Fetch felt like the Colonel was probably scowling at him, but the radiation burns and the nasty scar that split the old soldier’s upper lip made it difficult to tell for sure. One thing was certain, though, the faded grey eyes that stared at him out of that ravaged face didn’t exactly exude paternal warmth.

     “I could have you killed.” Colonel Maltesa’s speech was slightly impaired by his facial deformities. The result was a menacing kind of sibilance, like the man was part snake. “Just for being here in my bunker, I could have you shot dead. Or put topside. How would that be? How long do you figure you would last up there with the radiation and the muties?”

     Fetch shrugged. He was down, that much was certain, but he didn’t think he was out. If the gig was truly up, this guy wouldn’t be wasting his breath.

     “There is literally no limit to what I could do to you. Heck, in the strictest sense, you don’t even exist.” Squatter. Stowaway. Illegal. No matter what you called him, it all came down to the fact that Fetch was in the bunker without the express consent of the governing body.

     “But here’s the thing…” the Colonel said. “I’m told that you’re a guy who can get things. That true?”

     Fetch fidgeted with the handcuff that attached his wrist to the aluminum chair. “That’s why they call me Fetch.”

     “Yeah. Well, Fetch, your ass belongs to me now. And there’s something I want you to get for me.”

     Fetch pulled the handcuff up tight. “Unless it’s attached to the other end of this, I’m kind of limited at the moment.”

     “Smart guy, huh?” The Colonel slurped a trickle of saliva that threatened to escape the corner of his mouth. “You’ll be given enough rope, jackass. Because you see, the noose is already around that cocky neck of yours.” Colonel Maltesa dipped two gnarled fingers into the breast pocket of his uniform coat, and fished out a small glass vial. He set it down on the stainless steel tabletop that stretched between the two men. “That’s a derivative of Monoglygiglicyde. A fancy name for what they’re calling Leth out there in the Downtown. I’ve taken the liberty of giving you a lethal dose.”

     Fetch’s blood went cold and thick. He tried to stand, but his restraints held him pinned to the chair. Leth poisoning? How could it be? He felt fine.

     “Relax, nancy boy.” The Colonel was definitely scowling now. The effect was hideous. “It’s a time release dose. You’ve got about twenty four hours. Twenty four hours to get me what I want, and then I’ll give you the antidote and let you scamper on off to whatever little hole you’ve been hiding in these last five years.”

     Fifteen minutes later, Fetch had been sprung, and stumbled wild-eyed and sweaty out the front doors of the Central Security Building and onto the Level. The sodium arc lamps that attempted to approximate daylight lent a sick blue hue to the pasty skin of the mob packed into the common areas.

     The Level was the generally accepted ‘ground floor’ of FEMA bunker CE-114 East, the home of over thirty thousand of the best and brightest that America could muster and stuff underground for safe keeping. Originally intended to be a short term shelter, it had now been five years since things had turned to shit topside.

     Five years since the big hatch had been sealed, locking the refugees below away from the horrors on the surface. Five years to breed horrors of their own in this sociological petri dish. Someone had thought it was clever to dub the place Downtown. Naturally, it stuck.

     Fetch weaved through the crowd, mostly earnest functionaries and redundant bureaucrats milling about in this section, affectionately referred to as Red Tape.  He had picked up on two bluebillys tailing him, and made sure to ditch them before heading toward the Suck.

     The concrete walls of the Refrigeration Maintenance Bureau rose four stories high on his left, on his right was the Machining and Fabrication Board, a long low building, drab blue-gray under the lights. The machinists and welders, repairmen and electricians that kept the lights on and the water running in Bunker CE114 East, the backbone that kept the thermal generators turning and the toilets flushing, had been apportioned the hottest, noisiest sector of Downtown. The official name of it was Support Sciences Section, but those who spent their days and nights here called it the Suck.

