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10: LOST YOUR MITTENS, YOU NAUGHTY KITTENS! THEN YOU SHALL HAVE NO PIE.


The black tom barn cat had feral kittens.

Olivia hadn’t realized that Tommy Chang was the patriarch of a large sprawling family but all the clues had been there. Unlike the Undefended, who hid behind fake identities, the prostitutes of Tommy’s stable used their real names. Not all were named Chang but a goodly number were: from small witty Mokoto Chang to big quiet Babe Chang to sharp-tongued Lauren Chang. Everyone in Pittsburgh knew that if they messed with a Chang, they would face Tommy’s wrath. Having seen him walk into the heavily guarded shipyard without fear, she understood now why no one wanted to mess with him.

Two of Tommy’s feral kittens climbed into the truck cab with Olivia. Zippo looked like he could be Babe’s younger brother. He had that same big-teddy-bear vibe going on with a massive build and a warm grin. Zippo shyly flashed his smile as he got in but said nothing the entire trip. He watched every move Olivia made as if ready to bolt. The small, fierce Alita climbed up to perch on her cousin’s lap. It was hard to judge the kittens’ ages. Zippo seemed to be around sixteen but Alita could be as young as thirteen or as old as nineteen. She was tiny and flat chested, but her Goth makeup was applied with a practiced hand.

Olivia fumbled through making sure she was in neutral gear, starting up the engine, turning on the headlights, and setting the windshield wipers at their highest speed. The heavy rain reduced her line of sight to a hundred feet or so even with the wipers whipping back and forth. She double-checked their fuel level, knowing that big trucks were gas hogs. The gauge had been at full when she appropriated the big truck. They had driven close to twenty miles all told during the day. The needle had barely moved, suggesting a massive gas tank. There was no danger of them running out of fuel. She did the complicated foot dance of brake pedal—clutch—gas—clutch—gas to get the big truck rolling through the empty city streets in third gear.

As Olivia drove, Alita talked at machine-gun speeds about why she couldn’t warn Duff via her radio. Olivia was surprised by Alita’s candor: she’d expected more growling and hissing. Alita seemed to think that Olivia had won Tommy’s trust. Olivia doubted that she had won over the tom barn cat completely but she was glad for the information.

“The Resistance got started up shortly after the July Shutdown when Tinker got kidnapped. Everyone knew about the oni then…well, knew something about the oni.” Alita used the fingers of her left hand to tick off what Pittsburghers had learned since that Shutdown. “They knew that the oni had tried to kill Windwolf, were responsible for the shoot-out on Veterans Bridge, had kidnapped Tinker and set loose the giant electric catfishes—but that was it.”

That matched with what Olivia knew until she tracked down Forest Moss and became entrenched in the elf society. Every day she learned something new about the enemy, either from the royal marines or the Wyverns or Forest Moss.

Alita pointed to the right. “Turn at the next intersection. Until Tommy teamed up with Oilcan, we couldn’t say boo about the oni. Anyhoo, the Resistance felt like they were fighting ghosts, so they figured that they needed to be ghosts too. Now take this upcoming right. Not that right! Sharp right! Watch the fire hydrant!”

It had been a Pittsburgh intersection with five possible directions, none of them being straight. There had been a small forest of DO NOT ENTER signs barring most of them. The sharp right took them onto a street paralleling the river until they got to the Smithfield Street Bridge.

There were ROAD CLOSED and BRIDGE OUT signs at the intersection.

“Oh, crap,” Alita cursed. “Bridge out? What the hell? Did the train derailment take out part of the bridge?”

Olivia hadn’t noticed any obvious damage to the Smithfield Bridge earlier in the day, but she’d been distracted. She’d gotten to Aoife’s place via the light rail train that crossed upriver on a different bridge. She’d followed Linda Gaddy to the North Side via the West End—maybe because of the closed road. Still, she should have noticed if large parts of the bridge were missing as she traveled through the area.

