Busted Flush

by Unknown

  Then he floated twenty feet above the golden man. He flung out a hand and sent down a sunbeam that filled the crater with brilliance.

  It spattered gobbets of glowing-molten sand in all directions. Drake yelped and threw a hand up in front of his face.

  Tom landed. He felt his legs buckle under him. He had to put a hand down to keep from planting his face in the little patch of sand.

  He shook his head. “Whoa. Takes it out of you.”

  “Over there!” Drake shouted, pointing off and up toward the crater rim. Glad to know he’s picked a side, Tom thought.

  He wheeled quickly around and sent a fire blast toward the golden figure that stood against the bruised and roiling sky. It didn’t much surprise him when it vanished. Hope he didn’t notice that last shot was a bit feeble, he thought. I haven’t really recovered from letting it all hang out when I trashed the Nigerian Army.

  He was already spinning in place, cocking his right arm. His straight right caught the teleport square on the bridge of his aristocratic golden nose as he materialized behind Tom, sent him staggering back three steps. Smoke curled from beneath his slippers as he blundered into the hot glass.

  He doubled over, emitting a thin keening wail. He put hand to face, looked at it. Looking up at Tom in shocked outrage he said, “You broke it! Bloody hell.”

  “That’s just the beginning of a world of hurt,” Tom said. He was righteously pissed. Stutter-stepping forward he side-kicked him. Not hard enough to break anything, or much. Just enough to launch him.

  As the golden man reached the apex of his flight Tom raised a hand. But his sun-hot beam flashed through air and up into the dense clouds. They boiled away from its fury.

  “Shit,” he said. He stood tensed, casting from side to side, awaiting the next attack.

  After a minute he decided the glowing Limey had had enough. Too bad.

  “Next time, motherfucker,” Tom said. “Next time.”

  Elation hit him, like a jolt of all the drugs he so rigorously denied himself. We won! he thought. We won it all. We’ve joined the nuclear club, baby. Nobody can fuck with us now.

  “Okay, buddy. Let’s get you out of here.” He went to Drake, pulled him up by the arm. The boy felt like a pillowcase full of wet cement. Dead weight. But Tom could clean and jerk a Vijayanta. Important thing was, the boy didn’t seem inclined to fight him.

  The teenager slumped against him. Putting an arm around his fat bare back wasn’t Tom’s favorite thing to do. Compared to what else he’d done today, it wasn’t so bad. “Ever wanted to see Earth from outer space, kid?”

  “Naked?”

  “Don’t worry. You won’t feel a thing.”

  They landed in the middle of a parking lot outside the palace. A pair of guards in crisp sky blue uniforms came trotting up.

  They looked wild-eyed. Tom recognized them, so they must know him. His sudden appearance out of thin air couldn’t have rattled them that badly.

  Drake sniffled. “Why are there sirens going off?”

  Tom opened his mouth to explain an alert had been called after the armored column got nuked. Except why were they still going off?

  Terrible certainty struck him like a blast wave. He thrust the plump, naked boy at the two guards. “Here. Take him to the president pronto. Don’t let anything stop you!”

  He turned and ran for his rooms.

  The wailing of Congolese caretakers confirmed his sickest fears when he was halfway down the corridor.

  He blew in through the open door. Sun Hei-lian sat amid a gaggle of hysterical local women, stiffly upright and apparently emotionless. The shiny tear-track down either exquisite cheek gave that the lie.

  The women stopped their lamentations to stare at Tom in horror. Presumably a good part of their distress arose from their fears of what he’d do to them.

  “A golden guy—”

  Hei-lian nodded. “He took her,” she said. “I ran up here as soon as the fight started. I realized, a teleport—no one was safe. Anywhere.”

  He nodded briskly. “Smart. What happened?”

  “When I got here he was just chasing off the caretakers. He grabbed Sprout and held a sword to her throat. He said that the Committee would be in touch, with instructions where and when to bring the boy if you want your daughter back.”

  “The Committee,” Tom said. “Those cocksuckers.”

  He noticed something on a table: a black handgun, a compact 9mm CZ-100. His eyes followed several frightened gazes and one as unnaturally calm as his own to a wall, where a divot had been knocked from faintly pinkish stucco. He frowned.

