Metaltown (2 page)

He faced Colin again. “I can count on you, right Colin?”

“Yeah. Of course, Mr. Schultz. It's just that I've got work in an hour, and the Cat's Tale is way up Fifth Street. I mean, I'll do it, it's just … You know how the foreman gets if you're late.” Colin couldn't afford to push his luck with Minnick. The man had fired two workers just last week for getting sick on the job—something that happened a lot on account of the hazardous materials they dealt with. But he didn't want to get on Jed's bad side either, not after how good Jed had been to his family.

Jed smiled. “I'll talk to your foreman. You're in Small Parts labor, right?”

“Yes, sir,” said Colin.

“Good. Go ahead and take your pal.” He stuck a thumb behind him in Ty's direction.

“Okay.”

The concern that had come into Jed's face while he'd been talking about the family dissipated. He slung a hand around the back of Colin's neck and gave a companionable squeeze. “You're a good kid, aren't you? Remind me of me when I was your age. Man of the house.”

Colin grinned, and felt his ears grow warm under his hat. Technically, Hayden was the man of the house, but Hayden wasn't here, was he? Colin wasn't so irritated that his brother had blown off Jed anymore. In fact, Hayden could go right ahead and stay gone as long as he liked.

Imon handed him the stack of money, and Colin, fighting the urge to count it, folded it into the front pocket of his trousers.

“Say hello to Cherish for me.” Jed turned back the way he'd come, disappearing into the gray smog.

Colin felt ten feet tall. Breakfast, a personal hello from the biggest man in Metaltown,
and
the morning off work? It couldn't get much better than that.

“Wipe that grin off your ugly face.” Ty snatched the remainder of the bird from his loose grasp. He pulled his hat back, smoothed one gloved hand over his buzzed head, and winked at her.

“Ugly,” Ty repeated. Then they turned the opposite way, toward Bakerstown and the rising sun.

 

2

TY

Ty bit down on something that crunched, and pulled a white shard of pigeon bone from her cheek. It was thin as a needle, and she used it to pick at the food stuck in the gaps between her teeth. She may not have liked where the feast had come from, but she wasn't about to turn it down. Pride didn't fill your belly like a roasted pigeon.

“Smells good out here,” Colin said from beside her. She glanced over, but he wasn't smiling like he had been for the last mile—he was biting his pinky nail. She felt her own brows draw together in response.

The air did smell cleaner; anywhere outside the grasp of the factory district did. But though the sun didn't have to cut through a filter of smog, it wasn't like the place was perfect. The poor ran thick here, crowding the street beside them, begging at each red brick shop front for food and work.

Funny how they didn't come to Metaltown to beg for work.

“Don't lie. You know you love the smell of nitro in the morning,” she said, glad to see his hand lower from his mouth and his grin return.

The crumbling sidewalk they walked down ran beside an iron fence that twisted and spiraled like the ivy that clung to it. It would have been posh had the park within not grown over like a jungle. It was even stocked with wild animals: dopers and sellers and the kind of people who knew how to get anything you wanted—for the right price. At least half of them were in the earliest stages of the corn flu.

She felt the switchblade lodged into her boot, and another knife in her waistband. Always ready, just in case.

“How much did Jed's man give you?” she asked, changing the subject. She would have suggested pocketing a few bills for themselves, but she knew better. Nothing was free in Metaltown. She'd bet a week's pay that Imon's muscle work wasn't limited to greenback thugs.

“I don't know, but it's burning a hole through my leg.” Colin was thinking of lifting it too, she knew he was. They were two like minds. Had been since she'd taken him under her wing four years ago, fresh out of prep school.

She glanced his way, noticing the changes in him. Metaltown had made him hard. His sky blue eyes had turned to steel, and his dark, shaggy hair had been shorn close to the skull to cut the heat inside the plant. Hands used to writing facts and figures had grown strong and calloused, and he had muscles, too, beneath those baggy clothes.

