Molly Fyde and the Blood of Billions tbs-3

by Hugh Howey

  He lifted the man’s head to unravel the continuous strip of fur. After the first wrap came away, he saw that the goggles were on top of the rest, the rubbery strap helping to hold it all in place. He pulled the goggles off and made the mistake of looking at the man’s eyes. They stood open, tear-tracks of pain running back from the corners.

  Cole tucked the goggles into one of the jacket pockets and looked away from the accusatory glare. Even with nothing of the man’s face visible but those eyes, he couldn’t take the sight. He worked blindly, staring down the man’s body, gritting his teeth with the nastiness and intimacy of the task. As he untangled the head covering, he tried to lose himself in the bands of purple paint encircling the man’s thighs. He wondered what their significance was. He unraveled more fur, one hand looping behind the man’s neck, and he suddenly became even more fixated on the colorful bands of paint. There was a pink line wrapping around each, right above the man’s knees and barely visible through the purple stain.

  Something stabbed Cole in the chest before he was fully aware of it on a conscious level—the primitive part of him outpacing his frontal lobe and reaching the awful truth first.

  Flashes of terrible awareness strobed through his brain: an image of the man clutching at his leg; him thinking to look for Cole in that awful room; even what he had been trying to say right before he died. The man wasn’t complaining of the cold, he had been saying a name, over and over.

  All these things occurred to Cole at once, jumbled and overlapping. In a split second, he knew. He knew before he looked back to the man’s face just why those frozen, tear-streaked eyes had bored into him so.

  Holding the last of the rags, he turned to face the man he had just killed with his bare hands. He turned and begged the universe that he might be wrong. He didn’t want to be right. He could feel the world swallowing him up if he was…

  And he was.

  23

  Walter snuck up behind the circle of men, stooping down to see between their legs. It was like an orchard of poorly dressed stumps shifting to and fro. He squeezed past the outer layer, trying his best to ignore the easy pickings in such a melee—wallets and jewelry ripe and ready for harvest, begging to be plucked.

  He shook his head and waited for a shift in the crowd to create an opening, then he surged forward, getting out of the way again before they crashed back into each other. The rowdy men seemed to sway with the sounds of the beating ahead, loosening up as they groaned, their arms flying in the air, then packing back in as they waited for the next blow.

  Taking his time, getting a sense of the flow of the action, Walter gradually made his way to the inner edge of the circle, nearly on his knees he was stooping so low. He finally got a good look at the participants, just as the fight seemed to reach its conclusion. The lady Callite from the bubble—the one who had made the flood-awful sounds—was lying on the floor, a bloody mess. A large man stood over her, waving his hands to the crowd.

  “No more!” someone yelled.

  “C’mon, she’s had enough!” screamed another.

  The lady hollered something herself, flecks of blue foam spitting out of her mouth. Walter stared at her—amazed she was still conscious after bleeding so much—and tried to read her lips.

  “More,” it looked like she was saying. She waved at the man above her and tried to sit up. “More!” she groaned.

  The crowd quieted down, sensing the show was over. The man above her shook his head. “That’s plenty, Cat. You don’t pay me enough for this.”

  Her head fell back to the floor as she struggled for something in her pocket. Walter watched intently, wanting to end the spectacle, wanting to help her, but not knowing why.

  The man bent down and took something from her: a roll of money. He flicked through it, dropped a few pieces on her stomach, then stepped away. The lady curled her fist around the change and seemed to go limp.

  The crowd dispersed—their tribal rumbles transforming into chairs scraping across the ground, hollered drink orders, and the crash of glass on glass in trashcans. Walter hurried over to the lady, compelled by the sight of her blood-covered form. He suddenly thought of his mother, but shook the memory away as he crept to the lady’s side.

  Her face was a mess, covered in blood the color of deep water. One of her eyelids cracked open; a bright eye swiveled around to study him—

  Walter ran off, dashing to one of the tables. He grabbed a fistful of paper napkins, ignoring the men yelling insults at him, telling him to just leave her alone. He hurried back, falling to his knees and reaching out to dab her wounds.