  “You shot at him? When he was holding my daughter?”

  She lifted her chin. “You know what I am, Tom. I’m counterterror-trained. Sprout was in no danger. I would have hit him”—she reached up to touch between her eyes—“here.”

  “You missed.”

  “I did not miss. He teleported.”

  “Yeah.” He sighed and rubbed his hands together. “Bastard does that.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Give ’em the kid.”

  She blinked and jerked back as if slapped. “What will Nshombo say?”

  “Better be yes.” Tom said. “I’ll take them the kid. I’ll get my little girl back.

  “And then I’ll kill every single motherfucking one of them.”

  Double Helix

  THEY HAVE SOWN THE WIND, AND

  THEY SHALL REAP THE WHIRLWIND

  Melinda M. Snodgrass

  SPROUT WAS COMPLETELY AGREEABLE when I said I’d come to take her to her daddy. But now we are standing in Jackson Square and no daddy is in evidence. Her head is jerking from side to side like a hummingbird guarding its stash as she scans the crowds of emergency workers.

  The sky looks like boiling soap scum and the hot wind, heavy with moisture, shakes blossoms off the azaleas. There is the roar of diesel engines as earth-moving equipment scoops up and deposits sandbags. I can see Ana standing on the top of the river walk frowning out across the river. I spot Bubbles walking swiftly beside a man in a suit. Something about him screams “politician.” She’s making good time because she’s surprisingly slim, a testament to how much energy she’s been expending.

  Since she has met Drake and dealt with Drake it seems prudent to explain the situation to her. But I am currently Bahir and she knows Bahir from the battles in Egypt last year. She’s just as likely to flatten me with a bubble as listen to me. Which means—

  “What the fuck!?”

  A warbling tenor wail breaks across my musings. It’s Bugsy and he’s spotted me.

  “Holy shit! Bubbles! Ana!”

  The covey of aces are pounding across the flagstones and cobblestones with murder in their eyes. I allow the muscles and tissue to soften and flow. The ace stampede stutters, slows, and comes to a confused and milling halt.

  “What the fuck?” Bugsy says again.

  “Good you should ask,” I say, and thrust Sprout toward them. “This is Tom Weathers’s daughter. Weathers and the People’s Paradise have the nuclear ace.” They are goggling at me. “You know. Drake. Little Fat Boy, so to speak.” It’s a terrible pun. They don’t seem to get that, either.

  “You’re that magician,” Ana says. “The one who kicked our butts on American Hero.”

  “I’m an agent for Her Majesty’s government.” At least until Bruckner reports to Flint, I think. “I operate in the Middle East. Recently I’ve been working in Africa.”

  “But you tried to kill me,” Bugsy whines.

  “Well, not really. If I had wanted you dead, you’d be dead. You were making a dreadful hash of things, and I had hoped to make you reconsider your involvement. Therefore it had to look good.”

  “Hey! We saved those people—”

  “Not now!” I let it snap with command and they subside. “Weathers is a dangerous psychopath and President Nshombo and his sister are equally murderous. They now have a living nuclear bomb.” I overenunciate the final thre
e words. “I’ve left a message for Weathers that I have Sprout and he’ll get her back when I get Drake.”

  Hearing her name the woman suddenly says, “Where’s my daddy? Is he coming soon?”

  Bubbles can’t help herself. She puts an arm around the older woman’s shoulders. “He’ll be here soon. Would you like something to eat? Are you hungry?” And I realize that Bubbles really is kind.

  “Actually we stopped in Iceland and I bought her breakfast while I waited for the sun to rise here,” I say.

  “Why us?” Ana asks in her blunt way. “Why bring her here?”

  “Because Weathers will try to kill me rather than make the exchange. I need your powers. Individually none of you can stand against Weathers, but together . . .”

  “Yeah, well, I say you can just go fuck yourself,” Bugsy says. “Why should we risk our lives?”

  “Because Weathers won’t make a distinction between me and thee.” I give him a smile. “And my message strongly suggested that the Committee was behind this.”

  “You fucker,” Bugsy says miserably.

  “You should broaden your repertoire of invective,” I say. “How do I get a cup of coffee?”

