Outlier

by Kyle Harris

  Chaz tried to imagine what that Jade Jung-sook lookalike back at the assembly would have said about Libby leaving her “battle buddy” behind. What was her name? Taylor or Tyler? Anyway, Chaz couldn’t picture that Korean chick with any expression but open-mouthed horror. They’d all had it.

  But Libby wasn’t in much danger; she wasn’t on the list for extermination. That got Chaz to thinking: ninety-seven thousand names were a butt-load, but it wasn’t every gay or lesbian in the city. Libby wasn’t on it. Clare Navarro had somehow avoided detection too. And there were surely others. Libby’s omission might be explained by her father, but what about Clare?

  By now Chaz was rubbing her temples, and she knew if she kept trying to see the answer she’d have a killer headache to go with her angry stomach. Except for an intermittent gurgle, things had quieted down in her digestive system—hopefully a sign of no encore. She cautiously levered herself to her feet and saw to getting a drink of water.

  She had just about reached the fridge when there was a knock on the door.

  The one clue that it wasn’t Libby was the knocks themselves—heavy, with a deeper resonance. Definitely a guy. No way Chaz was chancing that. She retreated back to her desk, grabbed her tasker, and fired up the Renell camera feed.

  Standing outside her door were a couple of dudes. Ten o’clock at night seemed pretty after-hours for Jehovah's Witnesses touring the apartment complex looking for people to save. New marketing strategy? If only.

  The jokes didn’t stop Chaz’s heart from sinking, because both wore jackets like what Simon Dodders had been wearing before his departure from this world.

  Well. Shit.

  So she was next, then. Number eighteen. The roster for The Unrighteous had no address listed beside her name, but that made no fucking difference; any of the assholes could’ve used their eyes and tailed her back to the apartment. Maybe after the assembly with a little eeny-meeny-miny-moe? Or did they know she worked for Okocha, that she had unlocked their little treasure trove of revenge porn and distributed some of their identities? Either way, they must have seen her with—

  Libby.

  Chaz immediately launched the chat feed while her new guests outside knocked again. She started typing.

  |: BADDIES R AT MY DOOR. STAY AWAY. TELL U WHEN SAFE.

  Good enough.

  Now what?

  Chaz paced around a little spot on the floor—effectively reenacting how her head felt right now. The answer she kept coming back to was to twiddle her fucking thumbs and see what happened. Hopefully the meatheads outside would grow tired of banging their fists and get lost. Then, tomorrow morning, she could drop by the Starry Palace and check in with Okocha. Maybe he could—

  The chime came through, and Chaz unconsciously looked at her tasker for the reply. Only the noise hadn’t come from her hand. On the bed was a Samsung Glyder with a blue flashing light—Libby’s tasker. She’d left it behind.

  Shit biscuit.

  About that heart that had sunk a moment ago—it now plummeted off a fucking cliff. If God’s gangsters didn’t leave soon, Libby was going to walk right into them. She might not have been on the list, but she was still the kind of game these fucks hunted. One more unholy demon to cross out in the name of Jesus Christ the Heterosexual.

  More knocking.

  Chaz tiptoed to the door, digging out Schnoz’s switchblade from her back pocket. She’d been keeping it for emergencies, and it was the only proper weapon she had. The blade sprang out with the press of a button.

  She studied the Renell camera feed again. Uno and Dos hadn’t budged an inch. She focused on Uno—he was the bigger of the two, and he’d be the first one to appear when she punched the button for the door to whisk open. Her incipient strategy went like so: go for his heart, take him out quickly.

  Chaz put her back to the wall opposite the terminal. She could hear them breathing outside. Okay, she thought, shaking off the cobwebs in her legs. This ain’t a street brawl. If I don’t kill them, they’ll kill me.

  After three deep breaths, she popped the button for the door. It hissed and started to rattle open.

  You want me? Come and get me!

  She began to count quickly to three—then decided that two-and-a-half was plenty.

  There was a squeak of her heel turning and slipping on the vinyl floor, and she was through the gap when it was wide enough to squeeze through. The blade vanished into Uno’s BEGOTTEN SONS patch.

  His mouth produced a disjointed and blaring shriek.

