Every set of eyes in the bar was turned away or down, each man feigning focus on some unrelated thing. It was clear that they were waiting for him to talk.

  “On me,” Matteson mumbled for the two thousand and eighty first time. Hutton hadn’t paid for his own drinks in this o
r any of the nearby bars in years. But he bought rounds for others like his money was on fire. He was at home here among his boys. And they were comfortable whenever he was present. Technically, Hutton had no more authority than any other outrider, be he an old hand or a young buck. They all reported to the Office of Civil Defense just the same on paper. But Hutton had been tending the fields for a solid decade longer than the next most senior outrider. His authority was absolute, if only de facto. No one—him included—even remembered when he’d gone from Cliff Hutton to Boss Hutton, but the handle was accurate. He was The Boss.

  With the title came respect. But with the respect came responsibility, and a damn good serving of it at the moment: Hutton knew full well that if word got out about the drainers his boys would go trigger-happy. Innocent leeches (or rather those siphoning power only for themselves or for petty profit—there were no real “innocents” in the fields) would end up shot by the outriders, and sure as sunrise the riders would be targeted as soon as whoever was draining knew their cover was blown. What chilled Hutton to the core was the sheer volume of power being sapped. Anyone savvy enough to suck half the juice out of Vegas was surely smart enough to know people would notice. The unafraid are to be feared.

  Hutton took a long pull of his whiskey, easily putting away half the generous pour. His eyes scanned the room. Hell if he himself would make the trek into the city to meet with Hale and that shifty-eyed bastard from security, Strayer. But someone needed to head into town. And none of the half-drunk, whore-mongering men in the bar would do. In fact the only man Hutton trusted implicitly was at the farthest reach of the fields. The Boss briefly considered dispatching a rider to bring Scofield back in early, but then decided it would have to wait. Had Round Up not already been scheduled for the very next weekend he’d already be on the horn to send someone. But the information he’d gather at the meeting was crucial. New Las Vegas had never been drained before; a botched response would be far worse than a delayed one.

  “Fuckin’ hell,” The Boss muttered, downing the bourbon. He slid the glass back across the bar without looking and heard Matteson grab a bottle and refill it. Hutton turned and nodded his thanks.