Rejuvenation

A story in the MORFS universe

The honky-tonk roadhouse was rocking when she rolled up on the vintage hog. She walked the motorcycle back towards the stairway that led down from the front door and porch. Taking the mirrored aviator shade off, she surveyed the area for people standing around and spotted only two. They were on either side of the entrance. Both were over six two and looked like they had played linemen on the local community college football team.

As she walked up the steps one stepped away from the wall, meeting her at the top of the stairs.

“We don’t allow nig—” was as far as he got.

He landed hard on the rough pavement, never touching the steps, wheezing as he worked at trying to breathe again.

She turned her attention on the other, who slowly reached up, and tipped his Stetson.

“Nice ride,” he said, nodding in the direction of her motorcycle.

“Thanks.”

She walked past the door checker, ignored the cashier. Once all the way inside, the noise was nearly overwhelming. A line of dancers on the small dance floor doing a “boot scoot” line dance to the country rock music blaring from the speakers.

Working her way to the left, she edged the crowd to the less crowded, and much quieter dining area on the far side of the bar.

She spotted her mark sitting in the far back with another flyer. Getting closer, her mark was on the left, their back to her. Fatal mistake. Stopping next to the table, she grabbed the woman’s hair and smashed her face into the table, once, twice, three times before slamming it into the booth back.

The flyer’s eyes were unfocused and blood streaming from an obvious broken nose.

“Voy a cortarte, jodida perra de cerdo,” the dark woman said, snapping the knife open. She pushed the tip of the double-edged blade into the flyer’s neck. “Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll make sure you die quickly, comprender.”

“Puta! I tell you nothing!”

“Have it your way.” She slammed the woman’s face into the table again, then jammed the knife into the base of her skull. Twisting the knife twice, she pulled it out, and wiped it on the now dead woman’s blouse. Looking at the dinner companion she nodded to the emergency exit.

“Out that door, featherhead. You don’t want to be here.” The man bolted and she reached into a cargo pocket and pulled out a canister. Flipping the safety cap up, she thumbed the button, released and rolled the grenade under the table.

Turning, she walked back through the crowd and had just passed through the outside doors when the incendiary ignited. The crowd was just coming through the front doors when she tapped the electric start and roared off into deepening darkness.

Once through the door Chris spread his wings and took to the air immediately. He climbed high enough to not be spotted from the ground, and low enough that he would classified as ground clutter by airport and weather radar systems in the state. Checking the compass bearing, he headed off across the desert, following Spider’s ‘oh shit’ contingency plan.

He glided for a bit while fishing out a small earbud. Pushing it into his ear, he pressed the single stud on the end, and was rewarded after a minute with a long and short tone. The tone repeated after fifteen seconds. He mentally shook his head as his remembered the beacon had guided pilots across the North American continent for well over a century.

Luckily for him, he wouldn’t be flying that far, maybe forty or fifty miles straight line. When the tone shifted from Long-Short to a long tone, then to Short-Long, Chris banked left and got back on the long tone signal. He rode that beam for twenty minutes until he spotted the small blinking blue light on the ground.

“That has to be it,” he said to no one, dumped altitude, flared and touched down at the vehicle entrance of a large bunker. “Let’s hope you’re right Candice.”

The pedestrian door was unlocked. He walked into near pitch blackness. When the door slammed shut he could see a small green light blinking on the far wall. It turned out to be a switch. Chris flipped the lever up and was rewarded with blue night time lighting.

Fifteen minutes later, he’d found the kitchen, a coffee urn, filled it with water and plugged it in.

Why this place had power and running water was a mystery. A mystery that Candice might solve once she got there. If she got there. No, when she got there he corrected himself. He’d never known that woman to miss an appointment.

The first indication that Candice was close was the deep roar of a motorcycle.

About damn time he thought to himself as the ultramodern road hog slowed, then rolled to a stop inside the bunker. The glow strips near the ceiling provided just enough light to see. Spider parked near the corridor entrance to the living quarters.

“I was wondering when you were going to get here,” Chris said walking out to meet her.