     Fetch didn’t spot any Feems, and the only bluebillys nearby were taking a snooze in their graffiti covered aluminum guardhouse, so he headed toward Dodge’s. He felt the comfort of coming home as he loped down the short flight of concrete stairs and stopped in front of a rusty steel door that had a large ‘D’ tagged on it in white spray paint.

     Daryl “Dodge” Williams was a professional football running back whose fame and fortune had bought him a ticket into the bunker, when things had started going funny topside. Uncomfortable in the company of physicists and mathematicians, and bored in the company of politicians and lawyers, he found himself drawn to the working class vibe of the Suck. He started out making bathtub hooch for a few friends and neighbors, fermenting anything he could get his hands on, and distilling whatever the result was into barely drinkable concoction that he called Slap Your Mama. A niche had been filled.

     Dodge’s place had grown over time, the little space he had cleared out in the basement of the Metalworker’s Union now occupied most of the bottom floor. The mismatched tables and chairs that had been scavenged from offices and cafeterias sat clustered around crumbling support pillars in the low-ceilinged room. The floor was covered in a quilt of carpet remnants, and multi-colored Christmas lights provided a subtle illumination.

     Fetch stayed close to the door after slipping in, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He could see plenty of action, even this early. The daytime crowd would be mostly night shift workers unwinding before their turn in the communal bunks came around, but some were shirkers and others had disability waivers. None had anything better to do. Dodge was working the room, his big bald head bobbed as he talked, his lungfulls of laughter exploding occasionally over the din.

     Fetch caught Dodge’s eye, and the football pro signaled with two fingers, then nodded toward a table near the bar. Fetch slid into the darkened corner, and Dodge pulled up a chair opposite him.

     “Ho. Lee. Shit. You’ve got yourself jammed up good this time,” Dodge said after Fetch had laid out the whole story. “How’d you get nabbed, anyway?”

     “Long story, Dodge, and I don’t exactly have time to burn.” Fetch downed a shot of Dodge’s wicked hooch, and winced. “That stuff never gets any better…”

     “So what are you gonna do?”

     “I’m gonna get the man what he wants.” Fetch said.

     “A steak? Meat?” Dodge laughed, but it was a cynical chuckle, not the good time hoot that Fetch had grown accustomed to. “He might as well have asked you for a Cuban cigar.”

     “Hell, that I could have swung easily.”

     “Really? Because I-“

     “Cut it, Dodge, I need help here. The Colonel wants a pound of flesh. Beef. And not vat grown either, he wants the real deal.”

     “How the hell am I supposed to help you with that?”

     Fetch looked around the room, at the laughing chattering people. “People come in here. They drink. They talk. I figure you listen.”

     “So?”

     “So…You ever hear anyone popping off about real meat? I know that there used to be some livestock in the Basic Life Sciences quadrant. Any chance someone’s got some meat stashed away somewhere?”

     “Huh. Maybe. I might have heard…No. Just bullshit I’m sure.”

     “Come on, man. I’m grasping at straws here!” Fetch reached out and clutched at Dodge’s shirtsleeve.

     Dodge blew his breath out through his nose. “Might be a guy. A doctor. Used to be some kind of big shot in the topside world.”

     “How far?” Fetch asked.

     “Night Street.”

     “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

     The closer Fetch got to Night Street, the nastier things got. The humble working class pride of the Suck gradually decayed into the squalor of desperation and self loathing. The crowd around him thinned, but became more hostile. Skells hopped up on Jazz huddled in small groups, nervously looking over their jittering shoulders with red rimmed eyes. Empty styrofoam Sobean Burger containers and the ubiquitous red plastic cups piled around overflowing trash cans. Garbage collectors could hardly be expected to service an area that even the bluebillys avoided.

     Fetch glanced up toward the darkening ceiling. The lights over Night Street had been vandalized, broken out in a large patch over several blocks, plunging the core of the area into an eternal night, hence the name. He passed an overturned electric delivery cart, one tire hung in the air still spinning. The cargo, trampled and looted, spilled out across the pavement. The seat cushions had been torched, and still smoldered, giving off black tendrils of smoke.