The thing was, she couldn’t think of any other bridge that connected to the South Side. Since she didn’t own a car, her knowledge of the city was limited to its mass-transit lines. The next bridge downriver was Fort Pitt Bridge and it funneled into the Fort Pitt Tunnel that went…somewhere…She tried to remember if there were bridges upriver that went to the South Side. Surely there were but she couldn’t recall any except the Liberty Bridge that similarly channeled traffic through the Liberty Tunnel.

“They might have closed Smithfield until they could inspect the bridge for possible structural damage,” Olivia said slowly as she hated the plan that was forming in her mind. “We could see if we can get across.”

“Nah! We’ll cross Fort Pitt Bridge.” Alita indicated that they’d continue straight instead of plowing through the signs. “We can take the West End exit and do a U-turn onto Carson Street. Technically it’s not legal but we look like we’re the EIA and they do anything they want.”

“Okay!” Relief flooded through Olivia. She hated the idea of risking the lives of everyone in the truck by attempting to cross a possibly damaged bridge. She was glad she had someone with her who knew the way.

“The rest of our cell are too young and stupid to be real spies,” Alita continued her rapid-fire explanation of the Resistance. Olivia wasn’t sure how it related to the reason that Alita couldn’t radio Duff and warn him. “They were hanging out at Eides at the end of July, looking at videos to rent and talking about setting up a cell because they couldn’t get into Hot Metal. Part of me was like ‘Do you really want to trust these people to have your back?’ The other part was like ‘No one else is going to let you join a secret organization without asking dangerous questions.’ So I gave them fake names, wore a disguise, and pretended that I was just going overboard on the whole spy thing.”

Olivia nodded along. She was just as guilty about pretending to be someone she wasn’t. More so. If Alita had joined the Resistance prior to Tommy rescuing Windwolf, then she had been protecting her entire family by using a fake identity.

Theirs had been the only vehicle moving on the streets as they worked their way across the Monongahela River to the South Side neighborhood. There they found evidence that there had been fighting in the streets; some of the buildings looked like they had taken mortar hits.

Alita pointed right. “Take this upcoming right onto South Eighteenth Street. It snakes its way up the hill, so you’ll probably want to slow down a little. This place is a maze and I think some of the little narrow side streets turn into stairs.”

“Stairs?”

“So I’ve been told. I’ve only been up to the top of Mount Oliver a couple times.” Alita changed subject without taking a breath. “The thing is, my cell isn’t one of the power hitters. Our youngest member is twelve and the oldest is seventeen. We’re just a band of little wannabes, close enough to the action to know what is what, but far enough out that we didn’t even have a name for a long time. We had two guys quit because we didn’t have an official name before our leader put out the word that we’re the Palm Garden Trestle. Talk about a total W.T.F. Where the hell is Palm Garden? What the hell is a trestle?”

“Palm Garden is a big apartment complex near where I used to live on Mount Washington,” Olivia said, surprised that she knew something about the city that Alita didn’t. “It has its own station on the T. When I took the light rail out of town, Palm Garden was the next stop after mine. Trestle means it’s a bridge that only a train uses.”

“It’s real? I thought Steve made the name up to make us feel better.”

“Steve?”

“Our cell leader. Steve. The seventeen-year-old. A complete idiot. His older brother Ricky is in Hot Metal with Dog Bow-Wow but wouldn’t give Steve the commends to be part of it. How fucked up do you need to be that your own brother doesn’t trust you? And his brother is right not to: I shouldn’t know that Dog Bow-Wow is the leader of Hot Metal. But that’s beside the point. Any way you slice it, Duff isn’t going to believe me if I start blasting over the radio that maybe the oni are on their way to the bakery. He probably doesn’t even remember me, I was just a girl who handed him chili hot dogs at the racetrack. Chili, cheddar cheese, jalapeños, diced onions, and sour cream. If Duff knows anything about Palm Garden Trestle, he knows Steve is the leader and a complete idiot and we’re not supposed to have a radio. I’m not going to explain over the open air who I am and how I got my headset. It would put both our families at risk if I try to convince him that he can trust me.”

“That’s fair,” Olivia said.

