by R S Penney
The fallen pistol…
Slade dove, bringing both hands down on the pavement and rising into a handstand. With a growl, he took the fallen pistol and then flipped upright. A quick squeeze of the trigger…
Gaunt-Cheeks was still on the ground with his face in his hands, but the slug pierced right through his palm and through his skull as well, spraying a trail of blood onto the road behind him.
Slade whirled around.
Mr. Blond was leaning against the side of the police car, blood leaking from his crumpled nose in thin streams that flowed over his mouth. CRACK! A hole appeared in the officer's forehead, and blood spattered against the roof of the cruiser.
Thrusting the pistol into the air, Slade fired several more times, each shot ringing with a sound like thunder. “Get out here!” he bellowed to the maggots taking refuge in their little houses. “Come see your protectors! Get out here or I will force my way in and slaughter every last one of you! Starting with your children!”
No answer.
Rage overwhelmed him as he reached into his pocket this time and pulled out his multi-tool. Just the metal disk – the touchscreen and gauntlet would have been an obvious sign that he was Leyrian – but it was enough. He tapped a button.
Half a block away, the black car he had used to come here sat parked along the curb gleaming in the waning sunlight. Three Death-Spheres floated one by one out of the open driver's-side window.
One by one, they rose into the air until they were hovering side by side above the road, each with its targeting lens pointed toward Slade. They would seek out any human who didn't carry a special transponder; the fact that they didn't fire was proof that his was working.
With no viable targets in sight, the spheres executed their secondary programming, turning to point lenses at the nearby houses, charging up and firing bright orange particle beams that carved through bricks and mortar like a knife through a Christmas Day turkey.
Doors swung open, and half a dozen people flowed into the street, seeking escape wherever they could find it even if it brought them into the line of fire: a teenage girl, a woman in her forties in fine clothes, the old man who had been waiting on his porch, two lads in shorts in t-shirts and a young man in his twenties with unkempt hair.
A tap at his multi-tool stilled the Death-Spheres before they loosed particle beams on the befuddled people. Instead, they just floated side by side in a line with dark lenses pointed straight ahead.
Slade started forward.
The woman and the girl were standing in the middle of the road, but they turned to face him when they heard his approach. Flushed and frantic, the woman tried to catch her breath while the girl stared at him with an open mouth.
Closing his eyes, Slade breathed deeply through his nose. “You are frightened,” he said, approaching them. “That is good. Every religion on your miserable little planet has warned that a day would come when humanity would be called to account for its sins.”
The woman backed away.
“That day has come.”
The girl's mouth was a gaping hole, her cheeks glistening with freshly-spilled tears. “Grecken Slade,” she whispered, grabbing the older woman's arm. “Grecken Slade. Rita, that's the rogue Keeper.”
“Kneel,” Slade hissed.
Rita pulled free of her young neighbour's grip and strode toward him with a face that could have rivaled the darkest storm cloud. “Like hell we will!” she growled. “The people of this country decided long ago never to kneel-”
CRACK!
The woman staggered as something punched through her chest, dropping to her knees in the middle of the road. She coughed blood onto the pavement. “That's better,” Slade said.
Screams filled the air as the other five turned their backs and ran from him as fast as they could, ignoring the Death-Spheres that hovered before them. Or perhaps they did not know what they were looking at.
Another tap at his multi-tool reactivated the spheres, causing them to angle their lenses downward and let loose with orange particle beams that pierced flesh as surely as the sharpest blade. The disheveled man staggered as an orange lance erupted from his back and struck the ground behind him. He fell flat on his face.
One of the boys was next – Death-Sphere's killed indiscriminately with no regard for the age of their target – and then the old man.
The girl had sense enough to turn around and run toward him, her face red, her hair flying in the wind. “You mother fucker!” she screamed. “We did nothing.”
Slade tapped the button on his multi-tool one last time, ordering the spheres to halt their attack. That foolish child was still scrambling toward him as if she meant to pummel him right there in the street, but he was unconcerned. Someone had to live to report what they had seen here.
“Kneel,” Slade ordered.
She kept running.
“Kneel!”
The girl sank to her knees before him, hugging herself and rubbing her upper arms. Sobs racked her body, causing her to spasm with every breath. “Why?” she squeaked. “Why do this?”
Slade felt his mouth twist, then turned his head so that he would not have to look at her. This was such an unseemly business. “And lo, it was foretold,” he said, quoting the Scrolls of Layat. “The arrogant shall be humbled, the haughty laid low.”
Craning her neck, the girl looked up at him with tears streaming over her cheeks. “We did nothing to you!” It came out as a tortured whimper. “You were a Justice Keeper, for fuck sake! You were supposed to-”
“Be silent.”
Her mouth snapped shut.
The other boy had learned from his neighbour's example and now knelt in the road with fingers laced over the top of his head. He was crying as well. “Our father who is in Heaven, hallowed be thy…”
Slade lifted the multi-tool in his open palm, then tapped one of the three buttons on its surface to bring the holographic menu. A few gestures with his other hand – made that much more difficult by the fact that he had to hold onto the gun – allowed him to activate the tool's video recording software. He was going to livestream this.
