by Jay Kristoff
The vehicles slowed as they drew closer, the crowd parting to let them rumble up to the main gates. The lead car was an old muscle truck, fitted with tractor tires and monster suspension. Scripture was painted on its panelwork, and choir music was spilling from its tune spinners. On the doors and hood was the same ornate black X that marked the settlement walls, overlaid with a grinning white skull. The crude, homemade license plate read WAR.
The door cracked open, and a man jumped down to the asphalt. He was one of the biggest units Lemon had ever seen—bearded and mohawked, broad as a house. He was dressed in a white cassock, filthy and spattered with what might’ve been bloodstains. A white skull was painted over his face, chin to forehead, and a well-chewed cigar stub hung from his lips.
“Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war!” he roared.
His posse fired a few more shots into the air, some of the rowdier thugs on the walls joining in. One of the Brotherhood boys at the gates raised his voice over the clamor. “You get ’em, Dub? How many you brought us?”
The big man gave a beartooth grin, like a corner huckster about to reveal the secret of his trick. He reached into his cassock, then whipped out his hand, holding two fingers in the air. The thugs and Brethren whooped and hollered in delight.
“Finally!” one shouted.
A gaunt man with the same greasepaint skull as the big man leaned out the window of the monster truck and roared, “Get those crosses ready, boys!”
“You heard Brother Pez!” More shouts and hollers echoed among the Brotherhood boys as Brother Dubya raised his hands and grinned. “Get ’em up!”
As he began making his way through the crowd, Lemon looked this Brother Dubya over. The big man was well fed, his gunslinger belt loaded with tech, ammo, a fat pistol. The crowd treated him like a celebrity, but he looked at them like they were something he’d found on the bottom of his snakeskin boots. The mob jostled and surged to get a better looksee, and Lemon found herself pushed forward, until she bumped right into the big man’s belly.
Heart hammering, she blinked up into that greasepaint skull. The black eyes burning behind it. Wondering just how many abnorms this fellow had put to the nail.
Can he see?
Can he tell just by looking at me?
“Best watch where you’re stepping, lil’ sister,” the man growled.
“I’m sorry, Brother,” she said, smoothing down his cassock. “I’m jus—”
Brother Dubya put a hand on her forehead and shoved her out of the way. Hunter stepped smoothly between them, bristling with threat. But with contempt in his gap-toothed smile, the man simply puffed on his cigar and pushed on through the mob. The convoy trundled into the settlement, Brother Pez behind the lead truck’s wheel, Brother Dubya leading it through the gates to what sounded like more raucous praise inside.
The noise slowly died down, and with the excitement apparently over, the thugs manning the gate got back to work. Lemon wiped the greasy handprint off her forehead, shuffled along in line. Watching the junior thugs on the door, the way they spoke, the way they rolled. As far as Lem could tell, who exactly they let in and turned out seemed to depend entirely on their mood.
“Okay, I don’t mean to tell you your biz,” she muttered to Hunter, “given you’re running this kidnapping and all. But we step out of line here, we’re not getting through that gate. So maybe let me talk and keep the deathbees in your bra?”
The woman glanced at the guards. Nodded slow.
“Lemonfresh speaks wisdom.”
“…You know, I don’t think anyone’s ever accused me of that before.”
The sun was kissing the horizon by the time they reached the entrance. The sky was soaked the color of flame, fires were lit inside forty-four-gallon drums. The sign above the gate flickered into bright, neon life. As Lemon and Hunter reached the entrance, a young, weary thug looked her up and down.
“Ho there, lil’ girlie.”
“Brother,” Lemon nodded, mustering her least irradiated smile.
“Ain’t no Brother.” He pointed to the greasepaint X covering his face. “Just a Disciple. You here for WarDome tonight?”
“…Yep, that’s us.” Lemon smiled, smooth as an oil slick. “Me and cuz love us a good bot fight.”
Mister Greasepaint looked Hunter over—the cloak, the goggles, the stance.
“She’s your cousin?” he asked.
“Twice removed,” Lemon replied.
The thug sighed. “You know the rules of New Bethlehem, little girlie?”
“It’d be real fizzy if you stopped calling me ‘girlie,’ sir,” Lemon said.