A tall ridge ran along the Monongahela River opposite the Downtown triangle. Olivia had been told that at one time there were a dozen small distinct communities dotting the top of the steep hills. Once Pittsburgh had been shifted to Elfhome, though, the population of the suburbs started to shrink drastically. Mount Washington stayed popular because of the inclines and the light rail line. The other neighborhoods suffered from the fact that many of the side streets became bobsled runs during the wintertime. Their population shrank. The Elfhome wilderness pressed in. Communities were merged together until there were only two distinct ones.

Olivia had found a home at the edge of Mount Washington. It was a ten-minute walk to the incline but also the same distance to a little grocery store and the bakery in Mount Oliver. Alita had been right to call the place a maze, as the steep slopes of the hillside dictated placement of the roads.

South Eighteenth Street was terrifying in the dark and rain as she navigated the big truck up the narrow winding road. Kansas, where she’d learned to drive, didn’t have hills and turns like this! The farm roads were all flat and in perfectly square grids to give access to the thousand-acre cornfields. Each time she had to downshift on the steep grade, she whispered a prayer that she wouldn’t stall. When she reached the top of the hill, her hands hurt from gripping the steering wheel so hard.

Alita had said that she didn’t know her way around Mount Oliver. Olivia had been concerned that they wouldn’t be able to find the bakery. As they reached the top of the hill, however, she realized that South Eighteenth Street turned into Brownsville Road as it crossed into the Mount Oliver neighborhood. It meant that they were a block from the bakery. She made the sharp right onto Arlington Avenue.

The bakery was an old Dollar Tree store in a small deserted-looking strip mall. The sign of the variety discount store had been taken down but the letters remained visible as ghost outlines on the faded white paint. The glass doors and big windows had been boarded over as protection against Elfhome’s larger predators. Olivia had been told that the other business in the strip mall had been a medical clinic but all evidence of it had been scrubbed away when it was abandoned. Even the clinic’s doors had been bricked over as the bakery expanded into the space.

The mall’s big parking lot was empty, cracked, and weed choked. The Dollar Tree looked as abandoned as the stores and homes flanking it. The bakery’s owners liked it that way, since half of its workers had been illegal immigrants like Olivia. They had no choice—finding someone in Pittsburgh who would get up two in the morning to bake bread for minimum wage was otherwise impossible.

Most of the employees worked between midnight and sunrise. Many lived within walking distance. Those who drove to work ignored the parking lot that faced Arlington Avenue. They parked behind the bakery, continuing the illusion that the building was abandoned. Oliva turned down John Street, heading for the back of the bakery.

Duff’s pickup was tucked in the far corner of the rear parking lot. It was the only car they’d seen since they crossed the Fort Pitt Bridge. The floodlight over the bakery’s loading dock was on, evidence that the building had power. Olivia swung wide to the right and then backed the big cargo truck up to the dock. If the oni showed up, she wanted to be able to take off running.

“We’re stopping?” Alita peered up and down the obvious back alley. Only a block long, the cobbled lane gave access to a handful of backyards and garages. “This is it? When you said ‘bakery,’ I imagined, you know, cookies and cakes in a big window like at Market Square.”

“This is it.” Olivia snapped off the truck’s headlights. Rain drummed on the roof of the cab. The Dollar Tree blocked most of Olivia’s view of the main road. She could only see the mouth of the alley where it met Arlington Avenue. The power lines that wove a net over the main road gleamed brighter and brighter, indicating that a car—screened by the surrounding buildings—was approaching the intersection.

The cargo truck’s windows were manual crank to open. Olivia lowered her window, letting in the rain and cold. She called back to the marines. “Shhhh, everyone just hold tight for a minute!”

She heard Aoife repeating the order in Elvish. Olivia winced as she realized that she’d slipped back to English after talking with Alita.

Olivia half-climbed out of the truck so she could lean over the hood to see more of Arlington. The sound of engines grew louder. There was more than one vehicle coming. It sounded like a convoy of big trucks. She pressed close to the window frame to lessen her profile.

A big yellow box truck rumbled past—slowly—as if stalking something. It felt so predatory that it put a shiver down her back. At least the lead truck didn’t stop. There were more vehicles behind it. Olivia slid the rest of the way out of the driver’s window and down to the ground.

Alita whispered, “Where are you going?”

