“Fresh out of Kentucky,” Home said. “See the piles of legworm skins tied on the pickup roof?”
“Wonder if they’ve picked anyone up?” MacTierney asked no one in particular.
“They might just be running bodyguard for a brass ring, even a Kurian and his Reapers,” Maynes said. “The transports might not even have any rabbits.*”
These days, I often hear a misperception about headhunting bands that deserves correction. They did not simply sweep the countryside, raking up warm bodies for the Reapers. While that justified their existence in the Kurian Order and gave them a welcome in different Kurian principalities, the bands would also gather labor for large projects, return runaways to their home counties, and even act as an escort to skilled technical personnel who wished, for whatever reason, to switch from one Kurian Zone to another.
Those fleeing a Kurian Zone weren’t the wretched barefoot lumpen prole figures depicted in popular culture. A moment’s exercise of reason will illustrate: who is most likely to foment an escape? A person with the imagination to envision a better life, the intelligence to pick a course of action that gets him over the border, and the drive to carry out the plan. Generally the individuals and families who would “rabbit” were superior specimens just to make it out of their township and across a divide.
For those who point to the photographs of those emerged from the brush looking like a lice-infested feral tribe of reverted humans, I can only commend them to traveling almost path-free border country for a few hundred miles, moving out of sight by day, and holing up at night in deep ditches or barn stalls in an effort to hide the aural signature the Reapers read—then pose for a photograph.
The caravan therefore had both a comfortable bus for dignitaries and paying customers and an armored car for captives to cover any eventualities. They had the rude welds and checkerboard paint job over primer that identified the owners as licensed bounty hunters and prisoner transports. The bus would carry those who might be valuable as more than just fodder, while the armored car would usually make its first stop at a Kurian tower or a basement door of a New Universal Church fortified cathedral.
“Let’s be hospitable,” Maynes said. “Home, with me. MacTierney, radio in a report to the palace and the troopers, just in case our boys across the street are asleep at the switch. King, out of the Trekker. I want you walking tall at my heel, please.”
Maynes must have enjoyed his “refreshment”—he was a little drunk and being polite in a baronial way.
Crossing the street, we passed close to one of the gun-mounted pickups. “So this is what stupid smells like,” the gunner remarked to the driver. His voice crackled with fatigue.
“It’s civilization. After a fashion,” the driver replied. “Be grateful for it and don’t go giving us a bad name in a zone.”
The bounty hunters hung an advertisement for personnel on a wire clipboard bound to the grille, where it could be read by the vehicle’s lights, if needed. It was printed on the blank side of some church bulletin—a frequent source of paper for those who had a hard time finding inexpensive stationery. Someone, perhaps a bored rider on the bus or in one of the trucks, had handwritten each one with a marker.
I saved a copy and reproduce it below:
GOOD MONEY, BARTER, and GRATUITIES!
INDEPENDENT WORK!
DRIVING AND SECURITY EXPERIENCE!
Interested in the risks and rewards of travel? Want a valuable, protected job? Our caravan is looking for a few motivated, tough-minded individuals seeking the experience of a lifetime. We bounty hunt, personal transport between the Ohio and the Greensboro-Asheville corridor. Fifteen years of valued service and extensive interzone travel. Good training, experience, money, and bonuses, all travel supported. No bravos or cruelty jukes, we want smart, careful individuals who can play on a team.
• • •
The bounty hunters surveyed us. We looked official, but since we had just sidearms and the civilian-looking Trekker, they were probably wondering if we were the local honcho or travellers like themselves.
Maynes introduced himself to the driver, offering to shake hands. They held a brief conversation—Maynes was friendly and didn’t brandish his name as either stick or carrot. The driver pointed to the SUV with a heavy-duty off-loading suspension, light-bar, and several radio aerials.
I stayed at Maynes’s heel. He sauntered over to the black monster; it reminded me of the big doctor’s vehicle we’d crammed into on our escape from Xanadu. I smelled sweat and musky perfume like incense on Maynes as he passed. I’d long since come to the conclusion that my employer could find time for an assignation in the middle of a knife fight.
A little black-haired man in a red leather coat hopped out and greeted Maynes. He reminded me a little of a portrait I’d seen of a young Napoleon Bonaparte; he had the same cherubic features and serene, fixed-on-his-star eyes, though Bonaparte was Mediterranean and this fellow was Asian. I wondered how he came to command such a mob; usually they were led by the biggest, toughest thug in the group. I checked his hands as they shook—the stranger had had a manicure recently.
He introduced himself as only “Zihu.” When Maynes gave his name, Zihu grew suddenly wary and took a step back from us.
“Well, Mr. Zihu,” Maynes said. “You mind showing me what you’re importing to the Coal Country?”
“Not an import, Mr. Maynes, just transit,” Zihu said. He formed his words slowly and carefully and had the flatter tones of the Midwest, sounding to me like a man of Kansas, Nebraska, or Iowa. Perhaps he was some scion of one of the brass ring estates in Iowa, making a name for himself. “We’re on our way to Baltimore.”
“Ever been in the Coal Country before?”
“I did my trade in the Ordnance, but they’ve been cracking down of late, more permits and checks on visitors and border security. I don’t mind crossing a palm or two with silver, but paperwork gives me a headache. I’m trying the eastern seaboard, assuming I can find a route through these darned mountains not blocked by a slide. I thought you people were good with shovels.”
Maynes shrugged. “You must take that up with the Kentuckians, Mr. Zihu. Don’t believe what they tell you about the Coal Country. We’re richer than we look.”
A thin, rat-faced man with a big courier case fell in behind Zihu. “Everyone’s accounted for. Scouts want to know if they can bed down.”
“If the locals don’t object . . . ,” Zihu said, raising an eyebrow at Maynes.