The Disciple blinked. “Well, you’re a whole mess of mouth, ain’t you?”
Lemon glanced down meaningfully, slowly turned over her hand so the man could see what she held. In her palm sat a shiny credstik.
“In a hurry is what we are, sir.”
It was a gamble, offering a bribe to a religious sort. Could be he was the kind who’d take offense. But holy man or no, Lemon had never met a doorthug who wasn’t on some kind of take, and she guessed standing out here in the burn all day wasn’t the most well-paying gig.
Trying to appear casual, the Disciple checked over his shoulder to see if any of his colleagues were watching. Satisfied, he quickly pocketed the stik, tipped an imaginary hat and stepped right the hells aside.
“Welcome to New Bethlehem, sisters.”
Lemon winked, shuffling through the crush with Hunter in tow. A broad square waited beyond the gate, ringed with stalls and old tires and pubs and all manner of people. Once safely through, the BioMaas agent touched Lemon on the arm.
“How much did she pay?” she whispered.
The girl shrugged. “Wasn’t my credstik. Lifted it off that Brother Dubya fellow when I bumped into him. Looked like he had scratch to spare.”
“…She stole his money?”
“Borrowed. So to speak.”
“Resourceful. Fearless.” Hunter smiled. “Her name will be a song in CityHive.”
“Not if we don’t find some meds in here.” She winced, holding her gut. “Feels like I swallowed barbed wire and washed it down with battery acid.”
“Come, then. We hunt.”
Lemon could feel starving eyes on her as they limped through the square. She wasn’t carrying much worth stealing, but she was certain the two other credstiks she’d lifted from Brother Dubya were worth a little murder, and her bod would sell to any number of buyers, kicking or otherwise. There were dustnecks in Los Diablos who’d kill you for a can of Neo-Meat™, and New Bethlehem looked meaner still.
A heavy stink hung over the place like fog, and Lemon soon saw the source, parked on the edge of the bay. Frontways, it looked like an oldskool cathedral, with double iron doors and a big stone bell tower. But springing up out of its hind parts were the chimneys and fat storage tanks of a bloated factory. Black smoke spilled from its stacks, burbling and hissing spilled from its guts. The same words that marked the gates were painted above its doors.
AND THE WATERS BECAME SWEET
“It’s a desalination plant,” Lemon realized, looking around her. “That’s what they do here. Suck up the ocean, get it fresh to wet down those crops.”
“Come,” Hunter said, apparently not giving a damn. “We waste time.”
They pushed on through the crowd, down a dusty thoroughfare. The walls were plastered with WARDOME TONIGHT! posters, and murals of a handsome middle-aged man. He had flaming eyes and white robes, a halo of light around his head. Beneath every mural were the words SAINT MICHAEL WATCHES OVER US.
Dark was falling, and strips of old neon flickered and spat like a faulty rainbow along the way. Finally, between rows of shattered buildings and the local WarDome, they found an open-air tangle of tinshack shops and seatainers that must’ve been the New Bethl
ehem market. Crowded with old logika and people, the square was lit by blue methane fires, and stank worse than a busted belly. Hawkers and hucksters mixed with roughnecks and chemkids, Brotherhood bullyboys wandered through the lot, choir music from the PA system washed over the scene.
“Deadworld,” Hunter muttered, shaking her head.
Lemon stood on tiptoes. She could hear some kind of ruckus ahead, but she was still about half a person shy of being able to scope anything over the crush.
“Can you see a sign advertising meds anywhere?”
Hunter nodded. “There. Across the square.”
With Hunter right on her tail, Lemon pushed her way through the mob. Not for the first time, she thought about trying to slip free of the BioMaas agent, make a break for freedom. But talking true, Hunter was the only person in this whole city who sorta had her back, so cutting her loose didn’t seem the most sensible of plays. Besides, she was in no shape to run.
She swallowed hard.
If I don’t get these meds soon, I’ll be in no shape to do anything.
In the center of the market, Lemon found the source of all the shouting. A dozen bullyboys were standing in front of a flashy stage, welded together out of old RVs. Vehicles from the newly arrived Brotherhood convoy were parked around it, their headlights on high beam. Banners daubed with the Brotherhood X billowed in the wind. Lemon saw the convoy riders gathered halfway up the stage’s steps, Brother Dubya at the top, that white skull on his face, a fresh cigar between his teeth.