  The day is dragging by. I sit on one of the benches in Jackson Square drinking the strong, chicory-flavored coffee and setting myself abuzz eating sugar-drenched beignets. Around my feet is a halo of crushed butts. I ran out of the Turkish cigarettes hours ago, and have been making do with Lucky Strikes. Ana, Gardener, and more disturbingly, an army of the dead are still working to raise the levees. Bugsy and I are keeping watch for Weathers. I’ve warned Bugsy that Weathers will do something surprising and to consider every possible avenue for an arrival, no matter how remote.

  My phone rings. “Hi, babe,” I say as I answer. I know it’s Niobe. We’ve been calling each other every hour.

  “Oh, Noel.” Her voice is husky with tears. “It’s your dad.”

  It feels like a fist has closed hard around my guts. “Is he—” I can’t say the word.

  “No, but he’s unconscious. I think it won’t be long now.”

  I feel like a butterfly on a collector’s pin. I want to be with her. I want to see him. I need to be here for Drake. All I can manage to say is, “I don’t know what to do,” and there’s a five-year-old’s wail in the words.

  “He said to tell you to ‘live forward.’ Then he was quiet for a long time, and then he murmured something. I think he was still talking to you. He said ‘for love is strong as death.’ Do you know what he means?”

  The agony in my belly is gone. My throat is tight and my chest tight, but I’m oddly calm. “Yes. Yes, I think I do.”

  “Are you coming home?”

  “No. I need to be here for Drake.”

  “Then I’ll be here for your father.” Her voice is very soft.

  “I’ll see you soon,” I say and hang up the phone. “Good-bye, Dad. Godspeed. I love you,” I whisper. But the words are whipped away by the rising wind.

  Shoulda

  Caroline Spector

  “YOU’VE BEEN A BAD, bad dolly,” Sprout said. “Now you have to go to bed.”

  I walked into the room where Hoodoo Mama was watching Sprout play. Their heads were together, and it was hard for me to reconcile the hard-ass zombie chick with this gentle girl who was so tender with Sprout.

  “My dolly has been very bad,” Sprout said, looking up at me.

  “Oh, what did dolly do?” I asked.

  “She walked funny. See.”

  Sprout put the dolly on the floor. It got up on all fours and staggered around the room.

  “What the fu—heck is that?”

  “Uhm,” Hoodoo Mama said.

  I strode over to the dolly and picked it up.

  “Oh, hell no,” I said. “Joey, you can’t let her play with zombie cats.” I opened the door and dropped the cat in the hall.

  “I want my dolly!”

  “How about we go out shopping and find you a new dolly?” Hoodoo Mama said.

  Sprout frowned. “But I want mine.”

  “Tell you what, I bet Michelle will make you some bubbles.”

  They turned back toward me with expectant looks. I gave Hoodoo Mama a glare, but I couldn’t be mad at Sprout. She was sweet beyond all measure.

  “Okay, Sprout,” I said. “What kind of bubbles do you want? Soapy? Rubbery?”

  “Balls!”

  “Rubbery it is.”

  I made an assortment of bouncy, soft, moderately tough bubbles. Sprout giggled and began to chase them around the room. Ever since Noel had dumped her in our lap, we’d been trying to think of ways to keep her happy. And not scared.

  Once Hoodoo Mama had realized that Sprout was a child mentally, she was pissed as hell at Noel. “Fucker just dragged that poor little girl into the middle of all this shit about to go down,” she hissed at me.

  “She’s in her thirties,” I said.

  “That don’t mean dick.” Her hands curled into fists and her breathing was harsh. “You can tell by looking at her that she’s special.”

  “Well, her father is at the center of all this mess,” I replied. “If you’re going to be pissed at anyone, be pissed at him. He snatched Drake and set all of this in motion.”

  Hoodoo Mama’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t think I don’t know that. That fucker will be sorry he messed with any of this.”

  Her rage was so pure and clean. I envied it. But I was also trying to avoid spending too much time with her. We hadn’t talked about what had happened in the warehouse the night of the hurricane. Just thinking about it made me feel queasy. And excited. And confused.

