The Severed Finger
The Human Meat Factory.
I'm not going there just to grant some commando his last wish. If there isn't a cut in it for me, the hardship isn't worth the sweat.
The Human Meat Factory is the anti-government settlement closest to Headquarters. There used to be more of them around here. They've all been wiped out, and only one is left. The closer a place sits to Headquarters, the easier a military operation becomes—that's obvious—so most of them never lasted. The Human Meat Factory is different. Cutting-edge defenses, and a secret weapon on top of that. That's how they held out. Headquarters has given up on purging them, so for the time being their history will keep on going.
In other words, a market that isn't about to go under.
The body armor I'd taken off the commando was the same story. The things they make are uncannily well made. But true to a closed settlement, they don't trade with the outside. Pry open a route into a place like that and the advantages pile up—the same way Mask cracked a trade network with AAA. Money is money, and if it goes well I can get there first on high-grade information too.
So I'm going after all.
I'd had business there anyway. The destination of the letter Gyeongsu left behind. I never truly meant to deliver it. The place is too dangerous to walk into on a scrap of pity. But if I have a ticket in, that's a different story.
It's been a while since I drew a knife. Steel whispered free of the sheath.
This'll do.
The ring on his right index finger caught a faint gleam, and the blade came down with a wet chop. I cut the finger off.
Hauling a settler's corpse from out here all the way back to their settlement is reckless labor. Usually you have no choice but to leave the body. Sometimes, making do, you take only a piece; if there's a ring, the finger it sits on is the usual choice. You treat it as a stand-in for the dead, carry it in, and bury it or burn it.
The ticket's ready. The trouble is, this alone won't be enough. Show up claiming I've come to deliver the commando's message and hold out a finger as proof, and I know exactly how they'll react. They'll figure I killed him, cut the finger off, and came to run a con.
Well. Split it fine enough, and I did kill him.
Anyway. In a settlement friendly to the government, a Postman is trusted well enough. They still search you like they're hunting lice, but you fare better than some aimless drifter. In an anti-government settlement, a Postman is something else. They take you for a scout the national army sent ahead of an operation. Even so, I can't hide what I am. Get caught doing that and I'm not a scout anymore. I'm a confirmed spy. So I need a way in. It isn't urgent. I can think it over, and if a good angle turns up, visiting then won't be too late. Right now I've got more pressing work.
I have a feeling this ends with me having to talk my way through.
A rustle. Someone was there.
The commando's rifle happened to lie within reach, and I swung it toward the sound at once. Far off, a figure so small I could barely make him out, moving like a man with something to hide. He paid no mind to my reaction and kept coming, slow. Bad eyes, by the look of it. Fair enough. Even to me, with 20/10 vision in both eyes, he was no bigger than a bean.
Only after he'd closed a long stretch of ground did he notice the rifle in my hands.
"Whoa! Easy, easy."
He spread both palms, making sure I could see he was unarmed. Not just weapons. Several of the fingers that ought to have been there were missing. The man from the second floor of that building in the Truce Zone, the one where you could see the zombie in the pink dress. Thumb Man.
"That Postman from earlier? Here we are again."
I was still aiming the rifle, but he wore a perfectly brazen face and walked right up to my nose. Then he looked straight at the commando's head.
"Well, well. That's a proper little draft hole."
There was a gunshot wound in the commando's temple. I'd put it there. All the blood had already run out through it. Nothing left to drip.
"Been licking the plate clean all by yourself, huh?"
Thumb Man's eyes slid to the commando's bag. He thought I was robbing the dead.
"There's a story."
"Oh, relax. I don't even want to know why you killed him."
Had he stumbled into me again, or had he come looking?
"How about you cut me in, on the condition I don't ask about the story?"
He couldn't take his eyes off the bag. I didn't need to split anything on terms like that, but—
"Depends how you behave."
First, keep him quiet.
"And what do I have to do to get a share?"
"Keep your mouth shut."
He clapped both hands over his mouth—hands with nothing left on them but the thumbs. In the Truce Zone I'd only been able to see one of them. I'd wondered if he'd lost the fingers in an accident. Looking now, both hands were down to the thumbs. An accident doesn't leave you like that. Someone had cut them off on purpose. Punishment, most likely. A few settlements still take your fingers if they catch you stealing.
Cloth rustled as I got down to a proper search of what the commando had left behind. His bag was about half full, and even that I couldn't carry all of. I was already dying under the weight. Adding more wasn't realistic.
Take only what I need.
Just as the commando had said, there was a magazine in the bag. What it held was top-grade national army ammunition. Not a full load—about half. That was no small sum of money either. And a man heading out on an operation has no reason to bring that much of his own cash with him. Operational funds issued by the settlement, most likely.
A click, and I pulled the magazine seated in the commando's rifle as well. As expected, it was packed with cheap homemade rounds.
This is what you actually take into a fight.
Only a few left, but they were usable. I stripped them all out and wedged them into every gap in my bag. Beyond that, nothing was worth its weight. A few items had a name written on them, all the same name. The commando's, no doubt. Every time something came dragging out of the bag, Thumb Man nodded, as if it were about to be his.
I'm not handing any of this over for free.
Whatever I didn't take would end up as Thumb Man's share. All he owned was one small pouch at his waist. A beggar with nothing to his name. Proper business would mean squeezing at least a scrap of information out of him before I let anything go, but he didn't look like a man with anything worth knowing.
He's the only one enjoying this.
At last I pulled out the final item, the one lying at the very bottom of the bag.
"Oh! I know what that is!"
"I told you to keep your mouth shut."
"Hup!"