  In those few milliseconds of lunging and training her weapon on the bull’s-eye, Chaz’s brain had appended her attack plan with a second step: kick. Except the three of them were too tightly knotted. Amid Uno’s wails, Dos seized her by the throat and shoved her off. The haft of the knife slipped through her sweaty fingers, and she stumbled back into the apartment.

  She had enough time to see the fist making haste for her face—not enough to do a damn thing about it.

  “Get off, Satanist whore!” Dos gave her the business end of his God-loving right hook. “Repent for your sins!” Another that she deflected, a third that struck her in the teeth. He attacked fast and hard, not giving her a chance to defend. This wasn’t his first waltz.

  After four or five hits—and getting in a few swings herself—Chaz tottered, the force feedback in her legs feeling reversed from how she remembered it. She was falling suddenly, and then she caught herself on the bed. Dos bore down on her; she spun away before he could connect. The springboard effect from her legs threw her headlong into the baseboard. But she’d gotten away.

  Dos stayed where he was, appearing to shudder. “What is it about you lesbians that reeks?” He inhaled through his nose loudly. “Can’t you smell it too? No, of course you can’t. For I have the nose of God, and I smell a whore. And with the eyes of God, I see a whore. And that fetor, whore, is the mark of the Devil.” He raised his hands like he was gesturing for a congregation to stand. “Come on, now, get on up. You might be a whore, but there’s still a lady in you, behind all that muck. I won’t beat a lady when she’s down.”

  A groan came from the hallway outside.

  “Hey, CJ!” hollered Dos. “What’s the news, man? You all right over there? How bad she get you?”

  CJ moaned. He wasn’t short on pain from the sound of it, but he was still kicking. That was a fucking shame.

  “You just hang tight! We’ll get you fixed up with Jerry, have ya checked out. Don’t you worry, man! The Lord will look out for you.”

  Chaz’s face felt like it had been used to karate-chop a stack of wood. Looking up at this scumbag, she saw he was just a kid. For fuck’s sake, he had pimples. He couldn’t have been any older than she was. And that enraged her, that he was just a fucking teenager. His balls had barely sagged, and already he was a brainwashed homicidal maniac. Religion didn’t beat around the bush.

  “Come on now, I said,” he repeated. “A gentleman lets the lady stand first.”

  She was sitting up now. Her nose was bleeding. Again. “A descendant of God, huh?” she said. “That’s funny. I’m a descendant of Santa Claus. Look out for my Christmas cheer, bitch.”

  “The validity of God will not be insulted—”

  “I think I know what this is.” God’s champion didn’t even try to talk over her. “There was a girl at some point, wasn’t there? Because there’s always a fucking girl. Your dick told you to make a move, but she turned out to be a lesbian.” She wiped her nose. “This is all just the revenge of blue balls. Am I warm?”

  If his face got any redder, steam might’ve blown out his ears.

  “You know Simon Dodders? I’m the one who put the fucking bullet through his brain, dickweed. Oh yeah. You want to know how he went out? Begging.”

  Pimples managed a smile despite his visible anger. “A faggot is the child of the Devil, and the same is true for the lesbian. A Devil child from a Devil womb from a Devil mother.”

  “‘Please, oh nice dyke. Don’t shoot m
e. I’m a sweet innocent Christian boy with a tiny dick. You wouldn’t shoot a nice white boy with a tiny dick, would you? That’s like shooting a man in a wheelchair!’”

  “O Lord, may Your strength occupy my hands when disposing of this poor little sick thing. She is an error in this blessed paradise, but through death she will be reborn again, a slave in her homeland. Bound to the Devil for eternity.”

  “‘Please, God, help me! I don’t want to die a virgin!’”

  “Shut up, now.”

  Chaz heard herself laughing. “Simon whined and moaned like a fucking girl, and I pulled that trigger and watched his brains blow out the back of his head. And you know what? It was art.”

  Pimples reached inside his jacket and pulled out something—a Taser. “You ought to be quiet, whore. The hour of perdition comes. I’ma be quick about it, even with all those mean things you said.” He pressed the button, and the electrodes emitted a white-blue electric arc. “Damnation awaits for the unrighteous!”

