Gauntlet Run: Birth of a Superhero

  Henty sighed her relief and kept running.

  The glass cage stopped. Henty ran into the front wall.

  “Ouch!” She rubbed her nose.

  “Watch there you go,” said the capo’s voice.

  A chopper circled in careful inspection, then landed. Even though the mob had disappeared, the capo in his heavy gear ran to the glass cage. The door swung open just as he reached it and crashed shut again behind him.

  “Move it!” he snapped at Henty. “They won’t be distracted long.”

  “What—”

  “Sit on the ledge, grab the handles.” He pushed her. She hadn’t noticed the little ledge because it too was glass, as were the handles. The ledge caught her behind the knees and she sat. It was only nine inches wide. The capo sat next to her.

  A chopper dived at them and Henty screamed, in her mind cursing the Air Force for letting through the bounty hunter.

  CHAPTER 13

  The glass cage jerked and rose into the air with the chopper. Henty nearly fell out in her surprise. The capo grabbed her arm. Henty snatched at the handles. She tried to scrunch herself onto the narrow seat and into the glass wall as her feet swung free over the dark, terrifying void.

  “I told you, hang on,” the capo shouted above the rush of air. “Keerist! I’m glad this pilot got it right. Last week the idiot forgot to switch off the gravity lock and instead of lifting the cube, the cube pulled the chopper down. Splat!”

  “What happened to the mob?”

  “We’re burning the boats they came in. There’s a battle at the quay.” He took one hand from its handle to point.

  To Henty, the battle was mainly spurts of fire around the eleven points of old Fort Wood. From this angle, the Statue of Liberty looked odd. “There were so many of them,” she said.

  “One of these clays a mob’s gonna tear the Statue down just to have standing room.” The capo didn’t seem greatly concerned.

  Part of the crowd either realized the battle at the quay was a diversion, or couldn’t get near enough to fight the Finest on that narrow front. They ran underneath the free­ winging glass cube, throwing up lighted torches. When one struck Henty’s foot, she suddenly didn’t think they were flying too high. A man in the mob started shooting at them with a machine pistol. The capo hung on with one hand while trying to get the attacker lined up with his zipgun. The glass cage swung wildly as the inexperienced chopper pilot took it up vertically. Bullets were crashing around inside the cage. At last the capo managed to single out the attacker and get a bead on him long enough to zap him.

  “How long did the fool think he'd keep the Fist before the mob tore him apart?” the capo raged. But now Henty was more concerned with the dogfights in the sky above them. “Does your chopper jockey know not to take us up into that? I don’t want to be shot down by my own side.”

  “Yon ain’t got no sides, Sister. Everybody’s against you. Don’t forget that or you’ll lose me my bet.”

  “You bet?”

  “Hundred credits ay-en-oh.” ANO — parlance for the Runner making it to Arizona. Nevada or Oregon but not into California. Henty was so delighted, she nearly let go the handles to clap her hands — and now they were really high, just underneath the dogfights in the tricky light of the dawn sky. “Hey, the Syndicate inside betting is I’ll make Nevada. huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Cover yourself with a bet I make it all the way to the Mint,” Henty said bravely.

  “Naw ain’t nobody ever made it.” He ducked instinctively as a fighter in WWII camouflage dived at them from the melee above, cannons blazing, tracer passing perilously close. “Down!” he shouted into his throat mike at the chopper pilot.

  The glass cube dropped sickeningly. From nowhere a USAF jet appeared, seeming to throw incandescent lines of smoke forward as it fired both rockets. Both rockets scored, blowing the bounty hunter’s surplus plane out of the sky. It was so close to the glass cube, Henty watched in horror as pieces of the shattered plane crashed right next to her face. The Air Force pilot, only feet away as he pulled out of his dive, gave her a big toothy smile and a split second later was gone, zooming back up to the fray overhead.

  “The vidi never shows this bit, where the government keeps the Runner from being killed,” Henty said shakily.

