by J. A. Pitts
Stepping out of the airship almost stymied me. I couldn’t have a repeat of last time. I’d been damn lucky.
Now, the sharp blue sky burned into my retinas and the myriad of greens, browns and grays of the city of Pasco succumbing to the encroaching wilderness just about flipped my switch.
“Heart rate is spiking; you okay, sonny-boy?”
I closed my eyes and took three slow breaths. I’d done this before, just needed to concentrate. I focused on an outcropping of concrete and steel that had once been a bunker of some sort and stepped through the door of the VTOL. It closed with a hiss.
I spent the better part of the next hour creeping from one ruined building to the next, breathing slowly, and keeping my bad self low to the ground. “I am a shadow.”
Grandpa chuckled quietly while I moved.
“Seventy meters east,” Gramps said after another few moves. “GPS has your last DNA signature at alpha on your screen.”
A virtual overlay was painted on my retina, giving me a three-dimensional map of the surrounding area.
“What was Dad looking for?” I asked.
“He claimed to be looking for radioactive isotopes, but we both know those were long gone.”
“That’s what I told him,” I said. “But he never listened to me.”
“Want me to hazard a guess?”
“Sure.”
“He got wind that the Femme-Bots out of Portland had set up an outpost here. He was scouting either a trade, or information for a later raid.”
“Raid?” I spun toward the ship, as if Gramps was there, watching me. “He was going to raid the Portland Collective?”
“Femme-Bots, your old man called them,” he said with a hint of glee in his voice. “Robot chickees with lasers for nipples. I bet they wear those little plaid skirts, white bobby socks and black Mary Janes.”
I couldn’t tell, but it sounded like he might be drooling. Hard for a virtual entity. “You’re a perv, old man,” I said. “If they were robots, like Dad thought, why’d they wear all that?”
“Sex appeal,” he replied as if I were the stupidest ape left on the planet.
I chuckled and let the old man describe the Portland crew to his lascivious delight.
Past a long brick warehouse, around the south side of alpha zone, I saw something I had never seen in my life. Three women, and I knew they were women despite the fact they weren’t naked or writhing in oil, as all of Grandpa’s surviving vids had them portrayed. They were quite elegant; two were tall, one with black hair, the other with deep, rich brown. The third was small and wispy, with flowing red hair.
“Damn, no blondes,” Gramps whispered into the comm.
I slid a flechette out of the left holster and crept forward. As far as I could hear, I moved like the wind, but the way they snapped around should’ve been a warning.
When the sniper from the warehouse hit me in the right shoulder, I was bathed in bright intensive light. Every nerve in my body seemed to overload at the same time. They were screaming and waving their arms, so I didn’t notice a second shot. The fire that roared through my head nearly blocked out Grandpa’s final words.
“Damn, need to thaw another grandchild.” Then the happy juice hit me. “Nice knowing you, kid. Better luck next trip around.”
Colors are a wonderful thing. Funny how green pain is.
*
When you die you go to heaven—I remember heaven from a story I heard as a wee bairn. Angels live in heaven. I remembered that much, girls with large...um...wings, yeah, white wings and halos.
I knew I had died and gone to heaven because an angel woke me from the shiny greenness of pain. She smelled like lilacs and sunshine. When I opened my eyes, and she leaned over me, the light haloed around her vibrant red hair, a golden glowing circle of joy.
She smiled at me, and her teeth were the color of old tires—at least they were still in her head. The stench of rot overpowered the lilacs and I felt turkey medley driving up from below. I turned to the side and relived lunch. Her smile broke at my revulsion and she covered her face with a gnarled left hand. The red wig slipped to the side, exposing a mottled scalp of radiation scars and sores.
A deep rumbling laugh echoed behind my head, filling the room with the corrupt echoes of hate. “See how he looks at you,” a harsh voice mocked. “You thought to find a life with this weak creature?”
The girl-thing that had come to me with light and lilacs slipped from my vision and rasped a little squeak. “He’s so pretty,” she said.