Two men stood beside him. The first was the fellow who’d been driving the lead truck in the convoy, tall and thin as old bones—Brother Pez, if memory served. The other man was broader, almost plump. Both had the same skulls on their faces as Brother Dubya, both wore white cassocks like him. The plump man yelled into a bullhorn, smoky voice crackling with feedback.
“Citizens of New Bethlehem! I know y’all are impatient for WarDome to get under way!” The man paused as the crowd roared in response, urging them to settle with a wave of his hand. “But before the Dome opens its gates, we got a special treat for y’all. Raise your hands, won’t ya…for our own beloved Sister Dee!”
The crowd roared, and a woman stepped up onto the stage. She was dressed in the cleanest, whitest frock Lemon had ever seen, and looked straight out of an old Holywood flick: tall, dark hair, true lush. But her face was painted with that same grinning skull as the three men, her eyes a piercing black.
“Sister Dee!” the crowd called.
“Sister Dee!”
“Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord?” she cried.
Like someone had flicked a switch, the crowd fell silent. The choir music hushed. All eyes fell on the woman, her presence magnetic, the night around her growing darker. She prowled up and down the stage like a predator on the hunt, that greasepaint skull aglow in the light of the headlamps.
“And who shall stand in his holy place?” she demanded of the crowd. “They who have clean hands and pure hearts! For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness! And blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God!”
“Amen!” the Brotherhood boys around her bellowed.
“Amen!” cried the crowd.
“When my father started this church years ago, we never dreamed we would be so blessed,” the woman declared. “And yet, by ever standing vigilant against the marriage of metal and flesh, against the corruption and impurity infecting our very genes, we have earned these blessings! These times are sent to test us, oh my children.” The woman pointed to a banner behind her—a painting of the same gray-haired man that adorned the walls. “But with Saint Michael to watch over us, New Bethlehem will endure!”
“Saint Michael watch over us!” the crowd called.
The woman waved to the Brothers on the steps.
“Brother War and our Horsemen have returned from their righteous hunt upon the trashbreed maggots who’ve beset our convoys these many months!” Lemon saw Brother Dubya give a low bow as the mob howled. “And the Lord hath been merciful in his bounty, and brought our enemies low. Brothers! Bring forward the deviates, that they may partake in their divine purification!”
The crowd bellowed as the convoy riders popped the trunk of Brother Dubya’s auto. Lemon’s belly turned as she saw two figures hauled out into the light. Both had been beaten to within an inch of breathing, neither much older than she was. The first was a girl, short dark hair, long bangs, black smudged paintstick on her lips and a slice of Asiabloc in her ancestry. The second was a boy, tall and broad, his skin darker than Hunter’s. His hair was buzzed short, a radiation symbol shaved into the fuzz on the side of his head.
The girl was out cold, face swollen, blood leaking from a fresh bullet hole in her chest. The boy was conscious enough to struggle, not strong enough to break free. He spat bloody, fixed Brother Dubya in a dark, furious stare.
“I’ma kill you, you rat sonofa—”
Brother Dubya gave him a pop to the chops. The boy sagged, the crowd cheered. Sister Dee held out her hand, and a juve younger than Lemon slapped a hammer into it. The woman raised the tool into the air, looked into the mob.
“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” she yelled, her eyes alight. “And only the pure shall prosper!”
“Only the pure shall prosper!” they answered.
The boy was dragged forward as the crowd bellowed, still struggling, only half conscious. In the middle of the stage, the Brotherhood had constructed a couple of large Xs from old telephone poles. Brother Dubya slammed the boy against one, held him in place as Sister Dee reached inside her pristine cassock like a showman, and produced the first of four long, rusted nails.
Lemon had seen this party before on the streets of Los Diablos, at least a dozen times. She knew exactly how it ended. Thing of it was, and as bad as she felt about it, there was nothing she could do. The radsickness already had her shuffling toward death’s door, and causing a ruckus here was only going to get her closer. These Brotherhood boys were pure beef, with not even a rusty cyberarm or cheap optical implant among them—Lemon’s gift wouldn’t help her at all. And even if there was some way to use it to even the odds, that’d only mark her as a deviate, fit for another set of nails.