“Had to make a couple of stops along the way,” Spider said.

“There’s a pot of water for coffee if you want. Dinner is MRE de jour, or on the lite menu, ramen in a cup with bouillon cubes.”

Spider pulled open a recessed door and stepped into the dining facility.

“Air Force DFACs, don’t you just love them. Real trays, plates, even steel utensils, while the rest of us grunts get paper plates and sporks.” Spider sighed sarcastically. “The good old days.” She sorted through the remains of a couple of cases of MRE’s and pulled out one. Using a mug from the plastic rack on the counter, she filled it with hot water from the stand-alone urn and used the “hot beverage mix” from the MRE to make either chicken soup or a lemon lime hot toddy.

The two sat down at one of the remaining picnic style tables with their respective meals.

“Go ahead and ask Chris,” Candice said after she was part way through the BBQ rib patty sandwich.

“You mean about the bar? About you killing my contact and torching the place?” Chris dropped his own sandwich onto the table and arched his hands together. “Okay, I’m asking, what the hell were you thinking?”

“What I was thinking was that I was keeping your head from decorating someone’s trophy room.” Candice replied, ignoring the anger creeping into her partner’s voice. “You were being played, she was stalling until a Mexicali goon squad could get there.” She put her meal down, wiped her mouth with the paper napkin. “They had nasty plans. They were going to stuff you in the back of a semi-trailer and send you to Washington. SecHome has a big dinner planned at some high faluting restaurant in downtown DC next week. It was the goon squad’s job to get you there, as the meat course.”

“You’re joking, right?” Chris asked, his pale skin going pasty.

“A nasty bit of psych warfare they learned from us. Nothing so disturbing as sitting down to a nice fiesta dinner and being served the heads of your senior capos on a covered dish for desert.”

“You…your unit did that?”

“Told you before all this started, Zoo don’t have rules, we have missions, and the only goal is breaking the bad guy. Whatever it takes, being more brutal, more ruthless, ask no mercy, give no quarter.” She looks away, then down at her meal.

“Bolivia was the worst. The cartel was pumping out all sorts of poison. Cocaine, X, Comet, and worse. Got the kids hooked on it, then worked on the families. Moms and the teen girls would end up in the whorehouses, the little girls sold to perverts. The men and boys would work the fields. Unless the boys were pretty. Pretty boys went to a special hell.”

She looked back up at Chris, her eyes flint hard.

“You know how we operate, no innocent blood. It took us a while to find where the pretty boys went and we got them back. The nuns of a local convent took in the boys we rescued, gave them cartel money to take care of them. I warned them what would happen if they abused the boys. I bit the soldier in charge of the operation, injected him with venom. By the time he died, he was bleeding from every pore in his body.”

“You…bit him?”

“Most people call me Spider because I’m a cyber-path, go head crawling through the hyperweb. I could do that before I enlisted. Didn’t want to work in a cube farm, so I volunteered for a ‘special duty assignment’. There were nearly sixty of us at first. We took a ten mile, double time ruck run to a MASH unit, out in the middle of nowhere Texas. Medical tests they said, booster shots. Every last one of us got bleary eyed, gut puking sick. Some of us recovered. Most didn’t. I came out with what they thought were minor changes. I really don’t need NVG’s to see at night, and when the lights go off, I disappear.”

“Training after we recovered was brutal. Wilderness skills, weapons, hand to hand with weapons, and bare hands. That’s when I found out how much I’d really changed. Aloysius Klondike, the Fourth. Bastard son of some Alaskan money bag. We were doing open hand training. He got me on the ground and instead of letting me go when I submitted, he choked me. I was able to break the hold and pulled him down. Instead of rolling him off, I bit his shoulder, hard. I felt something pump, in my jaws. When I pushed him off me, he was screaming, his face turning purple, bloated. Blood started weeping through his skin. I stood there, watched him die and felt…nothing. Two days later I was transferred, to the Zoo.”

“Spent my entire career there. Training, instructing, or deployed, fighting in some stink hole.”

“But the Zoo was shutdown, the whole unit disbanded, thirty years back,” Chris said. “How old are you?”

