Valentine felt a little warmth in the look they exchanged. A bad use of a football-coach metaphor made her fallible - and therefore human.
"Will I have a contact I can trust out there?" Valentine asked. "I might need backup. Supplies or gear".
"I'll catch up to you at Nancy's", Styachowski said.
"Good to see you again, Valentine", Lambert said. "From this day on, your little charge is history. On paper, anyway".
Duvalier was the last to leave and ran her tongue obscenely against her lips as they said good-bye. "Even Queen Balance Sheet folds at last", she said quietly. 'Til buy you a drink at Hob's to make up. I'm guessing that ego of yours needs some soothing after getting shaded by a woman half your size".
"I'll have to chit that. If I'm going to be back at Nancy's in twenty days, I have to get that list to Styachowski and get my worm rigged".
The corner of Duvalier's mouth went up, but she ignored the opportunity for another raunchy joke. "Be careful, sweet David. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest".
First Macbeth, now Hamlet. He wondered where Duvalier had even picked up the line. He kissed her on the cheek. "I will".
th's Truckstart and Trading Post, Missouri, February, the fifty-third year of the Kurian Order: The days of long-haul trucking are all but over.
Nevertheless a few overland "runs" still exist. The Atlanta-Chattanooga -Nashville artery still trickles, as does the old interstate between Baltimore and Boston. The Vegas-Phoenix-Los Angeles triangle is the scene of the yearly "Diamondbacks Run", where supercharged muscle cars roar from the coast to Vegas, where the crews switch to off-road vehicles for a trip to Phoenix, then make a final leg in tractor-trailers running loads back to Los Angeles, something of an indulgence for certain wealthy or engine-obsessed Quislings.
Dashboard cameras record the experience, and sometimes the final words of the drivers.
But the longest of the "hauls" still in existence is that from Chicago to Los Angeles, much of which runs along the old lines of fabled Route 66, even if the end point at the Sunset Strip meets the ocean rather more abruptly than it did a century ago.
The veterans of the "Devil's Dietary Tract", as the route is known, make fortunes hauling art, rare firearms, expensive clothing, and particularly electronics from point to point, liquor and consumables flowing west, finished products imported from the rest of the Pacific Rim back east. The Kurian Order shrugs at such baubles for their human herds, or perhaps believes that physical and mental energy expended acquiring a Picasso, a pristine set of golf clubs, or a vintage Remington 700 is activity that isn't being spent resisting the regime. Blacky marketers are given a wrist slap in
most instances. The security services of the great rail companies make sure nothing that can't be hidden in a purse or backpack moves cross-country on the rails - at least without a substantial bribe. That leaves internal combustion engine or pack animal for the traders and smugglers who want to move larger loads.
Some say that the "independents" - as the nonrail transportation companies are known - are riddled with Kurian informers. Any firm that helps the burgeoning resistance is quickly seized, its durable goods auctioned and personnel packed off to the Reapers.
Trucks need fuel, tires, and spare parts to run, and of course the crews need food and rest. So on the fringes of the Kurian Order, or within Grog-held territory, there are "starts", where men and machines can be reconditioned for the next leg of the run.
Hobarth's is a typical example of a fortress truckstart, encircled by wire and then an inner wall of broken tires wired together and filled with dirt, a tiny human settlement deep within the Grog territory of mid-Missouri. There's a substantial warehouse devoted to trade with the Grogs, cavernous aluminum barns for the repair of vehicles and the storage of spares. Behind it rusts a junkyard covering a dozen-odd acres guarded by rifles and half-savage dogs. The penalty for unauthorized scavenging is a bullet.
But for the tired, broken-down, and road-weary there's safety within. Even for those without the price of a cup of coffee, the Hobarth staff will feed, wash, and accommodate the most destitute - "three days of a month, three months of a year". "Christian duty", the staff calls it.
Others are welcome to buy, sell, or trade at Hobarth's store or the stalls of mechanics and craftsmen. There's even a small jeweler under the old three-orb sign, who also acts as a currency exchange, able to deal in most of the Kurian scrips of the Midwest. The local Grogs have become adept at extracting and reconditioning everything from wheel rims to timing belts and sparkplugs, bringing them in to trade for bullets or sealable plastic storage containers, which the Grogs prize for a well-appointed, bug-free hut.
Three high-clearance flatbed tow trucks, armored and armed with machine guns, compose the toughest salvage team an overnight drive in
any direction. Two of the team, the front one prowed in such a way that it resembles a vehicular battering ram, fling gravel as they turn in to the main gate, bringing in a rusted cab-over. Once inside the compound and behind the main building, long and flat as Dakota prairie, the crews elbow one another and point at a smallish legworm contentedly pulling up leafless kudzu near the tire wall. A steel-framed ergonomic office chair, complete with ottoman, folding umbrella, and movable windscreen, sits stapled and chained to its spongy, segmented back.
"Argent's in", the green-hatted driver of the battering-ram wrecker announces, opening a tow truck door with driver carries no cash, lots of lead stenciled on the side.
* * *
David Valentine, reading a book as he drank his coffee in the four-table "cafe", recognized Tim Hobarth's step behind - the tow truck driver wore steel-heeled boots, which rapped distinctively on the boarding.
"What's the crawl, Max?" Hobarth asked.
Valentine, who'd left his name in the shambles of a wrecked career in the United Free Republic, drew his cup and book a little closer, making room for the big driver. He'd just as soon continue reading his book with the brew, though the bitter melange that the Kurians labeled coffee insulted the palate of someone who'd had the real stuff in Jamaica.
"Omaha's getting set for a fight", Valentine said. To the families who worked Hobarth's, he was just a wandering Grog trader blessed with unusual luck in avoiding the Reapers. Valentine had stopped and visited the Golden Ones, in the fading hope that his old friend Ahn-Kha had wandered home with an epic story of escapades from the Kentucky foothills to Nebraska's far horizons.
"Kur needs those rail lines out of Omaha badly, now that so much south of Missouri is cut and Tulsa's been burned to the ground. The Golden Ones are great fighters, but if they put some big guns into Council Bluffs..".
"Poor dumb Grogs", Hobarth said. The sympathy in his voice belied his words.
Valentine liked Hobarth. He possessed some feeling for the creatures Kur had brought from other worlds to help subjugate humanity. Some of the tribes found themselves in wrecked and poisoned lands after the fighting was over, and a few, like the Golden Ones, had turned against the Kurians.