Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter Page 0,3

through my chest.

The little scavenger predator ants would have sensed their compatriots dying, but that had been eons ago in bicolor time. They paused, evaluated the opening of the hatch and my unmoving body—which was cooler than the ambient temp—decided there were no predators, and went back to work, rushing all over the inside of the Tesla and all over the naked body. Except three spots. Two were where his tats had been inked above his heart.

On his upper pec were two black six-shooters, crossed over a gold star that still glittered with the ink the OMW had begun utilizing just after the war started in 2043—Tattered Pride Gold. Made only for the Outlaw Militia Warriors. The letters OMW were red and dripped down like blood onto the lower, larger tat. Touched by the last drop of red ink was an original Outlaw tat, skull and crossed Harley pistons, also free of ants.

The tats were old and faded and so was he, a war vet and an OMW made-man, mid-sixties, silvered red hair and beard, and a tattoo of Tennille Tennyson’s face on his left bicep. Ants were eating away at the tat of the singer’s pretty face. I knew this guy, just by his tattoos, even without running a viber over him for verification.

His name was Harlan. Buck Harlan.

He was my connection to the network, the black-market web where I bought and sold weapons and info. He and Mateo were the only people in the entire world who knew I was alive. He had been my father’s friend. He was also my friend, one of only two. Something inside me broke, shattered into slivers like glass, cutting my soul. I managed a breath I had been holding too long. The ants didn’t notice the slight movement.

The third part of Harlan that hadn’t been attacked by bicolors was the hemp-plaz note in his swollen fingers. On the front were my initials in his messy scrawl.

The chances of Harlan showing up here, in the middle of nowhere, by accident, covered in bicolors, with a note to me in his dead fingers, were low enough to be impossible. Harlan was dead because of me. Which meant there was a traitor in the Gov. and in Harlan’s network. I just didn’t know who.

I swore, but silently, in my head, not where the ants could hear me. They still hadn’t noticed me. Yet. I stepped back, slowly, slowly, moving steadily, doing nothing quick to attract attention. I pulled my Hand-Held and took a burst of the body. Walking at a snail’s pace around the vehicle, I took multiple bursts of stills as I moved, until I was back at the hatch.

Moving so slow it was like watching the sun cross the sky, I slipped on the military bot gloves. But something alerted the bicolors. As the gloves gripped onto my hands and arms, the ants turned to look at me. All of them. All at once. A shiver took me, even with the heat. But I didn’t scream, run, or indicate fear that might tweak their predatory instincts. Moving millimeter by millimeter, I pocketed the Hand-Held and reached for the Maltodine.

I needed to kill them.

I needed to read that letter.

The ants hissed. All of them together. A single sharp, piercing note. Looking right at me.

“Oh, bloody damn,” I whispered.

The ants raced around, forming into small groups, each the requisite thirty-nine in number, which was three groups of thirteen. There were four groups of thirty-nine in all, with a ragged half group. Enough to start over a dozen new nests. Here. On my junkyard land.

Over my dead body.

Over Harlan’s dead body.

Assuming they were a swarming party, sent to bring back food to an established nest, that meant these bicolors had been transported a good hundred kilometers from their queen; it tended to take a few hours before the ants noticed that they didn’t have a female anymore. It took seventy-two hours to complete the transition to female. I didn’t know how long they had been away from their nest, but they would notice they needed to create a queen soon. I had to act now.

But I needed that note.

“Shining. Company,” Mateo’s synthetic voice said directly into my wireless earbud. “Bike. Unknown model. Ten klicks out. I am launching ARVACs,” he said, referring to Auto Remote Viewing Air Craft—flying drones with better-than-standard artificial intelligence and real-time viewing, part of the junkyard’s defense system.

“The Law?” I whispered, looking at Harlan’s body, the jug a handbreadth from my