  “Flank off!” she yelled at him, knocking him back with incredible force.

  Walter hissed in alarm and felt the Wadi go nuts in the pocket by his stomach. He moved close enough to the woman to talk, but stayed out of arm’s reach.

  “I’m Walter,” he said.

  The lady looked at him, her brown, scaly face covered with a film of blood, both of her eyes nearly swollen shut. “You’re scrawny,” she said.

  Walter looked down at himself. “Leasst I’m in one piecse.”

  “If you’s bigger, I’d ask you ta kick me,” the woman said. She gave him one last appraising look, then allowed her battered head to settle back to the floor. She closed her eyes and ran a forked tongue over her busted lip.

  “Leave her alone,” a guy behind Walter said. Walter turned around to find a table had been scooted nearby; several men lounged around it, working on fresh, foamy drinks. “She’ll be fine, little man. Best you can do is leave her be. Sammie will clean up the mess.”

  Walter ignored the guy and turned back to Cat. “We’ve been looking for you for two weekss,” he told the lady.

  “I’d congratulate ya, but I ain’t been hiding.” Her eyes remained closed as she spoke. “Now scram, or go buy me a beating.”

  Walter felt for his wad of cash, all the money he’d lifted since they got to Bekkie. He unzipped his loot pocket, inserted his hand—and regretted it immediately. The Wadi inside bit him, sending toxins through his knuckles. He grabbed it around the belly, the sensation of its soft flesh between his fingers reminding him of the one he’d crushed on Drenard. He considered repeating that feat, becoming twice the Drenard he currently was, but remembered what he’d reached in his pocket for. He yanked his hand out and strips of confetti followed—all that was left of the bills he’d stolen from the locals.

  “Sstupid lizsard!” he yelled, zipping his pocket closed. He sucked on his burning knuckle, which just made his tongue sting. He looked down at the lady, who had one eye as open as it could get.

  “Palan, huh?”

  Walter nodded. He pulled his finger out of his mouth. “And proud of it,” he boasted.

  “Grab us some chairs,” the lady said. She grumbled to herself: “I hardly made enough tonight to feel it.”

  Walter had to go almost to the other side of the bar to find two unoccupied seats. He dragged them back, drawing glares from other patrons as they screeched across the floor. He almost expected the woman to be gone by the time he returned, but she was just sitting up.

  “You with a sadist club?” she asked Walter, as he helped her into a chair. “Cause I still do those meetings for a fee.”

  “I don’t think sso,” Walter answered, picking up the napkins and holding them out to her. He felt happy when she accepted them. There was something about the woman he couldn’t quite place; he’d seen a lot of bizarre alien stuff in his time, but nothing quite like her. “Why do you do this?” he asked.

  The Callite leaned back in her chair. She looked him up and down as she wiped two kinds of blood off her hands. Somehow, having sat up, the swelling around her eyes didn’t look quite as bad as it had before.

  “You’re too young to get it,” she finally said. “Now, you wanting an autograph, or you got a paying gig?”

  “I… we—” Walter looked around, expecting Molly to walk in at any moment; he wondered where in hyperspace she’d gone to. “My friend Mo
lly hass been trying to find you. Ssomething about fussion fu—”

  A sticky hand latched onto his mouth faster than a Wadi firing from a hole in a cliff. Walter looked down his nose at it; he peered across the brown arm it was attached to, tracing it up to the very stern and blood-streaked face. There was no doubt about it: the swelling around the lady’s eyes had gone down a lot. He watched them dart from side to side before boring right through his skull.

  “Who’re you with?” she asked.

  Walter mumbled into her palm.

  “Softly, now,” Cat said, pulling her hand away.

  “Molly Fyde,” he whispered, looking around.

  “That’s crap,” the woman said. “How do you even know that name?”

