DEADSTOCK

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

day of the dead

The Folger Street Snarlers' regular contact was not there when they met the new arms dealer, but he had forewarned Javier Dias to expect a KeeZee. Thus, Javier knew to be looking up high before the motel room s door even opened to admit them. The KeeZee was almost seven feet tall, but that was only part of his ominous aura. The being s jagged-jawed head looked like a monkey wrench with a thin, grayish-black skin vacuum-formed to it. His long hair had been woven into thin braids decorated with glass beads, which reminded Javier of his dead friend Mott. The alien s three tiny black eyes gleamed down at Javier lidlessly. The body under the black jumpsuit was a solid mass of muscle.

Javier had never heard one of them speak before. The jaws barely moved, but the muscles and tendons in the thing s throat seemed to knot and twist with a tortured effort. Even then, what reached Javier s ears was a translation as filtered through a device pi

"If you already have weapons on you, you d better hand them over first," the towering being told them. "I ve got a sca

"I thought Rabal told you we were trustworthy," Javier said, referring to their regular dealer, a Kalian. But he obliged by slipping out and passing to the KeeZee the gun that had belonged to Brat.

"I don t even trust Rabal," the KeeZee told him. "That s how I stay out of prison. And how I stay alive."

Next into the room came Patryk, wearing dark glasses to protect his still red and sensitive eyes. He handed over a pistol as well. Then Barbie, of the five faces, entered the rented room. She relinquished her own handgun, followed by a boot knife nicely balanced for throwing. Lastly, in stalked Satin in his new cybernetic pony, though it was actually far from new. It was bulkier and more awkward than his previous sleek black model, its yellow enamel paint chipped and blistered, but at least it moved his pupa-like body from here to there. Scowling suspiciously, he directed one of his mechanical limbs to turn over a stubby little pistollike submachine gun.

"Your iron could be better," the KeeZee remarked, locking the weapons inside a suitcase resting atop a bed too short to accommodate his looming frame. "Interested in upgrading?"

"Maybe next time," Javier told him. "Our finances are limited. Right now we want to concentrate on the stuff that Rabal said you could get for us." "As you wish."

The KeeZee knelt down to drag two larger suitcases out from under the bed. The mattress creaked from their weight when he set them down. He flipped both lids open, and took a step back to let the others see around him.

"Huh," said Satin.

"Whew," two of Barbie's faces said. Her largest face just gurgled and dribbled some saliva.

"That should be enough for what Rabal talked about," the KeeZee said.

"Anything we should know about this?" asked Javier.

"Yeah," the KeeZee s fabricated voice grunted. "Be careful."

Money changed hands. Satin's powerful cybernetic arms hoisted both pieces of luggage, as if he were a bellboy employed by this seedy establishment. Confiscated weapons were returned. Seeing his guests out, the KeeZee asked Javier, "So what are you folks, a street gang or something?" His tone, even translated, sounded a bit derisory-but people of his vocation made their living off street gangs. Javier suspected the derision had to do with the two mutants. Javier wasn t happy about that. Nor was he happy about the being's lack of discretion in asking him such a personal question, but he answered anyway.

"Yep," he said. "We're the Folger Street Terata."

It was well into night, but better than that, it was raining hard besides. Even the most ambitious worker at the office block next door had gone home hours earlier. Except for Quidd's Market and some notable theaters and restaurants in Beaumonde Square proper, this was not an area that seethed with nightlife. During the working week, the moneyed took themselves straight to the safety of their upscale apartments-such as, had it ever opened, Steward Gardens would have provided.

Safe from the stabbing cold of a pounding, late autumn rain. Safe from the criminals, the addicts, the gang members that might venture as far afield as Beaumonde Square if boredom or curiosity or restlessness compelled them, hoping to score one extra-fat wallet to pay for a larger than usual measure of seaweed or purple vortex, buttons or beans, kaleidoscopes or red shockers.

Javier Dias had tried all those substances and more in his twenty-five years. But tonight, his blood was pure. His mind was clear. It was not the first time he had been focused on avenging fallen comrades; he'd been doing that for over ten years. Yet, tonight it felt different. He felt much, much older now. By decades. By centuries. It was both a bad and a good thing, in ways he was only begi

Javier had bought the hovercar they rode in from his cousin, Santos, at a great discount. In addition, this week Santos had given Javier a job doing such odds and ends as polishing the outsides of the pre-owned vehicles, and sometimes cleaning the blood of their former owners (often gang members, drug dealers, pimps, and low-level gangsters) from the interiors. Santos promised to take his younger cousin under his wing, to have him selling the used and repossessed cars himself within the year.

As had been a popular style for a number of years, most of Santos s vehicles sported elaborate artwork on their hoods and sometimes on their flanks and bo

So the five of them rode in a battered hovercar with vividly purple Day of the Dead figures cavorting all over its lime-green body. It was not exactly nondescript, particularly for the Beaumonde Square area, but again-it was night, and raining in torrents of near biblical proportions, as if the sky had been rent open to reveal a strange sea hiding behind it: the inverted sea of another dimension.

There was the sound of a gun s slide in the car, as a first round was fed into the chamber. Javier knew it was Brat Gentile s gun, which he had given to his brother, Theo. Theo had heard about the reappearance of the last of the Folger Street Snarlers. Theo had sought them out. And when Javier had told him his story (the real Javier this time), Theo had asked to come along tonight. With the gang again, just like old times.

"Steady there, man," Javier advised him.

Theo grunted. The fear that had filled him lately had been eclipsed by his bloodlust. He stared out his window as Javier pulled into the lot to the right of Steward Gardens.

Earlier that evening, before the rain, there had been a vehicle parked here. They did not know that. They didn t know that a woman with blue skin had forced the vehicle s owner to help her carry another man, who was unconscious, to this vehicle, and then drive the three of them to a hospital. The vehicle s owner had resisted at first, because someone he loved had disappeared inside the building, but the blue woman had persisted, and the man had given in, knowing that there was nothing to be done. Javier and his friends were not aware of any of this. And because of the dark and the downpour, they had not spotted the helicar abandoned in the lot atop the building, either.