“He’s one of them,” the harsh voice spat. “He’s a man, ain’t he. Those guns he had on his hips weren’t the only weapon he carries.”
I grunted as a rough hand pressed down on my crotch. Luckily the exoskeleton supported her weight or I might have been singing soprano.
“His kind did this to the world, haven’t we taught you that?”
The large woman, seven feet tall with armored breasts and a shaved, malformed head loomed into my range of vision. I couldn’t turn my head, but I could move my eyes.
“His kind needs to be wiped off the Earth.”
“But what about the babies?” the plaintive girl asked. “I so want a baby.”
“Stupid breeder,” the warrior woman said, turning and spitting onto the side of the wall. We were inside the warehouse. Meant they hadn’t found the VTOL.
“How come I’m not dead?” I managed, though as soon as I’d spoken I knew it was a mistake. The mailed fist crashed against the side of my head, forcing the colors to return.
“Oh, for god’s sake. Cut out his tongue if he speaks again,” she said and stomped toward a shattered door and peering out. “Magenta, you stupid whore. You make sure he’ll live, then leave him alone, you hear me?”
“You aren’t staying,” the angel squeaked.
“We need to seal the bunker and high-tail it out of here. We have muties on the move.”
The wrecked girl smiled her broken smile again and nodded solemnly.
She stabbed me in the arm, pushing a tube of fluid into my body. It was like taking the happy juice, only it burned.
“We won’t really hurt you much,” she whispered in my left ear. “We need the DNA. Cloning is losing its cohesiveness. Getting freaks like me,” she said with a small hiccough. “I should’ve been pretty.”
“Thought you were an angel,” I said through the fog of drugs. “Golden halo and hair of fire.”
“Oh, my,” she said, clasping my hand. “The sisters will not waste this one.”
I felt her stripping away the exoskeleton, heard each piece fall to the floor—echoes of my father’s dismemberment. Then she cut away my enviro-suit. Likely I’d be exposed to some disease or other I’d never built an immunity to, alas. Slow death, fast death. It was all the same in the end.
I slipped in and out of consciousness, but there was a moment when she was above me and I’d once again gone to heaven. I could feel her against my naked body, doing things I’d only dreamt about. She made tiny squeaking noises as she moved atop me, her hands pushing against my chest as she rose and fell. Then the world evaporated into a soft white mist.
“Hell’s a coming,” Gramps said from the floor near my head. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my vision and turned to see the comm-link poking out of the ruined suit piled beside me. Magenta lay curled against me, her naked breast pushed against my chest. I barely noticed the burning in my back had returned.
“Grandpa,” I whispered, wondering if I’d ever get the feeling back in my right arm. Her mottled head had cut off the circulation, but her hands, gnarly and rough, felt kinda nice on my skin.
“You are screwed, boy-o,” he said. “Thought I’d lost you, likely to still, but we might have a chance.”
“Yeah,” I asked as Magenta moved in her sleep, drifting her hand down to the thinking part of my body.
“Can you get to the VTOL? They are likely packing you south of Portland. Not sure where yet, but my guess is somewhere near Bend
, or perhaps Crater Lake.”
“How’s that help me?” I asked, slipping my arm out from under Magenta’s head and pushing her hand from my crotch. She rolled to the side, pillowing her head against my ruined enviro-suit.
“Your mother has a handle on the mutant beastie in our home. Ain’t nothing she’s ever seen, but the DNA is human-like.”
“Might be a clue here,” I said sitting up. “They’ve got some sort of bunker here. Might be messing about with gene mods.”
“Could be,” the old man said.
“Their breeding is going to heck. Might be mucking about with something new since Mom stopped getting the journals regularly.”
“Weapon grade stuff there in Pasco before the world went black.” He paused again, a new symptom I was unused to. “Oh, and I found your father’s head.”
“Excellent. Where?”
“It’s in the central camp, about three hundred yards from you.”
“That’s just fine and dandy,” I said, looking around for a weapon. “But right now I’m naked with a horny mutant girl, and at least two Amazon warrior types who would just as soon see my tongue ripped out. Or worse.”