  “Course not. All the people got a constitutional right to hunt the Runner, but Liberty Island and the Mint are the only fixed places the Runner absolutely got to go. Stands to reason, if the government don’t rearrange things a little, all the Runners’ll get themselves killed in New York and nobody else gets a go, see?”

  “I just never looked at it like that.”

  “You’re going to have to look at a whole lot of things different, Sister. Where do you want to be dropped?”

  Henty tore her eyes from searching the skies for more lucky bounty hunters to look at the carnage on the New York and New Jersey shores. “I can choose anywhere—”

  “—reasonable.”

  “Intersection of Interstates 80 and 95,” Henty said promptly.

  “Trying to shoot straight across on 80 ain’t so smart. It’s been tried plenty times and nobody ever made it.”

  “All routes have been tried, nobody made it by any of them,” Henty said. “I reckon 80 is the shortest route with the least exposure.”

  “There’s The Trouble.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t going to drop me in New York.”

  “Yeah, sure. But last week we had a big battle with The Trouble and drove most of them across the river.”

  “But there are three million of them!”

  “Naw. that’s just vidizaggeration. Maybe mil.”

  “And the Finest beat them?”

  “Sure. Those kids are only programmed to destroy; we’re trained to destroy efficiently.”

  “And now they’re between me and ten million dollars and a free Presidential Pardon?”

  “Don’t get paranoid. It just happened. One of my men caught an unlicensed drug pusher and cracked his head and there was a riot and then they burned a bank and we had to act and from there it just escalated out of nothing and all of a sudden it was a pitched battle for survival, us or them.”

  “So where are they now?”

  “Well, the Syndicate didn’t want any million-and-a-half unemployed juveniles wrecking their sweet state, so they pushed some into Pennsylvania and they’re negotiating with the Mayor for us to take some back. Meanwhile, New Jersey is tough.”

  “What about cutting into upstate New York for a bit and turning back into Pennsylvania behind the problem?”

  “Thing is, they didn’t want The Trouble upstate either, so the state troopers are dug in all along the borders with New Jersey and Pennsylvania, together with the National Guard. You go up there, you’re just looking to be hunted by disciplined and organized men.”

  “Okay. Drop me as far south as you can and then I’ll turn west again. What about them?” Henty jerked her head up at the planes still whirling above them.

  “The flyboys will take care of them. They’re just amateurs. The real pro bounty hunters with planes will pick you up later.”

  “How?”

  CHAPTER 14

  “That Fist. It broadcasts to the Public Safety Watcheyes on a secret frequency that ain’t no secret. A lot of bounty hunters got receivers, so if they know the general area you’re in, they just wait until you come on the air. Then they pinpoint you with RDF.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Radio Direction Finding.”

  That would hurt. It took Henty a moment to think up the next question. “What can l do about it, short of cutting off my hand?”

  The capo gave her a tight little grin. “The transmission range is only about two miles, so you got to stay away from the Watcheyes so they can’t get a general fix on you from The Caring Society.”

  “You mean The Caring society tells bounty hunters where to find me?”

  “Who else?”

  ?
??Any other tips to help me get to Nevada and win your bet?”

  “Yah. Don’t be a hick. Don’t trust anybody.”

  “I got that.”

  “Kill anybody who gets in your way.”

  “I couldn’t do that. I hurt when I have to kill houseflies.”

  “Suit yourself if you want to be old fashioned and dead. Just remember, a whole lot of people aren’t going to wait until you’re dead to cut the Fist from vou.”

  Henty shuddered. She had seen it many times on vidi, bounty hunters cutting the Fist from Runners obviously still alive; mobs tearing whole arms from still fighting Runners...

  “I’ll tell you something else. That Fist’s got power.”

  “The doctor who fitted it told me it’s indestructible.”