     Fetch checked the address he had scribbled on a scrap of paper, then turned down a narrow alleyway between two towering racks of apartment modules. Somewhere high overhead, a water supply line had ruptured, and a fine mist descended, making puddles in the cracks of the wet pavement.

     A lone man, limbs heavy with Leth, shambled down the narrow alley towards him, lank hair hanging in his face. He could barely hold his head up, and drool hung in ropes from his stubbly chin. As Fetch approached, the Leth reached out a wavering arm, and mumbled something unintelligible. Fetch brushed on past him, but the Fader managed to grab a hold of his shirttail.

     “An muntha fack wit chew!”  Spittle flew from the cracked lips.

     Fetch spun and grabbed the Leth’s thumb with one hand, and peeled the grip from his shirt. He used his other hand for leverage, and twisted the guy’s wrist, hard. It was a move that should have dropped the man to his knees in pain, but this guy was heavy into the Fade, and barely reacted at all. Fetch twisted a little harder, and felt the wrist snap wetly.

     The guy swung a wide arcing haymaker that would have taken Fetch’s head off if it hadn’t been so sloppily executed, but Fetch ducked it easily. He drove a vicious uppercut into the slobbering hulk’s solar plexus, just as the Leth clubbed him on the side of the neck with his broken hand.  Fetch saw a white flash of pain, and reeled for a moment, dizzy. The Leth reached out his good hand and grabbed Fetch by the throat, and squeezed.

     Fetch’s sneakers kicked against the pavement, his vision narrowed, and he clawed ineffectually at the hand that constricted his airway like an iron band. He made a pathetic sort of a gurgle sound, and thought bitterly what a shabby way to die this was. All at once, the pressure was released, and he lay squirming on the damp pavement, hitching and heaving, trying to fill his lungs with air.

     Daryl ‘Dodge’ Williams stood over the prone form of the Leth, a bent piece of iron rebar clutched in his hand. “Man, I knew you were in way over your head.”

     Hacking, eyes watering, Fetch gave him the finger.

     “Shall we?” Dodge said, then turned and started down the alleyway. Fetch got his legs under him, then trotted along behind the football star. Eventually Dodge passed into a recessed doorway, an overhead fluorescent on a motion sensor flickered to life. Fetch joined him on the stoop, just as the big man tugged at the handle. “Locked,” he said.

     “In over your head?” Fetch said, then fished a thin black plastic case out of his jeans. He opened the case, revealing a small set of tools, and went to work on the access panel. Once he had the faceplate off, it was a simple matter of clipping a jumper wire across the proper two leads coming from the printed circuit board and… the door lock bolt clacked open.

     The pair lumbered down a dimly lit hallway, with a stained orange carpet and doors painted the color of circus peanuts. Each door seemed to barely muffle one sound or another, music, a crying infant, laughter, each grabbing Fetch’s ear as he walked past. Halfway down the hallway, a door opened. A head thrust out into the corridor, then withdrew, the door slamming shut behind it.

     They stopped in front of an elevator, and Dodge mashed the grimy button. The green light was burnt out, but the speaker managed a pathetic warble, and the steel door slid open. The inside of the elevator smelt like burnt electrical wire, and it lurched upward with a jolt when Fetch pressed the button for the fourth floor.

     Fetch and Dodge exchanged glances when the chime dinged and the door slid open, then they made their way down the hallway and stopped in front of a door marked 409. A scuffed camera lens set into a panel beside the door whirred and a voice crackled out of the speaker under it. “What?”

     “We’ve got business,” Dodge spoke loudly into the microphone.

     “Who doesn’t?” The speaker crackled back.

     “We’ve got credits,” Fetch said, holding a fifty up to the camera lens. The door clacked open.

     The passed through a metal detector, an x-ray machine, and a mag field on their way into a small room where a tall lanky man in a white labcoat stood between two thickset toughs.

     “You are Dr K, I take it?” Fetch asked.

