‘I’m about three thou off the high score!’ she called. I followed her upstairs and into a bedroom. It looked like a radio shack. There were electronics everywhere. Sprawling across a makeshift table (an old door laid flat with packing-cases for legs) was a computer system.
The girl could have been anywhere between fifteen and eighteen. She was thin and leggy, her black denims like a second skin. She’d tied her thick red hair carelessly behind her head, and wore a black T-shirt advertising some rock band. She was back in front of the computer, using the joystick to fire a killing beam at alien crustaceans. Two speakers had been wired to the computer, enhancing the sound effects.
‘Who are you anyway?’ she asked.
‘I’m a friend of Spike’s.’
‘Spike’s not here.’
‘When will he be back?’ As the screen went blank and a fresh scenario came up, she took time to wipe her hands on her denims and look at me.
‘What are you, Australian?’
‘English.’
‘Yeah? Cool.’
I was tempted to pull the plug on her game, but you could never tell with teenagers. She might draw a gun on me. I had to attract her attention somehow.
‘Spike never used to like them so young.’
‘Huh?’
‘His girlfriends.’
She smirked. ‘Not!’ She had dimples and a faceful of freckles, a pale face which seldom saw the sunshine outside. The curtains in her room were drawn closed. She’d stuck photos on them; film stars mostly. ‘I’m not Spike’s girlfriend.’ She rolled her eyes at the thought. ‘Jee-zuss!’
I sat down on her unmade bed. ‘Who are you then?’
‘I shouldn’t have let you in, should I? I mean, you could be any-fucking-body, right? You could be a rapist, or even worse a cop.’
‘I’d have to be an English cop, wouldn’t I?’
‘Not. I know who you are. Spike’s told me about you.’
‘Who am I then?’
‘He calls you “Wild West”.’
I smiled. This was true. She was looking at me again. ‘Am I right?’
‘Yes, you’re right. I need to see Spike.’
‘Well, he’s not here. Look at that, eight million seven hundred thou.’
‘The high score?’
‘You bet.’
‘I’m a great believer in quitting while you’re ahead.’
‘Uh-uh, bud.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m headed all the way to annihilation.’
‘Where is Spike?’
‘You’re getting boring, man. He’s on a shoot.’
‘A shoot?’
‘Down towards Post. It’s an hour’s drive.’
‘Can you give me directions?’
‘Sure, head south-east out of town—’
‘On a piece of paper?’
She smirked again. ‘I’m an American teenager, we don’t write.’
‘I’m going to pull the plug on your little game.’
‘Do that and you’ll be sorry.’ There was no humour in her voice, but I’d run out of patience. I found a four-way adaptor on the floor and picked it up, my hand clenched around the first cable.
‘Okay, man, you win.’ She hit a button on the keyboard and the screen froze. ‘This thing’s got a sixty-second pause.’ She looked for paper, found a paperback novel, tore the back cover from it, and drew a map on the blank side. She threw the map at me and jumped back into her seat.
‘Thanks for the hospitality,’ I said.
‘How hospitable would you be if your parents kicked you out?’
She was asking me to ask her something. My only weapon was to walk away, and that’s what I did.
Back at the store, Bel had bought a pair of boots for herself. They had shiny metal tips and ornate red stitching on black leather. She’d bought a new pair of denims to go with them. She almost looked like a native, which was no bad thing. Maybe that was the reason she’d bought the stuff. Or maybe she was just trying to shed her old clothes, her English clothes. Clothes from a home she no longer wanted.
I handed her the map as we drove off. She looked at the drawing, then at what it was written on.
‘ “Mainframe bandits”,’ she read, ‘“are on the loose in hyperspace, and only you can stop them, playing the role of Kurt Kobalt, Inner-space Investigator, with your beautiful but deadly assistant Ingress”.’ She looked at me. ‘Is that us, do you think?’
‘Not.’
19
It wasn’t that easy to find the shoot.
The map wasn’t wrong in itself, but some of the roads were little more than dirt tracks, and we doubted we were ever going to end up anywhere. As a result, we lost our bottle once or twice and headed back to the main road, only to find we’d been on the right road all the time.
At last we came to a lonely spot, a wilderness of hillocks and valleys. There was no habitation for miles, yet cars and vans had gathered here. Men and women were standing around guzzling from cans. That worried me straight off: guns and alcohol — the worst marriage.
As soon as we stepped out of the car we could smell it: the air was thick with cordite. We couldn’t tell if there was smoke or not, we’d kicked up so much dust along the track. I was glad I’d bought the Trans-Am and not some anonymous Japanese car. These were Trans-Am people. There were a couple more parked nearby, along with Corvette Stingrays and Mustangs and a couple of Le Barons.
Somebody yelled ‘The line is hot!’ and there was a sudden deafening fusillade from behind the nearest rise. Instinctively, Bel ducked, raising a knowing smile from the beer-drinkers. The sound of firing continued for fifteen seconds, then died. There were whoops and sounds of applause. A man came up to us, beer can in hand.
‘It’s six bucks each, buddy.’ I was handing over the money when I heard an unmistakable voice.
‘You old dawg, what in the hell are you doing here?’ It was Spike Jackson. He had a baseball cap on his head, turned so the shield was to the back. He took it off and ran a hand through his hair. He had thick wavy brown hair swept back to display a high prominent forehead. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, sneakers and old denims, and a T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, showing rounded muscular shoulders and thick upper arms. He stopped suddenly, arched his back to the sky and threw open his arms.
‘This is gun heaven, man! I died and went to gun heaven. Didn’t I always used to tell you that, Wild West? That’s what this country is, man.’
His audience voiced their agreement. Now he came up to us and, arms still open wide, closed them around me in a hug that lifted me off the ground.
‘Wild West, man, how in the hell are you doing?’ He let me down and gave Bel a smile, touching his crotch for luck, then turned back to me. ‘You old dawg, you! Come on, let’s go where the action is.’ He went to a stack of beer cans and pulled off a few, tossing one to me, but opening Bel’s and handing it to her with a bow from the waist.
‘Name’s Spike Jackson, ma’am, and this one’s for you.’ Bel took the beer but didn’t say anything. Spike led us around to where, as he’d put it, the action was. In another clearing people milled around examining the damage the latest fusillade had done to a couple of wrecked cars, a lean-to shack, and an array of crates and bottles and cans. Fresh targets were being set up by sweating volunteers.
I knew what this was, of course. Spike had taken me to a Texan shoot before. Forty or fifty enthusiasts would gather together and fire off a range of weapons. You could spectate, or you could participate. A couple of arms dealers, who supplied much of the arsenal, would then take orders. I could see the dealers. They were short and dumpy and wearing holsters under drenched armpits. The day was fiercely hot, and I half wished I’d bought a stetson; or at the very least a baseball cap.