  Walter pointed to his flightsuit, at his name scrawled across his left breast. “I’m crew on the sstarsship Parssona,” he hissed. “I’m the ssupply officser!”

  The hand returned, grabbing Walter’s collar and pulling him out of the seat, hauling him close to the lady’s face—which, now that he was up-close, really seemed to be in not that bad of shape, to be honest.

  “Where’s the ship?” the lady demanded. “And where’s Molly?”

  Walter swallowed. Or tried to.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered.

  24

  Cole cradled Riggs in his arms and sobbed. He held his old friend’s neck, pressed Riggs’s face up against his own, and cried as hard as he ever had. His body shook from the effort. Snot, saliva, and salt mixed on his lips as his moans turned into screams—mad, inhuman sounds that barely registered in his ears as his own voice.

  He wanted to pound his friend’s chest. He wanted to rip his own open. He wanted to claw out his heart and pack snow inside. Anything to fill the gaping, burning, crushing void he’d created there.

  Deep down, something yelled at him to undo it, to bring his friend back. It wrestled aside the angry beast that had taken him over, giving him instructions on CPR, telling him it wasn’t too late. But before he could think to begin, the door burst open, filling the room with harsh light and forcing him to bring his goggles back down.

  Cole turned and saw that his inhuman screams had summoned men dressed up as animals. And something odd seized him. That beast within took over, and Cole fell into a dream-like state untouched by time, a nightmare of slow and fast in which he was but a passenger riding along inside someone else’s skull. He felt a body around him, but it wasn’t his. That body jumped up, taking him along with it, elevating his view. He watched the body’s fists fly at a face.

  You aren’t supposed to punch that hard, he felt like telling the body, but the arms kept going straight out, impacting a skull, trying to punch straight through it.

  Blood splattered and leaked out from between the strips of fur covering the man’s face; Cole watched the mangled hand hit again, knowing it was broken. Not knowing it was his.

  The other man swung his arms as if he held an invisible bat. The person Cole occupied—whose brain he resided in—seemed to jump back reflexively. The torso of the man with the bleeding face flew apart, his insides spilling out like red ropes soaked in oil.

  The nightmare slowed down even further as the opened man collapsed, and Cole’s bodily vehicle slipped in the mess. The man with the invisible bat swung again, his black goggles seeming to pop with rage.

  Cole felt himself duck inside the skull, willing the man he was occupying to get low. They crashed down as one, and the invisible blade made a noise above. He watched as two arms—arms he should recognize as his own—scrambled ahead, swimming through the blood and mess on the decking, trying to reach the dangerous man with the invisible blade.

  The broken hand reached out and clutched the opened man’s torso, grabbing his lifeless furs and pulling forward. Somehow, Cole could feel the vehicle’s legs pushing and slipping in the blood; they propelled the scene ahead, lurching for the man with the goggles whose brow hinted at wild, unseen eyes.

  A hand grabbed the swordsman’s thigh. Cole watched, completely detached, as it yanked the man down, the slick blood assisting as it spread out beneath them. The man’s arms wind-milled, swinging for balance. He landed in a heap, then brought the invisible blade up, preparing to swing. Cole watched other hands—hands he barely recognized as his own—grab the man’s arms and wrestle them down. He admired the way the good hand pinned the man’s wrist while the mangled hand went to work on his face. That hand was no good as anything but a club, anyway. He wondered what it would feel like to own a hand destroyed like that. What the sensation might be like to ball crushed bone into something resembling a fist and throw it, as hard as one could, into a solid thing. Over and over.

  He wondered how that would feel, because he couldn’t know. He watched the scene for a little while, the horror slowly speeding up to real-time before he grew bored of it. The striking stopped.

  Cole couldn’t even tell what the hand had been hitting. Below him lay a red mess, the orb of one eye dangling from a bundle of nerves. It hung out of something misshapen and leaking. And what had been a crushed hand, now looked like ground-up meat. Splinters of white bone stuck out where knuckles once were, all of it dripping with blood.