“I’m checking the area.” Olivia wasn’t sure how else to quickly explain.

Alita and Zippo scrambled out as Olivia hurried to the back of the truck.

Her nerves were jangling with fear, urging her to run. She struggled to stay calm. Panic was her enemy.

The royal marines were all at the tailgate like a pack of eager puppies. Olivia put up her hand to keep them in place.

“Dagger, come with me,” Olivia commanded. The tall, willowy female acted as the informal leader of the platoon. Olivia could explain their situation to Dagger and know that the appropriate orders would be given. She pointed firmly at the others as Dagger jumped out. “If we need to move, it must be fast and quiet. No loud noises. Take guard points on the—”

What was the word for truck? She glanced at Aoife for help. The anthology grad student knew a lot more Elvish than Olivia did.

“Wagon.” Aoife supplied a suitable word. “Keep close to the wagon.”

That worked.

“Keep out of sight,” Olivia continued. “Don’t fire unless fired upon. We’re probably outnumbered. Stealth is vital. Be aware that we might have to leave in a hurry—be prepared to quickly get back into the wagon.”

“Yes, domi!” they whispered as one.

Olivia hurried to the corner of the cinder-block building and peered around it. Dagger, Alita, and Zippo crouched at her feet, huddled together so they could watch Arlington Avenue with her. Olivia felt like a mother hen with a litter of kittens trying to huddle under her wings. Rain beat down on them, quickly soaking through Olivia’s sundress. At least the others had on coats to protect them.

A second and then a third yellow box truck rumbled past the strip mall. All three trucks were heading up the winding, steep Arlington Avenue.

“I was really hoping that Texas Holdem was wrong,” Alita whispered. “I didn’t know where Duff was broadcasting from other than Mount Oliver. I figured that out from a lot of random clues that I put together. I could only guess it was Duff broadcasting because I recognized his voice. And I only know what he sounds like because he hung out with his cousins at the racetrack. That and the fact that the Resistance’s ‘boonies’ are definitely the hats that Andy ordered by mistake for Team Tinker. Roach was pissed as hell—you could hear him all the way to the concession stand. Someone must have ratted Duff out.”

Olivia shook her head. “The oni probably are triangulating on Duff’s radio signal.”

“You can do that?” Alita whispered.

“Yes.” The joy of being raised in a religious cult which routinely broke a dozen state and federal laws was that she’d been trained in all methods of urban warfare.

Luckily triangulation was a slow game of “hot and cold.” The trucks continued up the hill, past the strip mall, following Arlington Avenue as it snaked through a nearly empty residential area. There was nothing in that direction that would warrant three big trucks. The business district of Mount Oliver, tiny as it was, was all down Brownsville Road. The trucks would probably make several left turns as they spiraled inward on the bakery.

The trucks continued on, slowly, until the sound of their engines was washed out by the heavy rain.

“Dagger, those wagons are using a type of human scry magic,” Olivia said. “They’re going to circle around, trying to find this spot. Keep watch for them.”

Dagger nodded.

“Come on,” Olivia said to Alita. “We only have a few minutes before they find us. Go stop Duff from broadcasting.”

Alita’s eyes went wide. “What? Me? No, no, no, Duff isn’t going to trust me. That’s the whole point of driving over here. Weren’t you listening?”

Olivia had listened to someone who seemed smart, bold, and daring, talking her way into a Resistance to milk it for information. Had Alita only been brave because the kids in her cell didn’t know the real her? Certainly Olivia couldn’t have walked Liberty Avenue as a hooker if anyone from the bakery was watching. The other bakers had all treated her like a baby sister.

Olivia had wanted to stay close to the truck, as it was their only means of escape and no one else could drive it. Trying to talk Alita past her fear, though, would chew up too much time. “Come on.”

She led Alita up the back steps.

The back door was unlocked, which was normal—at least when she worked at the bakery. Only one of the overhead lights was on but it was enough to dimly illuminate the cavernous loading bay. There was no sign of forced entry—it seemed as if they had just beat the oni to the area.