Dave was ready to punch a hole in the dashboard. Through the windshield of his car, he saw nothing but the glowing red taillights of an old minivan that had moved a grand total of five inches in the last twenty minutes. The lane to his left was just as motionless, cars packed so closely together their bumpers were almost touching.
The sun was beating down from the clear blue sky, turning this car into an oven. Oh, he had air conditioning, but it was far less effective when your engine was just idling for long stretches of time.
Dave scrubbed a hand over his sweaty face, then ran fingers through his short dark hair. “Won't be much longer,” he said, glancing to his wife. “We make it past the 295, and traffic should start to thin out.”
It was a mass exodus from the city that had begun when Grecken Slade's people started shooting random civilians this afternoon. Now the Interstate was packed, and traffic was at a standstill.
At thirty-one, Marissa was gorgeous in a denim skirt and red tank-top, her bronze skin glistening with a light sheen of sweat. She stared through the window with her lips pressed into a thin line. “Turn off the radio?”
Dave shut his eyes, hissing air through his teeth. “I want to listen to it,” he said, instinctively twisting the volume knob. “You never know; he might say something that will give us a clue as to what he's planning.”
“And why would we want to know that?”
Baring his teeth, Dave looked down into his lap. “So that we can avoid the problem areas, hon,” he muttered under his breath. “I don't know about you, but I would rather not drive right into a massacre.”
Grecken Slade's message was playing on a loop on every station. Somehow the evil son of a bitch had managed to take over the airwaves, and now it was either listen to him or provide your own music. No chance of getting quality news either. It made Dave feel sick to his stomach.
“
You think yourselves free?” Slade's voice came through the speaker, dripping with contempt. “Your arrogance sickens me. I ruled over you once, and then I let you go in the vain hope that perhaps you would achieve some level of independence. I see now that the time has come for me to take a firmer hand.
“You will kneel,” Slade growled. “I have no patience for disobedience. Those of you who refuse will be extinguished. Painfully.”
Dave's knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel. Four years ago, when the Leyrians came to Earth for the first time, everyone had thought that they were some sort of enlightened people. Turns out they were just as capable of producing demagogues as anyone else.
“Those of you who try to flee,” Slade continued, “will die painfully.”
Dave leaned back in his seat with arms folded, frowning into his own lap. “Well, that's just grand,” he rasped, noting the bile boiling in his belly. “Bastard really thinks he can kill everyone who tries to leave the city.”
“Maybe we should go back,” Melissa whispered.
“Like hell.”
Of course, when he looked through the windshield, that minivan had moved three feet at most. They were not getting out of this city any time soon, and it occurred to him that they were sitting ducks out here. “I'll pull off at the next-”
He cut off when he noticed something bizarre – a tall, well-muscled shirtless man leaping onto the roof of a vehicle three cars away. The guy was pale and bald as an eagle, lacking visible body hair of any kind.
He spun to face them.
Dave pressed his back into the seat cushion, his jaw dropping as he stared through the glass. “What the hell is that?” he asked, pointing. “That thing…What's he got attached to him there?”
The bald man had some kind of device built into his chest, like some kind of mini-computer or something. Dave had to wonder if this guy was even human. Suddenly, he knew that Slade was quite capable of making good on his threats.
“Run!” Dave shouted.
He unbuckled his belt, barely aware of Marissa doing the same beside him. They had to get out of here. Now. Killing the engine, he pulled his keys from the ignition and ventured another glance through the window.
The bald man lifted a black sphere in one hand, a sphere that was just a little bigger than a basketball. He tapped one button, and that was it.
The last thing Dave saw was a roaring wave of orange coming toward him, as if the sun itself had come to Earth and consumed everything in fire.
Chapter 9
A gray van drove up a street in Brooklyn lined with buildings that were no more than three or four stories tall, making its way toward the sinking sun. The only car on the road, unless you counted those that were parked on each curb. Traffic should have been flowing at a steady rate, but the city looked deserted. The only thing missing was a plastic bag blowing in the wind.
Anna stepped out from the arch-shaped entrance of a store.
She wore a pair of denim shorts, a black t-shirt with the Batman logo, and a cap that did very little to keep the sun out of her eyes. Instinctively, she reached for the pistol that should have been holstered on her hip, but wasn't. They had come without weapons. Jena said the point was to be inconspicuous.
Anna bit her lip, looking down at the sidewalk. She brushed a strand of hair out of her face. “Watch the periph,” she muttered. “I want plenty of warning if one of Slade's hit squads decides to pay us a visit.”
Behind her, the silhouette of Raynar stepped out and turned his head to survey his surroundings. “I'm not sensing anything,” he whispered. “No hostility anyway. There's so much anxiety I feel like I'm wading through a swamp.”
Anna nodded.
Whatever Raynar felt, it must have been coming from the people who were taking refuge in those buildings; her spatial awareness detected no movement of any kind aside from trees on the sidewalk that occasionally lost a few leaves. For two days, the city had been on high alert.