“We think we can use Rapture on the mutant thingy, if we wanted, but your mother is convinced it may be intelligent. She’s trying to establish communication.”
I slid off the platform and leaned groggily against a broken strut, my dangly bits drawing up inside my body for warmth. Not the most pleasant experience. Magenta made a little noise as the sound of gunfire rattled in the distance.
“You get to your father’s head then get to the plane, we’ll worry about the thing that ate the workshop. You figure a way out of the mess you’re in, got it?”
“Yeah, sure, Grandpa. I’ll just waltz through their camp, pick up a robot head, slip out of their clutches and fly home naked.”
“Yeah, tough sell. Maybe if you had a pizza delivery uniform and a large bottle of lubricant.”
I stopped digging through my gear, confused. “What?”
“Never mind,” he said with a sigh. “So, any blonde femme-bots there?” he asked, his voice full of hope.
“No.”
“Plaid skirts, bobby socks?”
“No.”
“Damn,” he said.
“But I think Magenta and I might have done the deed,” I said, a flush creeping over my chilled body. “Likely I’ll catch something.”
“Nice work, boy. Get them out of their panties and you have half the game won.”
I shook my head. I may not be the smartest guy when it came to other people. Heck, I hadn’t spoken with anyone but my crazy relatives for a very long time. But I had the feeling that perhaps their views on women, especially, were a little off base.
More gunfire echoed inside the building. I looked around for anything to use as a weapon when Amazonia crashed into the long room.
“Magenta, you stupid bitch. Wake up.”
Magenta sat up, disheveled with her wig on sideways, and naked as the day she slipped out of her momma.
“What the hell,” Amazonia said, looking from me to Magenta. “Stupid, filthy...” she strode to me, grabbed me by the hair and flung me into a pile of broken tables. The burn on my back screamed awake once again, and the world swam with swirls of green.
Magenta stood up, one hand covering her rather nice breasts, and the other lower, covering her own thinking area.
Amazonia hit her twice. Once in the face with a balled-up fist, then a sharp kick to the ribs. The crack I heard sounded like broken bones. “Stupid, worthless...” She spat and turned to me. “She may be enamored with your amazing phallus—”
She strode toward me, one metallic hand groping for my private parts.
“—but I’ve never been fond of the leaky little meat puppet.”
I screamed as her hand squeezed my softer parts and I punched her in the face.
She grinned at me, a feral twist of broken lip and bloodied teeth. Then she head-butted me. Stars exploded in my head for a moment. When they cleared, she leaned more upright and flipped a knife from her belt with her free hand. “Let’s harvest this little thing and see if Magenta still finds you so pretty.”
I drew breath to scream. The sound of a thousand little explosions, followed by the sound of air and flesh being shredded, stopped my scream.
Amazonia lurched to the side, smashing her metal-clad hooters into my chest with a painful grinding sensation that made me think of broken ribs.
Pain registered in her eyes. A split second later she rolled off of me, bellowing in pain. In a blink, she was up on her feet, one arm dangling useless at her side. “What the hell!” she said, staggering to the right, giving me a clear view behind her.
Magenta stood across from us, her feet shoulder width apart, her hands wrapped around one of my flechettes with the perfect shooter’s grip.
“I never liked you,” she said and pulled the trigger again. Amazonia’s face disappeared in a haze of red. I rolled to the left, hoping that that hurking large armored woman would not fall on me again. As it was, she staggered back, careened off a broken chair, and fell to the ground twitching.
A second armor-clad woman appeared in the doorway, a laser rifle held loosely by one hand. She glanced from Magenta to me, then to Amazonia’s twitching corpse. She gasped, letting the laser fall from her grip, where it swung loose by the long strap over her shoulder. For a split second she covered her mouth with both hands, muffling a wail.
Magenta swiveled toward her and pulled the trigger. Hundreds of tiny needles sliced into the second woman’s upper body. Several pinged and rang as they bounced off the metal breast cones, but the rest shredded her thick, rough-spun shirt and most of her left shoulder. She stumbled backwards out of the door.
