Black Rust Read Online Free Page A

degenerate with the car.  A driver couldn’t help it when a stupid deer ran in front of his vehicle.  It was much the same with a d-gen.  No law was broken.  And nobody gave much of a shit about it.
    The world had a lot of that in it these days—not giving a shit.

Chapter 5
    I saw nothing but black sky and silvery twinkles above. 
    Where are those damn red LEDs?
    Apparently getting nervous as the ramifications of everything sank in, Lutz said, “We should run.”
    “Run?”
    “One year mandatory for each dirty kill,” Lutz told me like I didn’t already know it.  “I did maybe half of ‘em.  I can’t do twelve years in a work camp.  Not at my age.”
    Twelve d-gens? 
    Lutz might have shot six or seven.  I’d had to kill the rest to keep them from killing him.  Or maybe just because my blood was running hot and I liked pulling the trigger.  I wasn’t sure.  It all happened so fast. 
    “You want to do ten years in a work camp?” Lutz asked, as he swerved the speeding car onto the shoulder to get around a derelict semi tractor-trailer.  “What if they pin all twenty-three on each of us?  They do that, you know.”
    I knew.  At least I’d heard talk about it.  Rumors are as good as facts when you’re nervous.
    I looked for the drone’s red lights.  It had to be up there. 
    Lutz rubbed the sweat off his face.  “It’s four miles more, maybe.  Just off the highway.”
    Thinking about what lay ahead, I asked, “By that old mall?”
    “Tall building right by there,” said Lutz.  “Five or six stories.  Cellular phone antennas all lined up on the roof.  None of ‘em work.”
    Five or six stories wasn’t tall by Houston standards, but way out here it was.
    I knew the building he was talking about.  That’s to say I’d seen it a dozen times when Lutz and I chased sanctions into the piney woods northwest of Houston.  Like every other building—short or tall—out this way, most of the windows had broken out long ago.  Some of the structures were sagging under the weight of roofs crushing frames of rusty metal and rotten wood.  This one was still sturdy, probably.  If it weren’t structurally sound, it wouldn’t have a drone charging station built on the roof—made sense to me. 
    That was important because I’d soon be running through it to get to the roof just as fast as I could.  If that drone we were chasing arrived and docked, it’d take only seconds to get a connection and start downloading the incriminating video.
    With the destination and a plan in mind, I urged, “Get us there as fast as you can.”
    Lutz pressed the pedal to the floor, the engine revved.  The beast sped faster.  “Three years for shooting down that spotter drone.  That’s on you.”
    Are we still talking about this?
    I was working to cover my ass and his.  He was busy divvying up the blame. 
    Where are those damn red LEDs?
    “We should go to Old Mexico,” he told me.  “Get a gig doing security for a cartel boss.  Maybe those Camacho brothers.  I bet they’d hire a couple of gringos.”
    We were driving over a hundred miles an hour, a risky speed on roads that hadn’t seen any maintenance in twenty years.
    “There is no Old Mexico.”  I pointed at a green exit sign with its weathered white letters barely reflecting our headlights through the tall grasses growing around it.  “Is that where we get off?”
    “Next one.”  Lutz told me.  “You’ve been there, to Mexico.  You know people.”
    I huffed but said nothing.  Going on the run into a failed state with Lutz in tow was just about the last thing I wanted.  Chasing the Old Mexico dream, a dream I knew didn’t exist, wasn’t on my list.
    “I’ve seen the pictures,” he said.  “Beaches.  Palm trees.  Girls.”
    Poverty.  Lawlessness.  Shortages worse than here, unless you worked for one of the cartels.  And plenty of people down there who wanted me dead. 
    I pointed up the highway.  “If we get the