NightRacer

Chapter 3

It was a bottle of local stuff, known as Johnnie SkyWalker. And it was gold label, whatever the hell that meant in this place. On Earth, a gold label Johnnie Walker was a nice prize, if you were lucky to scavenge one. They used to pull straws every Friday. Losers had to go to the nearby towns and find "meds." There was virtually no good beer left, and wine was for scientists, but liquor was all theirs. Sometimes they'd find half a bottle, and sometimes they'd run into a place full of good stuff. A couple of times their scouts found survivors hiding in shelters loaded with "meds." Other times, scouts left and never came back.

After a minute or two, NightRacer realized he was staring at the bottle without blinking. Hypnotized by liquor? No, not him. He stepped forward and grabbed the bottle by the neck. The glass was cold. Drink it or break it, damn it! Just stop staring, Racer thought.

He ripped the seal with his teeth and sniffed it. Damn, it smelled good! Just one sip, part of him thought. Not more than one, the other part insisted. Racer took a gulp, and relished the feel of its warmth spreading through his body.

He never considered himself an alcoholic, but in the last days of Earth, all of the workers-men, women, and children-had drowned their sorrows. They quietly suffered in the morning, worked like crazy all day long, and spent their money on Jolts. And then they drank themselves to a stupor again in the evening.

He remembered the Danube outpost. It was an evening late in the fall, too late for the spores. They found survivors in a cellar, and those guys had a shitload of booze with them. He was barely walking when the siren blared. A cloud of spores was coming from the northwest. They ran to the trucks, only to find them disabled. By the time they came back, all their tents were cut to ribbons, and all the trailers' windows were smashed. The survivors were Talkers. He grabbed his emergency backpack, put his boots on in a hurry, and took off. Two others ran with him. The rest stayed behind, hiding in emergency tents. The three of them ran for nine miles, the last half in a cold drizzle. Even after getting pneumonia, they were the lucky ones. That night, Talkers snatched all the rest of their friends.

NightRacer took another gulp, and then another one. It wasn't too bad for a local brew. Was this really made on NAZ? Racer thought, and he let the numbness take over his body, stirring memories of long forgotten events. He remembered Nick, a giant digger who could drink half of a bottle in one gulp. Where was he from? Who cares! In those days they were all Earthlings. Because of that guy, they'd had to introduce Designated Drinking Receptacles, or DDRs. Everybody had a DDR according to their age and rank. They let Nick use a bigger mug, but it was still better than letting him drink straight from the bottle.

Racer leaned on the doorframe and let the drink flavor trigger another flood of memories.

Something moved fast in his peripheral vision, and Racer's hand shifted toward his gun. The thing moved again, just as fast, and the old fighter let his instincts take over. His knees bent, his hand pulled the gun, his hip pushed forward, driving his shoulder, elbow, and then his arm, and ended the almost spasmodic movement in fixing the gun on the target with the finger laid on the trigger. Before squeezing it, Racer recognized the victim. It was a cockroach.

A roach, here, now?

One millisecond later, the cockroach looked into the gun muzzle and beeped.

Racer thought, An electronic device? He hesitated to shoot. So tiny?

As if answering Racer's thoughts, the roach spun belly in an instant and, from its abdomen, squirted a cloud of fine dust into the air. Racer jumped back, his gun still pointing in the direction of the device, finger tensed on the trigger. The cloud flattened, rippled twice, and turned into a skinny, ephemeral screen with rugged edges, braced by an invisible field. The screen flickered with colors, and produced an image with some heavy compression artifacts.