  “More. To help the Runner get as far as possible, the Fist has real power. So much that they took fright and started putting it on the Runner’s left hand instead of the right just to cut back a little on the damage Runners did.”

  “Why not just reduce the power? How much power?”

  “Bureaucrats. Open the Fist and look at that handle.” Henty opened the Fist and looked at the handle. Then she looked at the other handle. The one held by the Fist was worn and cracked, the other one absolutely pristine.

  “This glass is supposed to be indestructible,” the capo said. “You saw it taking direct hits off that exploded plane and not a mark on it. But the Fist crunches it.”

  Henty dosed the Fist and watched the glass powder between her fingers until they met...

  “Hey, what you want to do that for? It’s government property and I got to account for it. Show a little respect, huh?”

  “Sorry. Just testing. You told me, trust no one.”

  The glass cage was being lowered to a busy intersection beside which armed men stood in a circle around a parked chopper. The cage settled and the capo, his eyes rolling like marbles in their sockets to check that everything was safe, held the door.

  The man from the Syndicate waited for them amid his soldiers and button men. “Good work, Joe. Delivery accepted.”

  Henty realized her conversation with the capo must have been monitored in the chopper, with messages relayed to bring Mr Greenshoes here.

  “You want to deal now?” Greenshoes asked her, flashing a legal-looking document. “You had a sample of our efficiency.”

  “How much?”

  “Standard price. Ten per cent. One million.”

  “I hear the Syndicate statisticians give me all the way to Nevada,” Henty said.

  “Thousand to one ANO, sure. But the price for taking your fall to us is the same.”

  “What help are you offering me to get to Nevada?”

  He was staggered. “Help? No help. We just guarantee not to change the odds on you before you get to Nevada, that’s all. Don’t you know the rules of the game?”

  “Then I’ll make my own rules,” Henty said easily and, calling “Thanks for the ride, Joe,” over her shoulder to the capo, she trotted away.

  CHAPTER 15

  Freedom from scruple, from sympathy, honesty and regard for life may, within fairly wide limits, be said to further the success of the individual in the pecuniary culture. — Thorstein Veblen

  “Get her!” the man from the Syndicate shouted. His soldiers and button men leveled their zipguns and he screamed. “Don’t shoot. Get her back here!” The confusion gave Henty just that moment she needed to push her way through the men and gain a few paces. They thundered after her but Henty had been a track star in high school and the work on the chicken farm had kept her fit. Henty vaulted a storm drain and landed on the eastbound carriageway. A twenty-four wheel haulier shrieked its air horns and air brakes and Henty rolled frantically to get away from the monstrous, thumping wheels. As she rolled she saw flashes of the driver’s contorted face alternating with visions of Syndicate soldiers and button men falling into the storm drain.

  Henty frantically stopped herself rolling before she cannoned into the next lane. The lights of the hurtling trucks blinded her. She had to get to the westbound carriageway. East would return her to the metrops. Horns shrieked. One played The Star Spangled Banner. The Syndicate thugs were climbing out of the storm drain. They were now only the width of a single lane from Henty. Twelve feet. She could see them between the trucks.

  One was tempted by her proximity and ducked into the traffic. A huge truck splatted him against its armored windshield that reached almost to the blacktop. Automatically jets of steaming, detergent-foaming water sprayed from the nozzles and the huge pantograph wipers flashed into action to remove his remains from the driver’s vision. The driver didn’t even touch his brakes.

  For a moment Henty stood horrified, her hand to her mouth, big trucks whizzing twelve inches either side of her, rocking her in the crosscurrents of air they set up with their bulk and their speed. Then she saw the Syndicate soldiers and buttons through the moving fence of trucks, standing there, judging their speed, preparing to dash into that deadly maelstrom to grab her.

  Henty turned. For a moment her nerve failed her. If she misjudged any one of the three lanes she still had to cross she was going to be splatted against a windshield and wiped off like a bug.

  She looked over her shoulder. A Syndicate thug hunched himself, then launched bodily through the gap between two speeding trucks towards her.

