She wriggled her way backward, out from under the big logger to stand behind it. The Kenworth slowed even more as it started into an insanely tight cloverleaf turn. The logger pulled tight on its tie-down chains, the equipment creaking loudly. Gage was downshifting, trying to bleed off speed to take the steep downhill turn. Olivia gripped the logger’s cab as she pulled herself upright. Luckily there were no trucks taking the turn with the Kenworth. No one was behind them to see her.
Olivia risked leaning over the passenger side to see what was ahead of them. There was a red light stopping the ramp traffic. The truck shuddered and groaned at the effort to come to a full stop.
“Yes!” she breathed. She could jump safely off once the Kenworth stopped.
The light turned green.
She gasped. “Oh no!” The sign ahead read Liberty Bridge. If she remembered correctly, directly beyond the bridge were the Liberty Tunnels. She had made notes that whatever she did, she needed to avoid the tunnels and the sparsely settled areas beyond. She needed to jump now.
The Kenworth shifted gears, slowing to nearly a stop but no longer braking.
“It’s just like the hay wagon,” she whispered to steel herself. If the hay wagon was under a dark overpass in a strange city filled with man-eating plants. She pushed the fear aside and jumped.
She stumbled in the dark, going down to her knees. Her hands landed in gritty dirt. She stayed down, panting with her fear. If she stood up, Gage might see her in his mirrors.
The Kenworth rumbled forward, gaining speed. She crouched in the darkness, waiting, until it had disappeared over Liberty Bridge. It was the last time she’d seen the truck. For days the rumble of big trucks made her heart hammer in her chest.
The makeshift morgue was set up at the huge parking lot at the foot of Mount Washington. The EIA had erected a big white tent. She’d caught a glimpse of it on the way up the Duquesne Incline but she hadn’t realized its significance. She’d thought it been set up for a wedding. Any little girl would dream of holding her reception within the crisp white canvas against the vibrant autumn leaves of the wooded hillside. Now that Olivia knew what the tent was, she noticed the line of refrigerator trailers parked beside it. Coolers for the dead.
Then she saw the Kenworth.
Olivia jerked to a halt at the sight of it. Around her the royal marines shifted into combat model, reading her alarm.
“It’s nothing.” She motioned for them to stand down. She forced herself to keep walking. Maybe she was wrong, maybe it wasn’t the same truck.
Blue Kenworth. Sleeper cab. Betts Farm. Blue heeler leaning out the window.
Yes, it was the same truck. The Kenworth was currently hooked up to a refrigerated trailer. She couldn’t see Gage Betts; the person setting the chocks on the trailer, though, looked too young to be its driver. Did it mean that Gage was somewhere nearby?
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Aiofe whispered fiercely. “It’s Director Maynard!”
Olivia tore her gaze away from the Kenworth to scan the area for the famous director of the EIA. She spotted Director Maynard talking with a tiny old woman dressed for church in a prim black pillbox hat, a russet housedress, white gloves, and black cane. What was riveting about the woman to Olivia was how prim and proper she looked — a counterpoint to the fact that every other word out of her mouth was a profanity.
“We normally fire up that goddamn ice rink up as soon as it gets hotter than fuck,” the old woman said. “It’s a son of a bitch to maintain and sucks energy like an expensive whore but the kids love it after pissing around in the hot sun all day. I don’t like it myself, it freezes the tits off me. I can’t take the cold like I could when I was younger. After the bullshit during the June Shutdown, we locked down and braced for war. Between that and Gage being off-world buying some equipment, we didn’t fuck around with the ice rink.”
“Can you gear up the ice rink to be a morgue, Mrs. Betts?” Director Maynard said.
Mrs. Betts? Was this Gage’s grandmother? The woman certainly looked fragile enough to be over a hundred years old.
“We could but what’s the fucking point?” Mrs. Betts said. “Most of the dead are elves or oni. Elves want cremated as soon as possible, not dropped on ice like a fucking Popsicle. The oni aren’t going be coming around, wanting to identify their dead. My kids can just dig a fucking big hole for your people to drop them in.”
“There are tens of thousands of people in Pittsburgh who aren’t permanent residents,” Director Maynard said gravely, as if he knew that Mrs. Betts had little sympathy for those who weren’t locals. “They want to know that they will be returned to their families if the worst happens.”
The old woman spat a curse so foul that Olivia blushed for having heard it. “They bitch and moan and do their damnedest to keep us locals from being together as a family. Serves them right to see what a bitter medicine it is to swallow.”
“Grandma Gertie,” Gage Betts said as he walked out of the big tent. He’d regrown his beard into a goatee. His dishwasher blond hair had been trimmed to a long crew cut. He was spiffed up to “farmer business” style with a button-down oxford shirt, new black jeans, and well-polished cowboy boots. He looked so much like one of the men from the Ranch that Olivia hated him on sight. All that was missing was a cowboy hat and a well-worn Bible carried like a weapon. “You know it’s the treaty that screws us over, not the off-worlders.”
The old woman cursed again. “The off-worlders are the ones that make it so hard to jump through the fucking hoops that the elves put in place. Two hundred pages of passports, visas, permits, and travel plans just to go to Earth for a month to buy a logger. What bullshit. When I was a little girl living on Earth, I could travel the planet with nothing more than a smile and nod.”
“That might have been true in the nineteen thirties, but it wasn’t true when I was a boy living in New York.” Maynard noticed the royal marines. A slight frown marked his confusion as he scanned the squad. He spotted Olivia and his eyes went wide. He flicked his hand to a woman standing behind him. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Betts, I have to attend to this personally. My assistant, Mrs. Walker-Buckton, will handle things from here.”
His assistant stepped forward with a clipboard. While her hair was dyed an unconventional deep blue, her demeanor was extremely professional. “I have the paperwork for the rental of your trailer and a check made out to Betts Farm to cover the agreed-upon deposit.”
Mrs. Betts didn’t take the unspoken clue. She eyed the assistant, grunting slightly. “What happened to that other girl, Maynard? The little twat that kept giving me the stink eye?”
Maynard glanced to his assistant, who did pick up the clue.
“She was an oni mole. I am not,” Mrs. Walker-Buckton said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Mrs. Betts blocked Maynard’s path with her cane. “She was? You sure? What did you do to her? Let those elves be judge, jury, and executor?”
“Taji Chiyo was part of the oni strike squad that kidnapped Tinker domi,” Mrs. Walker-Buckton said. “She was a kitsune; one of her ancestors was an oni spirit fox. Ms. Chiyo was part animal; she had fox ears and tail. At one point, Tinker domi nearly escaped while Ms. Chiyo was supposed to be guarding her. As punishment, the oni bred her to a warg.”
“A warg?” Mrs. Betts gasped and then added a blazing string of profanity.
“If you’ll come with me”—Mrs. Walker-Buckton motioned toward the Kenworth—“I can tell you all about it and we can discuss details pertaining to the ice rink.”
Freed of the old woman, Maynard bore down on Olivia with “intent” written all over his face.