  The person he was riding inside staggered to its feet, legs wobbly and shaking. It moved toward the light, toward the rectangle of air filled with sparkling flakes that rode on the wind. Unable to do anything but watch, Cole rode along as the person left the small room, taking him out as well, out into a world full of silent fighting.

  Men were everywhere, men and aliens, fighting in clusters. It all had the sloppiness of a dream as people split in two and some seemed to disappear altogether. Cole watched the legs beneath him march away from it all, moving toward the edge of the deck where more light and sparks of whiteness—miniature angels—danced and beckoned, offering a calm, seductive reprieve.

  When several men came running after him, after the body he was in, Cole hardly noticed the legs beneath him begin to kick. To Run. He jounced around inside the skull—confused trapped and alone—riding along and screaming for everything to stop.

  The men gave chase, swishing the air with nothingness. Cole could only see them when the head he was huddled inside turned around. Mostly, though, it looked forward, giving him a view of the approaching rail. But he was more concerned about the men, having seen what those blades could do. The body ran—the railing was so near—yet the legs beneath him continued to churn across the frosted deck.

  He felt trapped, a little creature in someone’s head. He imagined his tiny arms and legs stretched out, pressing on the walls of the skull, straining to hold himself in place. He wanted to steer away from the rail, away from the edge of the metal deck, but the thing he rode inside sprinted on. He could feel the blades whiz behind him as they threaten to spill him out of the skull and onto the decking.

  The body hit the rail at full speed. It bent in half at the waist, tumbling over. The head holding Cole became inverted. He had a brief glimpse of the snowy ground rushing past—far, far below. He grabbed at the controls for the arms, urging them to do his bidding. The nightmare slowed, proceeding at a crawl, each moment drip, drip, dripping.

  Then: a hand gripping. Gripping the rail. Both hands now, clutching the metal bar, stopping his plummet. One of them was whole, the other a disgusting mess. Above, several men gathered, their pants and gasps puffing out like smoke. They looked down over the rail, black goggles wrapped with fur. Cole watched from his prison as they scrambled for the arms, trying to pull the body back into the nightmare.

  The view turned, forcing Cole to look back down at the ground, at the inhospitable wasteland of snow racing by. When the view returned to the rail, the hands were leaving the arms, one man pushing the others away.

  Cole recognized him, recognized the blonde hair and small goggles.

  Joshua.

  Joshua smiled, almost as if he could see Cole through the goggles, could see inside the body’s skull where he was cowering, confused and afraid.


  Joshua held something over the rail: a wooden stick, hanging from another wooden stick.

  Cole froze. He leaned closer to the inside of the body’s eyes; he pressed his palms against the pupils and peered out, staring at the familiar device.

  Joshua swung the invisible thread right at him—right at the skull he’d receded into. Cole screamed at the hands to let go, at the arms to come up and block the blow.

  The good arm still had enough fear in it to obey, but the mangled one did not. One hand let go, coming up in front of the skull to protect him; the ruined hand somehow kept its grip. Cole braced himself as the body he was in rotated on the single grasp of that bloody, pulped hand. He watched as the invisible thread flew past, seeming to miss everything.

  But then, he started falling away. He fell into the sinking embrace of open air even though one arm remained fastened to the rail—remained there, frozen in the shape of a claw.

  Cole stared at it from within the head, watched it slide away from the body along a neat line of red separation.

  My body, Cole thought.

  This is me.

  That arm, still grasping the railing, he finally understood it to be a part of him. He came to the realization moments after it was no longer true.

  His good arm waved in the wisps of snow, but he focused on the other one. He watched the dismembered limb as he fell away from it, watched it remain up high, dripping blood through the whizzing white. The arm became smaller, a tiny piece of meat stuck to the side of the ship, as he fell away, down to the snowy drifts below.

  Air roared past his ears. Accelerating. Stomach rising with the speed. He landed with a pained crunch, a thump of lifeless heft. His body smashed through the hard, frozen exterior of the snow and drove down, deep down into the soft wetness.