Ustari Cycle 00,5 - Fixer Read Online Free PDF Page B

shoulder and we walked through the gate to the brown car, the owner of which was a good-looking kid with dirty blond hair too long for his own good. He looked delighted to be giving us his car, and walked off into the rain as Mags and I climbed in, all jaunty.
    I drove. Mags had never learned. He was this side of feral.
    I let the truck ease in front of us and then drafted it, not allowing anyone to get between us. Ours was a stick shift, and it had been years since I’d driven a manual, so the first few miles were laborious, with stalls and sudden stops and jackrabbit leaps forward. I started to pray the clutch survived long enough, but had no confidence.
    Mags began humming to himself. At first I thought it was just a random, nerves kind of humming, but as I listened it became clear that it was an actual song, a melody. I couldn’t place it. When he reached the cadence he absentmindedly spun back to the beginning and went through it all over again, a distinct pattern of verse-chorus-verse.
    I waited until we were downtown, people everywhere in heavy traffic. Without signaling, I steered us into the left lane and hit the pedal, pulling up in front of the truck. Settled in for a second at the same speed, counted to three, then thought to look at Mags.
    “Jesus,” I said. “Put your seat belt on.”
    It took him nearly a minute, finding it hard to move in the cramped space, his shoulders up against the roof of the car. When he was finally strapped in, I took a deep breath, feeling my heart take a leap in my chest and my head clear a little. Then I hit the brakes with both feet.
    The truck smacked into us and sent us rocketing forward into an old station wagon; the impact made my teeth click together, jerked me forward and smashed my forehead into the steering wheel. We half spun and came to rest wedged between the truck and the car in front. For one second I sat there in relative silence, listening to the engine click and Mags’s whistling breath. There was gas in the air, and after a moment blood dripped from my nose onto the steering wheel.
    “Come on,” I said, my voice like rust. My door wouldn’t open. I summoned three Words and felt the blood in my nose burn off, the spell blowing the windshield out. I climbed out onto the hood, lost my balance, and slid backwards, hitting the wet pavement with a painful jolt. The passenger door exploded outward and Mags leaped out, the torn fragments of the seat belt clinging to him like a vine. He reached down and lifted me to my feet, then held me in place for a moment.
    I nodded. “Okay, come on.”
    He kept one hand on me as I limped down the length of the truck. Baldy was still in the cab, a radio handset in one hand, and he didn’t look at us.
    In the back, as planned, the container doors had popped open. With me pretending to look worried, we circled around the back . . . and I wiped blood from my eyes and said, “ Fuck .”
    They were still cowering in the depths of the container. Every one of them. They stared back in silent motionless . . . what I wasn’t sure. Shock? A compulsion spell? I was very tired, but I was still bleeding from my scalp, so I took a deep breath and tried to think of something useful. A little mu that Hiram had used to jolt me out of bed when I overslept came to mind. Obnoxious, effective, and cheap in terms of gas. Four Words, too many for something so small, but I didn’t have time to rub it down and polish it. I had to add two, even, to expand its target. So I muttered six Words and felt the icy fingers of the universe reach in and scoop out a little more from me, and then every person in the container screamed and jumped.
    A second later they were pouring out, leaping down onto bare feet, dressed in rags, and running. They went scattering in every direction, eyes wide, skeletal people with brown skin and matted dark hair. I watched them all run until the last one had hobbled around a corner. Then I looked around at all the people