  Henty had been planning to let the gap in front of her pass and take advantage of the next one. Now the optimum moment to dash forward between the hurtling goliaths had passed. But if she delayed, the button man would cannon into her and they'd both go under the merciless wheels of the onrushing juggernaut.

  Henty squirted forward, the big truck clipping her heel as she pulled herself up sharply in the narrow safety between the lanes. Behind her she heard the splat! as the haulier collected the button man. Involuntarily she looked over her shoulder. Of the button man so recently sent to the infinite silence of Omerta there was no sign: the truck had carried his remains with it. But no fewer than five Syndicate bullies had made it across the first lane and were watching her through the gaps between the speeding trucks with burning, calculating eyes.

  They moved. Henty moved.

  Close up she saw the distorted face of a driver, lines of fatigue stretching from his eyes like a highway map. He didn’t even notice that she came within thousandths of an inch of sudden death against the panoramic windscreen of his truck. At the regulation hundred twenty-five miles per hour his gaze was hypnotically fixed on the brake lights of the truck thirty feet in front of his own nose. He was looking out for his own life.

  Henty felt a jerk at her jacket. One of the button men had caught up!

  As she turned to try and free herself, the next truck tore him away. But already another had arrived to take his place. Without looking, panicking, Henty headed into the fatal traffic-stream, shouting at the top of her voice and not knowing it. For the first time in her life she knew real fear.

  She was alone, without a friend in all the world, hunted even by those who had every reason — money — to help her.

  “Yaaaargh!” Henty shouted and bounded the lane in one concerted spurt of careless speed that carried her right over the divider and on to the westbound lane where she halted her impetuous momentum a millisecond short of annihilation by the speeding mass of malevolent metal. She stood swaying, trying to catch her balance and keep it.

  The syndicate thugs, now reduced to four, scrambled over the divider.

  Henty screamed in fear and rage. She didn’t want to be forced to run the gauntlet of these four lanes as well but none of the trucks even slowed to her frantic waving.

  The button closed on her. One reached for her, his fingers squirting towards her like a living fire hose.

  CHAPTER 16

  Desperately, Henty started running alongside the trucks, in the direction they were going, Westwards. Still they whizzed past her but she was gaining on the button men again. But then she saw another contingent of S
yndicate fanatics ducking and weaving through the Eastbound traffic to cut her off. Some were splatted but others were getting through and if even one made it, she was caught. She knew she was no match for a trained enforcer.

  The standout mirror of a passing truck just brushed Henty’s shoulder but the slight touch was enough to spin her around. As she spun, she could see the button men behind her cut in half the distance she had opened up. The break in her stride also ensured that the men crossing the opposing traffic to get in front of her would definitely cut her off. As if that wasn’t enough, two choppers came overhead with Syndicate soldiers and button men clinging to the skids, ready to jump on her the moment the pilot brought the chopper low enough.

  At the very instant that the first button man scrambled across the divider five paces in front of Henty to cut her off, one of his comrades from behind her put on an extra spurt of power and grabbed the back of her jacket.

  Henty spun with the leverage of the man’s hold and instinctively hit out at her attacker. Because she was left-handed, she reacted with her left hand. With the Fist. It smashed his face and lifted him clear off the ground and carried him back three or four paces, his momentum being such that three button men who had been on his heels could not stop his accelerating mass and were carried back with him, falling in an untidy bundle of arms and legs at odd angles.

  For a very brief moment Henty held up the Fist to stare at it. It was no Supertool but it had been built to magnify all movements. And, as the material itself was indestructible and protected the hand inside from all feeling, great force could be applied to be magnified. It was one of those bureaucratic puzzles why the government should fit the Gauntlet Runner with such a potent weapon and then insist it be put on his least effective hand... if the young doctor had not wanted to help her by fitting it to her best hand, if the capo had not told her of the Power, she might never have found it.