  This time when he came at her, Chaz was ready. She kicked up her left leg, the toe of her shoe nailing him in the hand holding the weapon. The Taser popped loose and went sailing toward the ceiling, where it bounced off and ricocheted out into the hallway. As he stumbled backward, she got to her feet and used her leg again—this time for something that Beverly had once called the cunt punt.

  Chaz hit him so hard that his feet left the ground—We have liftoff! And he was screaming. Screaming. He collapsed, holding his groin. She threw herself on top of him and hammered his face over and over, laying into him until her knuckles were bleeding. She wanted to mutilate that fucking mug until no one could—

  Suddenly her spine snapped straight, and every muscle from her skull down to her toes tensed up. She could feel her fists clenching so hard that her fingernails dug into her palms. And the pain. It felt like her body—her existence—was trying to rend itself into pieces. There was a strong smell of something burning.

  She didn’t know how long it went on, but it felt like years, every pain receptor overloaded.

  When it finally stopped—or when she was aware enough to realize it had stopped—her body executed a system check: she was breathing, heart was still pounding, nothing felt broken. But somewhere she’d lost time, because Pimples wasn’t underneath her anymore. And the apartment had gone quiet. The only sound was the air being drawn into her lungs and let out again. Now her sore body was being hauled up.

  Someone cranked the volume knob.

  “—her up, now! Hold her steady!” Pimples had a broken nose and a cut lip, and his left cheek had been split open. His chin was banded with rivulets of red, but he didn’t seem to care. He walked bowlegged. “You gave her the full juice, CJ? That’s all right, then. God has told us that she should be awake, so awake she’ll be.”

  CJ. He was the one holding her, which meant she had whiffed the stab even worse than she’d thought. Shit.

  And there was something else: now that she was upright, her legs felt discombobulated. And they seemed to weigh as much as a couple of anvils. When that fuck had jammed the Taser into her back, something must’ve been disrupted.

  No, there’s a fail-safe. The word triggered a fuzzy recollection of browsing the instruction manual, some paragraph talking about the electronics temporarily switching off to prevent damage. Like a circuit breaker. The legs just needed a power cycle.

  Pimples snapped his fingers. “Hey, she’s not paying attention. CJ, do something about that, would ya?”

  CJ yanked on her hair. That’s when she heard that loud mouth-breathing again. She’d thought it had been her, but it wasn’t. CJ was the one hyperventilating, and it sounded like he was a few short breaths away from conking out.

  “Over here, now,” said Pimples. He was on the opposite side of the bed. “I want to have this whore’s undivided attention for the next portion of our show.” He bent down, and his head disappeared behind the mattress. “Come on, now. I ain’t gonna hurt ya. That’s it.”

  No, no, no! Don’t you do it! Don’t you fucking dare!

  When he stood up again, he was holding Don Quillxote. “What the holy text doesn’t say about this homosexual disease is that it’s contagious. Whatever the faggots and lesbians lay their filthy hands on, it spreads.” He turned Donny to look at her. “That’s the way the Devil’s influence works, and the only immunity is Jesus Christ. The protector against the gay savage hordes.”

  “Let him go,” she growled.

  “Ah, but one does not contact an exterminator to spray a single room and leave without killing the infestation. The Devil works in all shadows, and there are many shadows in this apartment, whore. His evil is seething through these walls, and through creatures that have turned their backs to the one and just God. Only through faith in Our Lord will the gays be expelled from this polluted world.”

  Chaz felt herself slumping—CJ was getting weaker. “You got it all wrong,” she said. “Being gay is like having a superpower: I can feel happy whenever I want. You know how? All I have to do is look at a guy and feel no attraction. It’s pretty fucking awesome.”

  Pimples tightened his jaw. “Your corpse will wither the flame of wretchedness that burns so bright in this city—”

  “Put him down!”

  “—and you will pay for your infernal sins, whore, for inside me is the blood of God and Jesus Christ, and I am the disciple that will purge humanity of all its foul and evil enemies.”

  Just keep him talking, she thought. As long as he was acting out his sermon role-play fantasies, he was content with leaving her in the slackening arms of his wounded partner. Hopefully between now and whenever he had a renewed bloodlust, she’d break loose.