She'd been eleven and he'd been thirteen when they'd met, but their ages might as well have been reversed. He'd known nothing about work, and for some unknown reason she'd taken pity on him and called a
safety.
According to street rules that made her responsible until he could stand on his own two feet. Now he was a leech. She couldn't shake him if she tried.

“Let's count it,” she said, feeling a different, greedy kind of hunger take over. Even if they couldn't lift it, she could feel the paper in her hands and imagine what it'd be like to buy whatever she wanted.

“Yeah right,” he said, and his shoulders pulled forward again. “We passed the beltway. We're on McNulty's turf now. One sniff of green and they'll be on us like flies on rot.”

“Let 'em come then,” she said, tapping the handle of the knife she kept in her waistband. “I'm not scared of any Bakerstown pansies.”

His barked-out laugh had her cheeks suddenly warm. “Just like you were going to take Jed and his man, right?”

She fought the urge to sock him between the eyes. “I could take 'em.”

“Course you could've,” he said. “Imon only outweighs you by a hundred and fifty pounds.”

She tossed the bird carcass into the trash-filled gutter. “I'll take you in a second.”

“Such a tease.” He shoved her off the sidewalk.

She pushed him back, maybe a little too hard, irritated that all the layers of clothes she wore suddenly made her too hot. He bounced off the iron fence, laughing.

The clang of a doorbell from one of the shops across the street drew their attention to a couple exiting a deli. They were flush, that much was obvious. Smart clothes—a black peacoat and slick leather shoes on the man, a swanky black dress on the woman—and clean, brown skin. The woman's small brimmed hat with its fishnet veil had Ty wondering what purpose such ridiculous clothes could possibly serve.

The couple waited for the doorman to clear a path through the beggars, then headed down the sidewalk around the corner, making no attempt to hide the shiny handheld defusers they each wore on their waistbands. The crowd cleared around them; one shock from those things and a person would be out for hours.

“Must be hard being so damn rich,” said Ty. “Wading through all this muck. It's disgusting really.”

She hiccupped a laugh, pleased with herself, but Colin didn't find her funny. His eyes were round as he watched them go. What was wrong with him? He was standing taller. And smoothing down the front of his shirt. He'd been acting strange all morning, ever since they'd run into Jed and Imon.

She shifted her weight from one side to the other. They shouldn't have left Metaltown. Jed was trouble—she refused to trust a rich man she'd never seen work. He probably wasn't even going to keep his word and tell the foreman. Then they'd be sacked and she'd be no better than these bums here, begging for a job.

Colin had begun walking again.

“If I was flush,” he said, “I'd buy a separate sidewalk so me and my greenback friends didn't have to get our shoes dirty.”

Ty's shoulders loosened, and she fell into step beside him.

“If I was flush, I wouldn't walk at all. I'd make scraps like you pull me around in a cart.”

He smirked. “If I was flush, I wouldn't even need a cart. I'd make scraps like
you
go get me everything I need.”

“Anything for you, Great One,” she said. But her laughter failed when he lapsed into silence. Most of the time the quiet didn't bother her. She preferred it actually; there was nothing more annoying to her than mindless chatter. But here, so close to a home she knew he still missed, she felt a strange pressure to keep him talking.

“Where is Hayden, anyway?” she asked, thinking back to the whole reason they were on this venture. “And why's he working for slick Jed Schultz?”

Colin scowled. “He's not slick. He's all right.”

Ty took this answer to mean that he didn't know where his brother had landed. He was all doe-eyed again, thinking about Jed, and she didn't like that one bit.

A couple stiffs in black uniforms walked by, and Ty pulled Colin down off the sidewalk so they could pass. Bakerstown police were as crooked as they came. Word was their chief was owned by big boss Hampton himself, who could use them as his own private army if the mood struck. They wouldn't take kindly to a couple Metalhead kids with pockets full of cash.

“Here's Fifth,” she said when they reached a corner. A bike messenger swept by them, nearly clipping Ty's arm. She swore and gave him the finger.