“Your mama should have taught you never to ask that question,” she grinned while rolling up the remains of her meal. “Let’s just say I’m old enough to be grateful for the new day, and young enough to still appreciate a warm, friendly, body.” Spider replied, tossing her trash into the small waste incinerator.

“Lights out, Chris. Tomorrow starts way early.”
In the barracks, the two bedded down for the night. Chris was settled and nearly asleep when roused by Candice pushing a half bunk against his and sliding under the blanket. He draped an arm, and a wing over her as she snuggled back against him.

It wasn’t the first time they’d slept together in the field. It was, however, the first time they didn’t have camo and body armor between them.

Spider was right, morning did come early. She headed to the single three stall bathroom while Chris made his way to the open bay shower. Only one of the four shower heads worked and he was surprised when he felt hot water coming from it.

Candice stood at the entrance to the shower and had a long look at the man's back. The missions they'd been on against the drug families and terrorists these past three years had changed him. Turned him from an office geek into a hard bodied, blooded field fighter. Her body remembered the night before.

It wasn't the chill pre-dawn air that stiffened her nipples or heated the space between her thighs.

Dammit woman, he's a baby, her conscience warned, and White.

Things like that don't matter anymore. Not the way they used to, she told herself.

Stepping up to the man's back, she took the almost too small bar of soap from him and washed his back. When she was done, she handed him the remainder and turned around. Bracing against the ancient tile she enjoyed the feel of his hands on her. Chris was too much of a gentleman to push their friendship and kept his hands above her waist.

When they were done, he tried not to stare at the keloid scarring on her abdomen and chest as they shared a towel.

“They make you uncomfortable?” Candice asked, looking up into his eyes.

“They make me want to hurt whoever put those there.” Chris replied as he rattled his wings, shaking the remaining water off.

“Those were from two lifetimes ago, Chris," Candice said as they dressed. She put her hand on the flyer’s chest. “The man who caused them is dust, a long time past. They’re a part of me, memories of life etched on skin. Come on flyboy, we’re burning daylight,”

Candice walked her motorcycle to the bunker entrance. Chris looked at the still dark sky and chuckled.

Candice put her hand on his arm.

“Thank you,” she said gently, before hugging him tightly. “It’s been a long time since someone cared that much.”

Before Chris could recover, Spider had her helmet on and was rolling away into the morning. Chris took to the air, circled a time or two to get his bearings then set off to the North.

The sun was just coming over the mountain ridge to the east when Chris landed at the whistle stop station. Using a cash card Spider had given him, he pulled money from an ATM and picked up a pre-purchased ticket. As he thumbed through the itinerary, he smiled. A scenic tour of the United States.

One of the stops was in Kingman, Arizona. With the twelve-hour layover there, he could get a couple of outfits and a meal. From there to Seattle, then east, through the mountains, into Chicago. He’d change trains to the Emerald Coast Streamliner, then down the Eastern seaboard into Atlanta.

While Chris was riding thermals over Kingman, Spider pulled into the parking lot of a small roadside filling station in the outback of the Oklahoma panhandle. She’d been riding for several hours and needed to stretch her legs and do other things.

Stepping back into the light, she had nearly finished a large bottle of water. She crossed the parking lot to the group gathered around her bike.

“Look at it,” one of the leather clad bikers complained. “No shaft, no belt, not even a chain.”

“It’s direct induction drive,” Spider said getting close to the group. “The engine turns a generator and the generator powers the drive coils. Fewer parts to break and leave you stranded.”

“Never seen an engine like that, ‘cept on an airplane,” another commented.

“A radial eight? Yeah, same here, before this. But it runs real well. I’m headed to Pike’s Peak to run the course up there,” automatically giving the onlookers misdirection on her plans. Spider slipped the helmet over her head. The engine fired with a roar and settled down into a steady, powerful purr.