  Yeah. It was too much to ask.

  Pimples shut his eyes. “God speaks! Slow down, partner, slow it down. I can’t keep up, now.” He nodded. “And I do…uh-huh. Okay, okay. Punish this whore until she begs for death. Got it.” He opened his eyes. “God is my voice, and I am his holy instrument!”

  He pitched a hedgehog fastball—at the wall.

  “NO!” screamed Chaz. “YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

  Then he was stomping. The wet crunching sounds…

  “I’m gonna fucking kill you! You hear—”

  Falling. CJ had finally lost too much blood, and he was pulling her down with him. The impact with the vinyl floor sent his arms splaying back, and she rolled off him.

  “Hey, CJ?” panted Pimples. “What’s the matter, man? You all right?” He rounded the corner of the bed. One of his boots left a bloody footprint.

  Chaz hurried to find the switches and turn her legs back on. Once they had juice, this fuck was going to meet his ancestors. She serpentined her hand down her pants leg, found the power toggle under a protective plastic lid, flipped it twice, now the other—

  The toe of a shoe came to greet her in the jaw. She stared up at ceiling.

  “CJ?” Pause. “You impious whore! We are God and Jesus Christ. Thou cannot destroy what is indestructible!”

  Chaz’s mind swam, memories resurfacing. She was thinking back to the dome-walk and Patrick Letts. The VanCom android and its color-changing body. The resort. She should have taken the offer. Maybe she still could, if Pimples here would be down for rescheduling. In a week they could resume, and he could finish her off.

  But first, a deep-tissue massage.

  She rolled left, grimacing. She saw something under the bed.

  “Hell is waiting for you to return, whore! Back to the Devil with you!”

  When Pimples grabbed her coat to turn her onto her back, she lashed out. There was enough string to encircle his neck once. He fought to get his fingertips underneath, but by then she was already pulling on the beads, pulling in the hope that she had enough strength to cut off his fucking head.

  “This is for my fucking friend!” she screamed.

  They thrashed around. His foremost plan seemed to be trying to distance himself from the pain. Good fucking idea. By doing that he was tightening
his own noose, giving her even more leverage. They rolled until she was on top of him, and then it was just waiting for biology to do its thing: die off without oxygen.

  At the point when his face started to turn purple, Pimples realized that trying to loosen the beads was a lost cause. That’s when the desperate punches came. The first two missed by a kilometer, but the third had fortunate accuracy. It nailed her between the eyes. The blow caused her hands to relax enough for the beads to slip free.

  “God!” he coughed out, the word like a plea for help. “God!”

  Chaz regained her senses quickly, anticipating more fight out of him, but he was still gasping and swallowing down air in huge mouthfuls. All his energy went into trying to remove the beads from around his neck.

  She assisted him. “God’s not here.”

  Then she gathered the anal beads, waited until his mouth opened wide for another big breath, and shoved them inside. One made it into the goal—his throat—before he tried to bite down. A few hits to the face made him more compliant. Another bead went in. A third. His eyeballs grew huge.

  “How’s my fucking ass taste?”

  The skin over his neck was tight over three distinct bulges. With the rest of the beads trailing out of his mouth, she clamped both hands around his neck to prevent him from coughing them up. In his death throes, his arms flailed and knocked against her, but any coordinated use of them was in the past.

  After a minute his arms went still at his side, and that was that.

  She rolled off, her heart jackhammering in her chest. She saw movement: Libby stood in the doorway of the apartment with a paper sack in her hand.

  “Chaz?” she said, her eyes widening as she looked around at the carnage. “What happened?”

  Chaz was about to answer, but her stomach turned abruptly. She jumped up and made a beeline for the toilet.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Chaz pressed the coldpack to her face. The injuries weren’t worse than anything she’d sustained before. Around the time puberty had left its ugly footprint all over her body, she had thought having a big patch of bruise was like a badge of honor. The marks didn’t mean you were tougher or meaner than anyone else, only that you were difficult. Once the grownups saw that you couldn’t be coerced into obedience by being knocked around, it undermined their delusion of authority. Suddenly all their power was gone.