Olivia cautiously stepped into the loading bay. The original Dollar Tree receiving area had been expanded into the abandoned medical clinic, as the bakery needed to quickly take delivery of an entire month’s worth of supplies from Earth in a single day. Walk-in coolers had been added to take pallets of butter, cream, milk, and lard. When she’d started two days after Shutdown, the area had been stuffed with paper goods and baking ingredients. Bread bags. Cupcake cups. Donut boxes. A dozen different types of flour from plain white to rye. Cane sugar. Brown sugar. Powdered sugar. Yeast. Seeds. Nuts. Spices. It was a carefully calculated supply to keep a half dozen storefronts stocked with bread, cakes, cupcakes, donuts, and pastries until the next Shutdown.

Then Tinker domi had destroyed the orbital gate. Without another Shutdown in the foreseeable future, there was no way to restock the bakery. All of the new hires were let go.

The loading bay had been half-empty on Olivia’s last day. She expected to find it bare, but there were hundred-pound grain sacks piled up high over her head. They looked Elvish in design, elegant despite the rough weave of the sackcloth. Wheat was scattered on the ground—although the individual grains were smaller than she was used to seeing at the Ranch. A big commercial grain-milling machine sat to one side, dusted with white flour. Somehow the bakery was getting Elvish wheat that they were milling into flour. It explained why the various storefronts were still open, although no longer selling cakes and cookies.

The loading bay had been set up as an airlock so the dirt and weather couldn’t spill into the kitchen areas. When she worked at the bakery, coming in after the first shift of dough makers, both doors were always unlocked. Considering what Duff had been doing in his spare time, it was not surprising that the inner door was bolted. An old fashioned voice-only intercom station had been installed since she was let go.

She rang the button on the intercom and then pounded on the door.

“H-h-h-hello?” a female said over the intercom. The woman sounded familiar but Oliva couldn’t put a name or face to the voice. “Who’s there?”

“It’s Red!”

“What’s red? Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Olivia had invented “Red” when she started to walk Liberty Avenue as a hooker. What name had she used with the bakery? Oh, yes, she’d been too naïve to use anything but her real name. “It’s Olivia! I used to work here. Duff trained me. He was my manager. Oni are coming here to kill him.”

“What’s the password?”

“There’s three trucks of oni warriors on Arlington Avenue looking for Duff! How’s that for a password?”

“What?” the girl—because she sounded younger as she reacted to the news—cried. “The oni are coming here? How do you know that?”

“There’s no time…” Olivia said.

Alita stepped up and leaned close to the intercom. “We are Team Tinker. Priority Code: Take the trolley to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe.”

The door jerked opened. The mystery speaker was Widget, the computer guru who would come to the bakery with Hazel Bunny. The African American girl was only a year or so older than Olivia, brilliant in terms of computers and things but stupidly naïve in the way of the world. She’d run away from a safe and normal life to chase after a dream of sexy elves and magic. Olivia had been a bit jealous of her. Widget had landed on her feet in Pittsburgh despite a string of utter stupidities. Olivia had continued to stumble and fall.

All things considered, it wasn’t entirely surprising that Widget was risking everything again by being part of the Resistance.

“Blast it all!” Widget pointed at the two Chang cousins. “Who’s this?” And then past the feral kittens to Dagger, who was leaning through the back door with a worried look. “Is that really a royal marine or just an oni disguised as one?”

Fear spiked through Olivia at the look on Dagger’s face: something had gone wrong already.

“A real royal marine. Widget, this is Alita.” Olivia pushed Alita through the door. “She’s part of the Resistance. Alita, this is Widget. Make it work.”

“What?” “Huh?” “Olivia?” the two girls cried in dismay.

“Get moving!” Olivia said. “With three trucks full of warriors, the oni are going to be able to search door to door quickly.”

She hurried back to Dagger.

“What is it?” Olivia asked quietly.

“Listen.” Dagger cupped her pointed ears and turned toward the south. “The enemy wagons are returning.”

Olivia listened carefully. Over the white noise of falling rain, she heard the rumble of big engines growing closer. “Fudge,” she whispered. The oni wouldn’t be able to track the signal if Duff stopped broadcasting, but they might still stumble over the bakery by accident.



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