She idles the bike into a turn, then takes off, leaving the crowd in her wake. She turns north, crosses into Colorado, then turns east, getting onto one of the less traveled US highways. Its straight as an arrow. Spider opens the throttle and lets the big bike roar. As the speedometer passes one hundred forty miles per hour, new features take over. With the ease and smoothness of a jumbo jet taking off, Synergy thrusters lift the bike four feet off the roadway. Guidance and radar systems activate along with an active HUD projected against the inside of the dark tinted face shield. There would be plenty of warning for obstacles in her path. In this mode, the bike would go over anything it couldn’t go around safely.

Her speed steadily increases to two hundred miles per hour and there’s no sign of instability. She would need to tell the engineers they surpassed themselves this time.

She made good time keeping to State and County roads that ran past farm fields. The only real danger were tractors pulling trailers and combines crossing from one field to another. She had to ‘jump’ a large combine as it crossed the road, and a double trailer semi as it hauled corn to one of the commercial grain elevators that dotted the fields.

Dim, dusty memories bubbled up from her past. This wasn’t the first time she’d ridden farm roads like this running past mile after mile of corn and wheat. Riding a tractor with her father pulling a trailer with a thousand bushels of dried and shucked corn to the mill to be turned into cornmeal and flour.

Shadows were stretching long when she reduced speed and grounded the bike. She took the exit ramp for the Interstate. Getting to the top, she stopped. From where she sat at the intersection, she could see the town in the distance, past fields of wheat and corn and the spray of irrigation sprinklers. Additional memories rose from her past.

Fourth of July parades, watching her brothers play football, faces of friends, memories of the town she grew up in, played like scratchy sounds from an Edison cylinder.

Summers in the fields, taking water to the men driving the tractors and combines, helping Mom, Kissie and the others with cooking and setting up tables for dinner each day. Twenty men, sweaty from a sunup to sun down harvesting day, all of them bowing their head while Daddy said the blessing.

Old Man Wilkerson, his knife flashing in the last of the sunlight. The pain in her stomach.

A truck passing by on the highway broke the spell.

Not sure herself about why, she depressed the gear lever with her foot, checked traffic, and rode through the intersection, and down the on ramp towards the small farm town of Greenfield.

The town hadn’t changed much from when she’d left. New buildings in places, a new school and the Lutheran church had been rebuilt. The one her family attended had white clapboard siding. She could still feel the heat of the summer, as her Mom and sister sat with her in the balcony pews. How they sweated through service, even with fluttering paper fans stirring the air. Mama telling her if she wasn’t good she’d be going to hell, a place where the heat in the church balcony would be a cool breeze.

This was a more modern building of brick and mortar. Turning at the intersection she drove a half dozen blocks to the east, to what was still the edge of town. A right turn, then a quick block she pulled over in front of a large two-story home.

The color had been changed from basic white to a light tint of green. The window shutters were new. A colorful picket fence had replace had replaced the rough-cut poles and chicken wire that used to surround the front yard.

She killed the engine and took off her helmet. She had no fear of anyone walking away with it or the bike. The people here were too nice, too honest.

She walked up the steps and reached for the small bell hanging next to the door, but pulled her hand back as the front door opened.

“Oh, hello,” the surprised woman said. “May I help you?”

“I was looking for Frau Engels,” Spider said. “Does she still live here?”

“No, I’m sorry, Großmutter Engels passed away many years ago. She was my grandmother.” She paused a moment. “Did you know her?”
Spider smiled and nodded.

“Yes I did.”

The woman inside regarded her for a moment, smiled and pushed the screen door open. “Would you like to come in? I’m sure you’ve had a very long ride.”

The two women had been talking for a while when the front door opened and a pair of teens walked in carrying books and a PADD case.

“Mom?” the boy asked.

“Candice, these are my children, Stacy and Mark,” she turned her attention to the pair. “This is Candice Simmons. She grew up here, with my grandmother. What kept you two, it’s after dark outside.”

“Practice Mom,” Stacy said, the symphony of exasperation clearly audible. “For the game tomorrow night, remember?”

“Be nice, we have a guest. And yes, I remember. I’ll be there with Mr. Jenkins from the county paper.”

“You’re going with that sleaze maggot? How gross.” Stacy complained, following up with fake gagging sounds.