Every major freeway had been damaged when one of those creepy ziarogati used a plasma bomb to destroy people were just trying to get out of the kill zone. Those people who survived the blast had abandoned their cars right there on the road, creating a clog of traffic that prevented anyone else from trying to escape, although she had heard stories of cars driving on the wrong side of the road in some frantic attempt to flee the city.
Bombs at the train station, hit squads at the SlipGate terminal: Slade had done one heck of a job of discouraging his new subjects from leaving. For twenty-four hours after the mayhem had started, the police had tried to keep order, but the paramilitary psychos who treated Slade like their new messiah had a habit of gunning down anyone who wore a uniform. And plenty of people who didn't as well.
On top of that, there were ziarogati roaming the city.
She turned back to Raynar.
The kid stood there with his head turned so that she saw his profile, frowning into the street. “Something…” he muttered under his breath. “It's hard to tell what. Anger and fear and something.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
Anna crossed her arms, approaching the boy with her head down. It was instinct; she didn't want anyone seeing her face. “Come on,” she said. “Let's stay focused on the job. We find food, and we bring it to the safe house.”
She turned and started up the sidewalk again. There was a convenience store not far from here – or so she had been told – and if the shelves hadn't been picked clean yet, her people would have supplies for a few more days.
Anna scrunched up her face as if she had just bit into a lemon. “I don't know about you,” she began in a harsh voice. “But if I have to have Pop-Tarts for breakfast one more time, my stomach is going to implode.”
“I kind of like 'em.”
“Too sugary for me,” she said. “I mean I have a sweet tooth, but I'm eating for two. And Seth prefers it when we get proper nutrients. What I wouldn't give for some fruit and maybe a little yogurt.”
The convenience store occupied the first floor of a red-bricked building that stood four stories tall, and the shattered front window told her that their chances of finding any food that hadn't passed the expiry date were slim.
Once inside, she saw that the situation was even worse than she had imagined. The shelves had been ransacked, and the candy rack at the front counter was equally barren. Shelves behind the counter that would have contained cigarettes – a filthy habit, that – were empty, but she spotted a few empty packs here and there. Of course, the owner was no where in sight.
Clenching her teeth, Anna felt sweat on her forehead. “Glorious,” she said, moving deeper into the store. “The neighbourhood has to ration these supplies until we get food shipments going again. Instead, they do this…”
Behind her, Raynar stood with hands clasped behind his back, his head hanging in dismay. “I think you give people too much credit,” he muttered. “This is what they'll do every time things get rough.”
Anna stood with fists on her hips, shaking her head. “Indeed…” she said softly. “A year spent living on this planet is enough to shatter anyone's faith in the general goodness of humankind.”
“Slade is Leyrian, you know.”
She turned.
Anna lifted her chin to study him, slowly arching one thin eyebrow. “What's your point?” she asked in that dangerous voice she never intended to use. “Now might not be the best time for the 'human nature' lecture.”
The kid went red and refused to look up at her. He scrubbed his fingers through his thick blonde hair. “Yeah, I get that…But there's nothing here. Maybe we should look for another store?”
“Let's go.”
A scream pierced the air.
She charged forward, leaping through the broken window in the time it took most people to blink. She landed hard on the sidewalk, bending her knees to cushion the blow, then took stock of her surroundings.
There was no one on the street – no one to the
left, and no one to the right – and no traffic either. Of course, anyone could be hiding behind the cars on the opposite curb; her Nassai couldn't see through solid objects.
Squeezing her eyes shut, Anna trembled as she drew in a hissing breath. “You know what I hate most?” she asked, turning back to Raynar. “Feeling helpless. I hate knowing that someone needs my-”
Another scream.
The convenience store was located on a street corner, and now that she was out in the open, it was clear that whoever was making noise – a young woman by the sound of it – was doing so around the side of the building. In fact, she could just barely make out the sounds of an intense struggle.
Anna turned, charging up the sidewalk, rounding the corner before it even occurred to her that she might want to use caution. The Bleakness take her impulsiveness! On the adjoining sidewalk, she found two men in shorts and t-shirts who had cornered some poor woman against the brick wall.
The lady was tall and slim in a blue sundress under a white cardigan, her blonde hair left to hang loose to the small of her back. “Back off!” she screamed, clutching a set of keys as if she meant to stab them with it. “I'm warning you…”
The first man put his hands on his hips and towered over her, clearly undaunted by her threat. “Yeah, I'm real scared,” he mocked. “Just give me the damn purse and my bro and I will leave you alone.”
“Back off!”
They moved in closer.
“Heh-hem!”
At the sound of Anna clearing her throat, both men froze in place and then slowly turned to face her. They might have been twins if not for the fact that one was clearly a few years older than the other. So “bro” was literal then.
“Walk away,” Anna warned.
The first one – the one who had done all the talking – closed his eyes and shook his head. “Now why would I do that?” he asked, striding forward until he was looming over her. “Look, I just want to get some food, but the people who are selling aren't taking cash anymore. She's gotta have something in there: a phone, some jewelry. So I really have to ask. If I'm robbing one woman, what makes you think I'll stop for another?”