Old rusty cars were parked on the curb, relics from a time when gas wasn't just for the rich, before the war between the feds. Most people used them now for shelter, though half of them had been dismantled for parts. A parking garage entrance came up on their left, and though their pace didn't quicken, both of them kept their eyes sharp. A lot of shadows in there. A lot of places for someone to hide.

Two guys were sitting on the concrete exit ramp and jumped up as Colin and Ty approached. They were both shorter than Colin, and well fed, dressed in hand-me-down wool slacks—nice ones, but not new—and shirts tucked into their waistbands. Their belts were painted green, flaking around the buckles. Muscle, hired by McNulty. Ty thought they looked soft and out of practice.

Colin sighed beside her, which made her lips quirk into a small grin. But when a girl about their age sauntered out of the shadows with her shirt tied in a tight knot behind her lower back, the scowl returned to Ty's face.

“Well hello,” said Colin, eyes traveling from her darkly painted eyes and thick brown curls down her curvy form. She smirked and pushed her chest out, hand resting on one cocked hip. Ty made a noise of disgust.

“Let's see,” said the first guy, a dark-skinned boy with dreadlocks. “Holes in their boots, eyes dumb as a dead pig, and the stink of acid. Must be Metalheads.” His friend laughed into his fist.

Colin smirked, then wiped his grin away with the back of his hand. “Was that an insult, Ty? I … just … can't … seem … to … catch … on.” He scratched his head.

“I
think
so.” She shrugged. The other two looked at each other and laughed, but the lines around the first boy's eyes had gone tight.

“Damn,” he said. “That's a girl. Thought for sure she was a man.”

“That's 'cause she's twice the man you are,” Colin shot back. His hand on Ty's arm stopped her from smacking those smirks right off their fat faces, even as her skin prickled with resentment. He'd meant it as a compliment, but it didn't feel that way.

The girl giggled, maybe at them, maybe just to flirt with Colin. Girls were always losing their heads around him. He sent her a smile blocked immediately by the second boy, whose hair was curled so tightly against his skull it looked like it might break.

“Why'd you cross the lines, Metalhead? You know better.”

“Jed Schultz sent us to see a friend of his,” Colin told them, easy as he might've said
nice weather today
or
say, you all have matching belts, how 'bout that.

Ty's jaw locked. Why was he pulling the Schultz card? They could have handled this on their own. It took a second for her to figure out he probably didn't want them finding out about the money in his pocket.

Jed Schultz had immunity in Bakerstown, which meant
they
had immunity in Bakerstown. She wasn't used to that kind of protection. She wasn't sure she liked it. A reputation like that came with a cost.

McNulty's boys sighed and took a step back.

“Yeah, all right,” said the boy with dreads, the disappointment thick in his voice. “Why didn't you say so? McNulty and Schultz go way back.”

“I'll bet they do,” said Colin.

Jed was the white knight of the gray city, the middleman between the people and their wealthy employers at Hampton Industries. McNulty was the king of the underworld—a big Northerner who made his money from the wealth of Bakerstown through girls and gambling and dope. Word was, McNulty used to run Metaltown before Jed came along, but after Jed won the workers over, he booted McNulty across the beltway. There was a truce in place: as long as their interests didn't clash, their people didn't clash. But that didn't mean they liked each other.

“Shouldn't you Bakerstown pricks be in school?” Ty asked. “I think I hear your teacher calling.”

“
School?
” Dreads' patronizing tone made her hands curl into fists. “Surprised you know what that is, she-man. Are they teaching factory workers to read now?” His friends laughed.

She laughed with them, despite the bite of annoyance. She could read. Kind of.

“We graduated early,” said the boy with the curly hair. “McNulty handpicked us to run his crew.”

“Least he got it right with one of you.” Colin leaned around them to grin at the girl.

She twirled her hair around one finger.

Ty's eyes narrowed. “Look, interesting as this is, some of us actually got things to do.”

A long, hard stare passed between her and Dreads, kicking up her pulse. He was the first to back down, bringing a smirk to her face. When he turned away, Curly Hair balked, but followed. McNulty's clan let them pass without further trouble, though Ty could hear them arguing with the girl all the way down the block.