“He’s the sports reporter, Stacy. It’s an assignment, not a date. Dinner will be in an hour, go get your homework finished.”

The kids went upstairs.

“I think I should be going,” Candice said.

“Please stay. It’s full dark outside and the closest place to stay is two hours away,” Emily Engels, replied. “I have several guest rooms upstairs for the harvest workers and they won’t be here for another two weeks. It really is no inconvenience.”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

Candice got her few belongings up to the room next to the bath and stripped off her riding leathers. Checking the time, she could hop in the shower and get at least some of the road stink off. The hot water felt good after a full day of cruising.

She shivered at the sudden memory of this morning’s shower, of flyboy’s hands on her shoulders and back. He was impressively built, everywhere. The feel his body spooned against her the night before brought urges to the fore she’d thought long dead.

“Stop it Candice,” she muttered to herself while turning the water off. “You’re old enough to be his grandmother.” Yeah, what’s your point? her libido fired back as she dried and pulled on a pair of panties that had seen better days. She’d promised Angel before they had gotten involved in their private war on drugs and terrorism, that she wouldn’t touch his heart. It wasn’t his heart she wanted.

Dressed in shorts and a tee shirt featuring a rock band from the last century she made her way downstairs with her dirty clothes.

“The machines are out back on the porch,” Emily said. “Help yourself.”

Dinner was boisterous, with Stacy and Mark peppering her with questions about what she did and if she really drove that big motorcycle out in front of their house. The kids cleaned the table and the kitchen while Candice went out into the back yard.

It was a cloudless night, ruined only by the light coming from a shed on the next property over. It took only a few moments for her to find the lamp’s timer and make it think it was morning. When she opened her eyes, the sodium light was off and the residual glow was fading quickly.

She stopped at the low fence that crossed the back edge of the property. She reached out and touched the nearly mature corn stalk. So many memories flooded back from her youth.

Hertha and she had been inseparable. Sisters in every way but blood. Most of the town couldn’t have cared less that Hertha was white and she was black. There were a few that couldn’t see past her light chocolate skin, but she had chalked it up to ‘haters are gonna hate’.

She’d stayed after graduation from high school, went to the nearby ag-tech college. Hertha had stayed home helping her mom with boarders that rented rooms. Once she’d come down with MORFs, that was the end of it.
MORFs was the boogyman, like HIV/AIDS. The town shunned her, all that she could do was leave. Hertha didn’t even come to say good bye at the train station.

Approaching footsteps brought her out of her memories.

“Why did you come back, Candice?” Emily asked quietly.

“I’ve been trying to figure that out myself,” she said turning to face the other woman. “Maybe just to remember a time when the world was simple, and pleasant, and not insane, ready to blow itself up on the whim of some butthurt politician.”

“You can always come home,” the woman said, putting her hand on Candice’s arm.

“I wish that were so, Em. How I wish that was so.”

Together the two women walked back to the house.

Just after midnight, Candice roused herself and eased herself out of the bed. Standing in the hallway door, she looked down at the woman, gray and blonde hair spread on the pillow, a nipple peaking out from under the muslin sheet. Years peeled away, the woman’s face growing younger, decades falling away until it was a girlfriend who was closer than any sister, better than any friend she’d had in her long, long life.

“Good-bye Hertha,” Candice whispered.

Minutes later, she slipped her helmet on, fired the engine of her motorcycle and left. When she stopped at the top of the highway ramp, she turned left and headed east.

Dawn was pinking the eastern sky when she arrived at Chicago’s Union Station. The Empire Builder train would be arriving in a couple of hours, giving her time to get her bike into a shipping crate and onboard the south bound Emerald Coast Streamliner leaving in six.

The look on Chris’s face when he saw me waiting for him in the little sleeper cabin was a joy. I slid into his arms right there in the doorway and stretched up to kiss him full on the mouth. When we ran out of air, I pulled him the rest of the way in and closed the door.

“It’s thirty hours to Atlanta,” she said, pulling the zipper down on her road suit. “You have that long to make me feel young again.”