The last thing was a relic of the old world. Thumb Man pointed at it and kept twitching his mouth.
"I know what it is too. It's what they call an electric razor."
He rounded his lips and hoisted a thumb, wagging it like mad. Noisy, even without making a sound. Maybe if I let him talk, the rest of him would sit still.
"Just open your mouth."
"If you don't need the razor, give it to me!"
"I need it."
"Tsk, tsk. You don't get it. A beard suits that face. Grow it out a little and you'll end up almost as handsome as me."
"Starting today, I shave three times a day."
Obviously, nobody actually shaves with one of these. Spending precious electricity just to cut hair—you'd have to be out of your mind. There was a cap on the underside you could slide open. Not a rechargeable. A model that took batteries. Another click. I'd hoped, but of course the inside was empty.
"Batteries in there?"
"As if."
"Doesn't matter. Fill it with dirt."
Dirt won't make a razor run. For what the world uses them for now, that doesn't matter.
A trophy.
A cutting-edge machine from the old age, and small and light besides. So of course its use is as a trophy. Nothing beats one for a bit of fussy decoration. You make a little stand so it can sit upright, and you put it on display. Empty, it tips over easily, so packing it with dirt is standard. The rarer the model, the more a collector will pay, though it isn't a field I know well. Having the black-market Boss appraise it would be ideal.
"You don't know how to read a razor, do you? I know a thing or two."
Was it that mooching voice of his? He barely said anything, and it still grated.
"I know someone who can appraise it."
"Oh? We're acquaintances already?"
He's asking for a beating.
To begin with, this razor might be a second ticket in. Because of a name written on it.
Same surname as the ones on the other things. A different given name.
The name written the same on every other item was probably the commando's. And the different name on this razor—if the shared surname wasn't a coincidence, it belonged to one of his family. Was this the charm he'd mentioned?
That it had been at the very bottom of the bag mattered too. If it were trade stock, or something he'd picked up recently, there'd be no reason to jam it all the way down there. He'd carried it a long time and never had cause to take it out. That was the reading that fit. And the fact that this was his father's keepsake was something I couldn't have known without talking to the commando.
One more ticket.
"Let's do it this way. Mister Postman keeps all the rest, and you hand me just the electric razor."
Because the razor was the most valuable thing here? It was also the only thing I needed.
"No. I'm taking the razor."
"You know a good thing when you see it, so how about we both eat. You finish the job and then you go off to—what's it called—the Government Complex? Stretch your legs out and sleep like a man born lucky. That's you, isn't it?"
Now I was hearing that I had it easy. Well. Luck is relative.
"Enough. If you want even the rest of it, cough up something useful."
He wouldn't have any valuables that were both pricey and light. If I could get information out of him, that was luck enough.
"Ehh? Why would I? Whatever you don't take is mine anyway. It doesn't have an owner."
"What do you mean it doesn't have an owner? You've got the wrong idea. Everything in this bag was promised to me."
"Promised? By who? A corpse?"
"Before he was a corpse."
"Pfft!"
Thumb Man laughed like he couldn't believe his ears.
"A civil servant kills one upstanding citizen, and that isn't enough—now he's lying to another? That's a bit much."
"Upstanding citizens."
One of them a fighter from an anti-government settlement. The other a beggar who'd had his fingers cut off for stealing.
"Which part of either of you is upstanding?"
Then came a dull thud. He went and did it. He kicked the commando's head with his boot. The head that had been facing the other way was looking at me now.
"Take a good look at this face. How innocent is that? And those decent, kindly eyes—"
Eyes half shut. Blood-soaked dirt had dried and stuck to one cheek. A little while ago, this head had been laughing with me over a game of billiards.
"......What are you doing?"
"Aigoo, look at that serious face. You killed him, and now you can't stand someone else kicking the corpse? You think if you bug your eyes out like that, I'll get scared?"
He wouldn't believe the circumstances even if I spelled them out. So I didn't.
"Telling you now wouldn't make you believe me anyway."
"What, you were about to say you didn't kill him?"
"I did. But there's a story."
"Story, my ass."
Another thud. Again. He made the same mistake twice.
"Quit staring like that. You're killing the mood. Take the razor and get lost. The rest is mine."
He started putting the things I'd laid out on the ground back into the commando's bag. That wasn't how this was going to go.
A cold metallic click.
"Whoa, whoa. You trying to kill me too?"
I drew Backscratcher and leveled it at his forehead. The muzzle sat a little over a yard from his face. His hands went up at once.
"I don't feel like wasting a bullet on trash like you. But if I let this slide, I think I'll be picking up one more nightmare."
"What is this—look at this bastard. A hunter-grade handgun? I'm crazy enough that nobody needs to pity me, but this guy's the nastiest son of a bitch in the whole madhouse."
A gun in his face, and he still wouldn't shut up. What was he leaning on, running his mouth like that?
"Before you put a hole in my skull, how about a quick look behind you? There's something fun back there."
So that was it. I'd thought he was awfully short on caution. He believed I'd committed murder and robbery, and he'd walked up to a Postman that vicious with no weapon at all. I'd taken him for a man with no tomorrow. He wasn't. He had a partner.
"I don't need to look. The sniper from the rooftop."
"Oho~ Quick on the uptake, aren't you?"
Nothing like the air when we'd met in the Truce Zone.
"Now that you've got the picture, put the gun down and get both hands up on your head. If you've got a moment to spare, kneel, and keep your eyes on the ground."
"And if I don't feel like it?"
"I'll dig those eyes out with my own hands and pack the holes with dirt."
The cold of the trigger climbed my index finger and settled through my whole body. This was outside the Truce Zone. A battlefield.