  I didn’t know who I was anymore. I didn’t make love to other girls. I mean, girls other than my girlfriend. But Hoodoo Mama had needed me then. And I had wanted to help her, but then things got carried away. And . . . and I was making excuses.

  I left Hoodoo Mama with Sprout and walked across the hall to Bugsy’s suite. Since the rest of the Committee had shown up, we’d taken over the entire top floor of the Royal Sonesta. I could hear the arguing through the door, but I knocked anyway.

  “. . .you bastard . . . Weathers . . .”

  The door flew open. Bugsy had a pissed look on his face. Behind him it looked like an American Hero reunion. Except there were no cameras and no one was smiling. But the furniture was better. Nice Louis XVI–style couches and chairs. All done up in tasteful blues.

  Drummer Boy was missing, though. I was still trying to decide if that was a good thing. He’d been an asshole during the show, but afterward, in Egypt, he wasn’t as bad. And Curveball, Lohengrin, Rustbelt, Toad Man, and Brave Hawk were here in addition to my own team.

  “Bad time?” I whispered.

  Bugsy’s body began to look fuzzy. He was going all insect-y on me. “It’s not great,” he replied.

  Fortune was glaring at Noel. Curveball, Rusty, and Lohengrin were leaning against the far wall of the room. They all had their arms crossed and they looked pissed.

  “I don’t see what the big deal is about Weathers,” said Gardener, leaning forward in her chair. “Between us, we can take him.”

  Noel rolled his eyes. “Honestly, John, where do you get these girls? TV? Weathers is terrifyingly powerful and completely mad—and he’s been around longer than most of you have been alive.”

  Toad Man’s tongue snapped out and popped loudly behind Noel’s head. His tongue rolled back into his mouth and he morphed out of toad form. “You should really watch who you’re being snotty to,” he said. “Far as I know, you’re a double-crossing, cross-dressing liar who shouldn’t even be here.”

  I didn’t say anything. Right now, Noel wasn’t exactly on my Favorite People list. He’d been playing, well, everyone off each other. And Drake was in the soup because of him, no matter what excuse he gave.

  Oh, and if my eavesdropping was accurate, he was also screwing Niobe. If he broke her heart, I would kick his sorry ass from here back to whatever warm-beer-drinking blood-pudding-eating den
tal-hygiene-impaired London borough he came from.

  “Fortune,” he said in his most supercilious voice, “you should be able to rein your people in by now. Regardless of their opinion of me, we have Sprout now and a way to retrieve Drake. So that should make me—what’s that American expression? Your new best friend.”

  A groan ran around the room. Noel was about as popular with the rest of the Committee as he was with me.

  “Everyone calm down,” Fortune said. He was looking tired. Then he stopped and got all daydreamy-looking and I wondered what Sekhmet was saying to him. Then he said, “Noel’s right. If it hadn’t been for him, we’d have no leverage with Weathers at all.”

  “Oh, c’mon!” yelled Bugsy, jumping up from his chair. “Noel tried to cut my head off! I don’t care how ‘helpful’ he’s been. He’s a menace.”

  I walked over to the side table where a coffee service had been set up. As I poured a cup and started loading it with sugar, I heard Curveball say, “Look, I know everyone’s unhappy with Noel, but he really isn’t the problem right now. We’ve got to figure out how to handle the Sprout/Drake exchange.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Fortune was giving her a wan smile, but she didn’t smile back.

  “What I want to know is how we’re going to make the swap,” said Earth Witch. “I mean, if Weathers is as powerful as you say, he’s going to be a bitch to handle.”

  Fortune rubbed his eyes, then took a pull off his coffee. “The swap team is going to be me and Michelle. Weathers wants me, so if I’m part of the swap he’ll be thinking he’s going to have a shot at me. And Michelle is there for two reasons. First, she knows Drake. And second, she can take almost limitless damage. Probably anything Weathers can dish out.”

  “You got any opinions about this, Bubbles?” asked Rustbelt in his flat Midwestern voice.

  By now, I was sitting on one of the chairs next to the door. I was almost back down to my thinnest and had wanted to stay there until the PR part of the mission was over. Though it made me a little less able to kick ass right out the door, it was nice not to worry about the furniture when I sat down.