“Oh, Goddess,” Magenta said, falling to her knees, the pistol held loosely in her left hand. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
I climbed to my feet, uncertain. I wanted to go to her, pull her into my arms and make her feel better. Another part of me, the part that sounded remarkably like Grandfather, wanted me to run away and hide. It was strange, these conflicting emotions.
The fact that we could die at any moment was of no consequence. My immediate and overwhelming urge was to protect her. It may have been the most powerful and conflicting emotion I’d ever experienced.
Shut it, old man, I said in my head. I limped over and dropped to Magenta’s side, placing on hand on her shoulder. She let out a gasping sob and turned, flinging her arms around me.
She cried for a brief moment, the hard flechette pressing uncomfortably against my back. After a moment, she sat back, wiped her face with her wrist, and gave me a watery smile. Her eyes were like two pools of warm chocolate. “You smell fertile,” she said, tears streaking her face. “Sorry we’re gonna die now.”
The feeling in my chest swelled, and I was pretty sure it had nothing to do with broken ribs. She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen.
“You saved my life,” I said, my voice hoarse.
She kissed me on the forehead and grinned. “Come on,” she said, standing. I let her help me up. I wasn’t used to having so much of my person exposed to angry metal-clad attackers. I was feeling a bit more vulnerable than I was comfortable with.
Magenta adjusted her wig and pushed me on the shoulder. “Get your gear,” she said, pointing to the pile she’d cut from me.
I limped over, sure there was something vital broken in my nether regions, and fished out the comm-link. I slipped it over my left ear and then bent over the lifeless body of Amazonia. She looked angry even in death. I couldn’t fathom the life she and her people had led.
I took her knife. Magenta was obviously a whiz with the flechette. As no one else had appeared in the doorway, I hobbled over that way and tapped on the comm-link.
“You there, old man?” I asked into the ether.
“About time,” Grandpa’s voice sounded in my ear. “You got trouble, boy. Looks like a group of muties
attacked the Femme-Bot camp a few minutes ago, but the Femme-Bots are holding their own.”
I pulled myself around the door frame as a scream sounded ahead of me. Several yards down a long hall, a large mutant ferret was dragging the kicking body of the second Amazon warrior away. I flipped the knife, catching it by the tip of the blade and flung it toward into the mutie. The blade sunk hilt deep into its furry body, but it didn’t fall over like I’d hoped. It did, however, give the warrior a chance to bring her laser to bear. She shot three bursts into the wounded ferret. It lumbered back a couple of feet, already dead, but two more of its friends chose that moment to arrive. Big, furry eaters. Not even sure of the original genus, other than hungry.
“Muties,” I called out, looking around for another weapon. “Need a hand here, Magenta.”
“Hang on.”
The warrior fired one final long thread of light, slicing off one of the new attackers’ limbs, and catching the second one a glancing blow, forcing them both to scamper back. The singe of fur and the crackle of cooked flesh barely registered over the sounds of battle outside.
“Magenta,” I cried, hiding my body behind the door frame, but looking down the hallway. “We’ve got to go.”
Her hand on my arm startled me.
“You okay?” Grandpa whispered urgently into my ear.
“Just jumpy,” I said. Magenta had taken the time to slip on her panties, a small pack and her wig before she crept up beside me. She also wore my holster with the second pistol, and the bandolier of cartridges. She looked hot.
“Who are you talking to?” Magenta asked.
“My grandfather,” I said. The muties hadn’t returned to the hallway, but the warrior was not looking so good. “Come on.” I grabbed Magenta’s hand and pulled her away from the door. “That way is blocked. What’s her name has that way covered. Let’s look for another exit.”
“Claudia,” she whispered. “She wasn’t nice to me, either.”
“Right.” We ran back into the main warehouse where my pack poked out from a scattering of tables and chairs. I pulled it out of the rubble, slung it over my shoulder and pulled Magenta along toward another doorway. “Hope this leads somewhere,” I said as we jogged.