     “Names just get in the way of commerce.” The lanky man spoke softly, precisely. “I am a man who has a commodity; you are a man with some credits to spend. Anything more is superfluous”

     “Right. Straight to business then,” Fetch said. “What I need, and I will be as specific as possible, is exactly one pound of beef. Can you help me out?”

     “Absolutely. However, good sir, a pound will require a greater compensation than fifty credits.”

     “How much?”

     “Two hundred fifty is the current market value.”

     “Aw, come on!” Dodge spat. “Where the hell are we supposed to-“

     “Done.” Fetch cut his friend short, then dug into his jeans pocket and began peeling grimy bills from a wad. Dodge gave Fetch a look, and Fetch shrugged it off. “I’ve been saving up for an ident chip. A clean ident chip.”
Fetch held the credits out, and just before one of the two toughs grabbed a hold of them, he snatched them back. “Just a minute. How do I know it’s the real deal? I don’t want any vat grown stuff, and you better not try and sell me some man meat.”

     The doctor grinned like a hungry wolf. “Rest assured, my skeptical friend. You will be convinced of the flesh’s veracity. In fact, I will introduce you to the source.”

     The room that the doctor led Fetch into was some sort of makeshift operating theatre. A large dialysis machine groaned and wheezed, a cobbled together respirator hissed, and the heart monitor beeped a steady cadence. The smell of blood and dung mixed with the sharp tang of industrial strength disinfectant. In the center of all the machinery, lying prone on a large stainless steel table, was the scarred carcass of a cow. An actual living cow. Fetch had been eighteen the last time he had seen one.

     He approached the beast slowly, watching the steady rise and fall of the ribcage, and he reached a hand out to touch the scored and stitched up hide. A muscle twitched under his touch, and the cow snorted. “You’re not going to kill it?”

     “Perish the thought. Kill the literal cash cow? No, my friend. I’ve grown quite attached to Isabella here. A minor operation is all that is required to procure the flesh you wish. Believe it or not, I was once considered the preeminent neuro-muscular surgeon in the country. Now it would seem that I am the world’s last butcher.” He plucked a scalpel from the tray of instruments. “Do you prefer a tenderloin or a shoulder cut?”

     Fetch looked into the soulful eyes of the cow and saw his own silhouette reflected there. “Whatever the poor girl can spare.”


##

 
     “Well,” Colonel Maltesa said around a mouthful of meat, “They said that you were a guy who could get things. And by god they were right.” He cut another hunk off the slab of beef, then poked it into his scowling mouth. His eyes rolled back in their sockets as he chewed noisily.

     “That’s right,” Fetch said. “My half of the deal is done. Now I need the antidote.”

     The colonel swallowed, then dabbed at the grease on his bottom lip with the cuff of his shirtsleeve. “Right…the antidote. I don’t think so.”

     Fetch stood rigid, watching the colonel’s steak knife saw into the hunk of meat, watching the fork tear away at another morsel, and watching the bit of pink flesh get shoved into that nasty, scarred face. “You don’t think so?” Fetch said as he watched the colonel swallow again.

     “Disappointing, isn’t it? Naw, I think I’m just gonna…let…you…” He cleared his throat. “Let…you…”

     “I thought you might feel that way, Colonel, so I took the liberty of seeking my own medical treatment.” Fetch took a step in the direction of the small dining table. “Here’s some advice, though. If you want to poison someone, and then withhold the cure, next time don’t tell them what you’ve used.”

     The Colonel’s face was going slack, the hand that gripped the steak knife trembled, and the knife clattered onto the plate.

     “You see, I’m not going to tell you what I poisoned that steak with. Tell you the truth, I can’t even remember the name. The doctor I got it from called it a paralytic. You’ll live, providing I get what I need.” Fetch snatched the knife off the plate and held it up under the Colonel’s throat. The tip bit into the old man’s neck, drawing a pearl of blood. “You mentioned my reputation as a guy who can get things. What I need, and I will try to be as specific as possible, is a clean ident chip.”