Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy Read Free

didn’t even look at the registration form after I filled it out with my name and car number and country of origin, and didn’t ask for ID.
    “You got any hydropacks?”
    She shook her head. I wasn’t surprised. “But my brother’s got a still out back if you can run on that.”
    Might as well refill my alkie tank, just in case. “I could use some.”
    She opened a drawer and pulled out a big dusty, dented, ancient sys the size of my hand, punching a few buttons. I didn’t hear a voice at the other end, but she yelled, “Carl! Customer!” She shoved the sys back into the drawer and told me he’d be right with me.
    “Okay.” That necessity dealt with, I added, “Any food?” I looked around the lobby. Not so much as a potato in sight.
    “Got some soup left.” She slouched off to the back room, returning with a screw-top mug of something that didn’t smell too good. I took it anyway. As she handed it to me, our eyes met for the first time. There was anger and pain in hers, the look of a dog left tied up in the yard too long.
    A door slammed and a male version of the motel clerk strolled out of the back room. He was wearing jeans that were brown and stiff with dirt and he hadn’t shaved for a while. His hair was pulled back in a skimpy gray ponytail. From the look of his red nose, he’d indulged too much in his own product.
    “You need some corn?” His teeth took up too much room in his small mouth and his protruding incisors turned the word “some” into a whistle.
    He looked like the type who’d raise the price if he thought I was desperate. “Sure, if it’s good enough.”
    “Pure 60 percent. Guaranteed.” If he said 60 there was a hope of it being 50, good enough to replace the barely adequate 100-proof Blackbeard was probably busy throwing up.
    “Okay. How much for a six-gallon tank?”
    He squinted at me, his flat, pale blue eyes all but disappearing in the pouches around them. “Ten a gallon. That’ll be sixty Lincolns.”
    “Make it forty-five.”
    He shrugged and jerked a thumb toward his sister. “Pay her.” I handed over enough for the moonshine, the soup and one night in the motel. She gave me a key. It was an actual metal key, rusty and pitted, must have been seventy years old or more. I slipped it into my pocket. Carl went back through the curtain again; in a few seconds, I heard something rattling around outside and went to look. He was pulling a big rolling tank up to the back of my car. I set my soup down out of the way and tapped the lock, watching while he screwed one end of a black hose into his tank, climbed in, started the siphon by sucking at the hose, spat onto my floor, and stuck the other end in my tank. When he finished, I checked the gauge. Full. I nodded. He made an odd, jerky half-bow and rolled his tank back around the side of the motel.
    I slipped my sys out of the armrest slot and dropped it into my shirt pocket, retrieved my three remaining laser pistols and the charger from their hiding places, and grabbed the pack of necessaries from the back. Clean shirt, underwear, socks. Toothbrush, soap, comb. I shoved a bag of raisins and nuts from the passenger seat, along with the soup mug, into the outside pocket of the pack and slung it over my shoulder.
    The kinks were slipping out of my muscles already, and fatigue was easing into relief and a measure of cheer, despite the headache and the sore wrist. I wasn’t proud that I’d killed a shoot-first-ask-questions-later sheriff or let a brain-rotted hugger wander back to his keepers, but I’d gotten out of Iowa alive one more time and was traveling west. That was worth a celebration. I stopped at the vender next to the ice machine and searched my wallet for more Nebraska paper. Wine? No, beer. I pushed the bills through the intake and poked at the LaCrosse button. A decent import from Northland. The can dropped into the catch-tray, bouncing hard and more than once before it settled.
    I’d heard that someone up in