Free Black Rust by Bobby Adair

my room.  It’s at the end.  Go inside.  That door’s not locked.  There’s a black case under the bed.  Grab it and come back to pick me up.”
    “Where?”
    “I’ll call you when you get outside again.”
    “What if the cops stop me?  What do I tell them?”
    “Dammit, Lutz.  Make something up.  You’re good at lying.  We don’t have any more time.  Get the case.  If the cops are on your ass when you leave, and I can’t get to you, take the case to Ricardo.  Got it?”
    Lutz grumbled something.
    “Got it?”
    “Yeah,” he yelled, “I got it.”
    Lutz braked and turned the Mercedes into the cut-through. 
    I swung the door open, and as soon as we were moving slow enough, I jumped out with rifle in hand and I ran into the trees.

Chapter 16
    I watched Lutz’s taillights shrink as he drove the Mercedes back toward the roundabout at the entrance.
    Checking in both directions up and down the road, I didn’t see another car or anyone else moving.  I figured I’d slipped away undetected.  I ran across the street and made my way through the weeds and bushes to get to the eight-foot stone wall that surrounded my neighborhood.  The wall wasn’t a formidable obstacle to anything determined to get in, but it served to keep most d-gens out. 
    Well-hidden from the road, I followed along the wall for a bit.  Rustling through the shrubs and vines, I found a tree growing right next to the wall, cracking the lower cinderblocks with its roots.  Using the tree’s branches like a ladder I climbed, and in a matter of moments I was over, coming down in someone’s backyard.
    With the wall at my back, I knew I wasn’t more then a hundred feet from the nearest house.  I was completely concealed by the forest that looked every bit like the wild woods Lutz and I had done our dirty business in earlier that night.  Two decades prior, I’d have been slinking on a lawn of green grass bordered with colorful flowers, shaded by a handful of regularly pruned trees.  Lawn mowing and maintenance had been a commodity service in those days.  Now it was a luxury well beyond the means of the residents in my neighborhood.
    I made my way quickly through the trees, and came upon a house that seemed to be empty.  No surprise, most of those in the neighborhood were vacant.  The seven-person partnership that owned the community—probably some of the original residents or their heirs—charged rents much higher than anywhere else around.  They still believed the price bought them exclusivity from the wrong kind of people.
    How’d I get in?  Long story. 
    I did not, however, pay the higher price for the exclusivity.  A system of solar panels provided electricity when the lines were down—as they often were—and a system of cisterns throughout the neighborhood kept water in the pipes.  Those were the reasons behind my choice.
    Once at the street, I got my bearings and took off at a quick pace, weaving through the trees just off the road.  No point in making myself needlessly visible as I suspected the Regulator in the SUV at the front gate had a partner waiting at my house.
    With no intent to come to my place from the front, I took a circuitous route down several blocks, between houses, and finally onto an oblong meadow that had once been the fairway for the golf course’s eighth hole.  A herd of deer froze when they spotted me.  After a moment of evaluation, they bolted into the trees. 
    I jogged down to the end of the meadow and slowed as I walked through the knee-high grass on the eighth green.  At the remains of a metal fence that bordered my yard, I stopped. 
    Across a murky pond that used to be a swimming pool, I scanned the back of the house and looked for movement in a cave that used to be a vast, covered porch.  Now it was laced with giant spider webs and humming with a nest of wasps or bees.  I never ventured close enough to find out which.  For that matter, I never got near the pool either.  A