This crowd would rip her to pieces.
She recognized the familiar burn of helplessness inside her chest. An old, unwelcome houseguest. But she didn’t know these kids. Didn’t owe them dust. Just because she was a deviate, too, didn’t mean they were crew. For all she knew, these two had just been born with an extra couple of fingers.
The dark-skinned boy met her stare. Bruised eyes, locking on hers through the crowd. She heard Hunter whisper something, couldn’t quite hear it over the pulse in her ears. But even with that boy looking right at her—his stare not pleading, but full of the same fury she felt inside her chest—Lemon turned away.
She heard the first hammer blow. She heard the crowd roar. She didn’t hear the boy scream, and she felt strangely proud of that. But she knew his courage wouldn’t help him. That nothing could help him now.
And so, she pushed through the crowd. She had her own troubles. High enough to pile to the sky. Adding someone else’s wasn’t gonna help anyone.
Rule Number Eight in the Scrap.
The dead don’t fight another day.
“GOOD EEEEEEVENING, HUMAN FRIENDS!”
The shop was lit by flickering neon, red and purple and blue. The sign above the door read NEW BETHLEHEM PHARMACY AND GENERAL STORE. Walking inside with Hunter close behind, Lemon saw the space was huge, the shelves were crammed with gear, neatly cataloged and labeled. Filthy as New Bethlehem was, she noticed there was no dust on the stock or dirt on the floors. A small portrait of Saint Michael graced the wall. A sign over the counter informed Lemon:
YOUR SATISFACTION GUARANTEED
A buzzer had announced their arrival, and
before the door was even shut, a tall logika had risen up from behind an antique cash register. Its hull was painted creamy white, trimmed in golden filigree. Its eyes were round and cheery, and when it spoke, an LED in its mouth flashed, lighting up its smile with every word.
“MY NAME IS SOLOMON, FRIENDS,” it said in a proper fancy accent. “AND WHO MIGHT I HAVE THE PLEASURE OF MEETING THIS FINE EVE?”
“Lemon Fresh,” the girl mumbled, feeling altogether wrecked.
“WELCOME TO OUR HUMBLE EMPORIUM, MISS FRESH! HOW MAY I HELP? NEW CLOTHES? FIREARMS, PERHAPS? I’VE THE FINEST IN ALL NEW BETHLEHEM, FIFTY PERCENT OFF AMMUNITION WITH ANY PURCHASE. YOUR SATISFACTION IS, AS THE SIGN SAYS, GUARANTEED.”
Hunter stared at the logika in disgust, lips pressed tight together. Lemon shuffled to the counter, wiped the sweat off her brow.
“We need meds,” she said. “Something for radsickness. You got any?”
“OH MY GOODNESS, ARE YOU ILL?” the logika smiled.
“I’ve had better days.” Lemon winced, pressing at her stomach.
“OH MY, THAT’S JUST TERRIBLE!”
No matter what it said or how it said it, the logika’s face wasn’t animatronic, which meant its expression never changed. The bot just kept on grinning, as if it were telling you that you’d just won the lottery, or that there was a mix-up at the medstation when you were born and you were actually CorpState royalty.
“Um, thanks,” Lemon said. “So about that medicine. You got any?”
“OH, GOODNESS, YES!” The bot waved at some small plastic bottles on the shelf behind it. “THREE PER DAY TO RELIEVE SYMPTOMS, BEST WITH MEALS, YOUR SATISFACTION IS, AS THE SIGN SAYS, GUARANTEED.”
“Fizzyfizzyfizzy.” Lemon sighed with relief, fully prepared to jump over the counter and kiss the bot right on his creeper grin. “Can I have some, please?”
“OH, GOODNESS, NO!”
“…Why not?”
“WELL, FROM THE LOOK OF YOU, MY DEAR, YOU DON’T HAVE TWO BOB TO RUB TOGETHER, IF YOU’LL PARDON THE EXPRESSION. AND I’M HARDLY RUNNING A CHARITY.”
