Apocalypse Nyx

by Kameron Hurley

  The parrots flocked the bakkie, obscuring her view. Nyx snapped on the lights and turned on the wipers. Kasib hung out the passenger side, firing. Eli and Mahir lolled out the back two windows with their own guns blazing. A swarm of hornets swept across the hood of the bakkie, which meant Ada was in play now, too. At least Nyx didn’t have to give them directions once the shit hit.

  Nyx drove until she hit the crossroads with the main southern artery they had come up on, and just kept feeding juice to the bugs for all the fucking bakkie was worth. It wasn’t her bakkie. If the bug cistern overpopulated and burst, that wasn’t her problem until a lot later, if she lived to see later at all. What she needed now was speed.

  She could make out the road if she concentrated on the thin stretches of it she could see through over the flapping wings and soaring bodies of the parrots. Then one of the parrots started morphing right there on the hood, throwing off streamers of mucus as its wings elongated and its beak shortened and it began to take on its human form. The thing grabbed at the edge of the window with its wing-fingers. Kasib shot it in its half-shifted face, and the thing rolled off the hood and onto the road.

  Nyx yelled at them to keep an eye out for a farm compound, but they all seemed too busy to pay much mind to anything but the shooting. She peered out both sides as best she could as half-shifted parrots kept peeling away from the bakkie. The ride up in the cat-pulled cart had taken a lot longer, and she knew she was making good time in the bakkie. They would be on it any—

  The green eye of the top of the contagion sensor careened past.

  Nyx jammed on the brakes, taking the bakkie into a full spin. Eli screeched and nearly fell out of the bakkie. Ada grabbed their burnous and pulled them back in.

  Nyx blasted forward again, turning sharply left off the paved road and onto the sandy drive of the homestead. The happy, twinkling lights of the farm grew closer. If she squinted, Nyx could just make out the sheen of the filter around the place, protecting the grounds from all the toxic shit that came in from the front.

  “Hold on,” Nyx said.

  “Fuck!” Mahir yelled. “How do you know it’s not tailored for people? It could fucking kill us!”

  “You got a better option, Mahir?” Nyx said.

  They hit the filter.

  The bakkie shot through and ground to a halt. The hood reared up, and the cistern blew bug juice and the heated, popping carcasses of dead red beetles across the lawn.

  Nyx grabbed her scattergun and pushed open the door. Bug juice bled across the ground; the red beetles protected by the cistern hadn’t been completely fried to ash, but they were sure as fuck dead, and they floated down the rivers of bug juice like sad little soldiers.

  Nyx raised her scattergun, pointing behind her at the filter. A heap of colorful feathers lay on the other side of it. A few partially burned parrots limped around on the other side, missing a wing, a beak, a foot. There were more parrots in the swarm, but they had circled off and regrouped. Nyx saw them resting at the top of a nearby sand dune.

  She lowered her gun. Behind her, Mahir was talking to Ada, asking her to send a message.

  “The fuck?” Nyx said.

  “I want my money,” Mahir said. “She’ll send a beetle swarm to our contact and let them know to meet us here.”

  “There any alive in here?” Nyx said.

  “Out there,” Ada said. “I can manipulate them from here. She’ll get the message. We can hide out here.”

  The porch light came on at the homestead.

  Nyx wondered how to play it—put the gun away or hold it up?—but Mahir was already moving, waving Eli and Kasib ahead of her.

  “Hands up!” Mahir said. “We’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

  “Leave it,” Nyx said, but Mahir was already on the porch, talking down a beefy woman who bore a long scar on one side of her face.

  A gunshot came from inside.

  “Goddammit,” Nyx said.

  Mahir and Kasib bolted into the house. The beefy woman tried to stop them, and got the butt of a gun to the face in response.

  Nyx stood outside with the injured woman while the others cleared the house. The woman clutched at her face and leaned hard against the door jamb. She snuffled and snorted snot and blood. The woman wore a breast binding and trousers, and she was barefoot. A battered old shotgun lay nearby, no doubt tossed when Mahir came down on her like a fucking sandstorm.

  Mahir yelled from inside and told Nyx to escort the homesteader back in. Nyx helped the woman up and half-dragged her inside, where Nyx found herself staring down the sorriest bunch of folks she’d seen in a while.

  There were six kids total, four of them clearly from the same batch. The other two didn’t seem to be related to the batch or to each other, and they were older, maybe ten and twelve. The beefy woman Nyx pushed toward the others was maybe thirty, and there was a legless woman in her twenties and a battered war vet who must have been over forty babbling to himself in one corner. He smelled like urine. The house was neat enough, but poor as shit. Everything was simple, well-worn; the kids wore patched-up clothes with cracked goggles around their necks. One of them had some kind of rash spreading all up his face and along his left shoulder. Another kept wiping her nose and sniffing.

  “We ain’t staying long,” Mahir said. “You all sit tight here, don’t try any shit. We’re meeting someone, then we leave.”

  The beefy woman spit. “You take what you want,” she said. “Don’t mind us. Need water, food, you take it. We got some weapons in the back. That’s all we got.”

  “Shut up,” Mahir said. “Just . . . fucking sit tight. Shit.”

  “I have to pee,” one of the kids said, and that’s when Nyx had to go sit outside.

  Nyx slumped into one of the chairs on the porch and gazed out at the fence. The beefy woman had bled all over the porch, spraying blood from her burst nose. Smears of it ran across the stones. Nyx was dying for a drink, for some sen, for sex, for anything to take her mind off this fucking night.

  Nobody came out for a long time. Nyx didn’t hear any gun-shots, which seemed like a good sign.

  Finally, as the first hints of the blue sunrise tickled the horizon, Nyx heard a bakkie buzz up to the edge of the filter. It parked on the other side, and someone got out.

  Mahir opened the door behind Nyx. She said nothing to Nyx but walked down onto the path to meet the newcomer.

  Nyx pegged the newcomer as First Family, one of the rich old families whose kids never seemed to serve much at the front and who spent most of their lives behind filters that protected them from the sun. She heard some of those pampered pieces of shit lived to be sixty or more. Interesting, though, for a First Family to send one of their own out here to pay off Mahir, instead of just a lackey.

  Nyx shifted in her seat, making it a little easier to grab the butt of her scattergun if she needed to. She also tugged up the hood of her burnous, just in case. This wasn’t a job she wanted to be remembered for.

  The woman reached Mahir, and stepped into the light from the porch. Nyx realized the First Family woman was someone she knew. It was Yah Reza, a magician who ran one of the major boxing gyms and magician training operations in Faleen.

  “You got my piece, baby doll?” Yah Reza said. Her speech was a little slurred, and her teeth were red with sen use. She was a regal older woman, all wrapped up in a red burnous.

  Mahir produced the complicated bit of metal, or whatever it was. “Just where you said it would be,” Mahir said.

  A grin split Yah Reza’s face. “That’s just fine, baby, just fine.”

  “We’ve got . . .” Mahir said, “the parrots. You saw the parrots outside?”

  “No problem,” Yah Reza said. “I can take care of those. Now.” She closed her hand over the piece.

  “You have what we agreed?” Mahir asked.

  “It’s all been transferred,” Yah Reza said. “Ask Ada.”

  “Great, great,” Mahir said, and she smiled wide. “Great do
ing business with you.”

  Yah Reza glanced at Nyx now for the first time. “Come on down here, Nyxnissa.”

  “Shit,” Nyx said.

  “Go on in Mahir,” Yah Reza said. “I want to talk to Nyx.”

  Mahir raised her brows, but did as she was told.

  Nyx didn’t go down to Yah Reza. She just pushed back her hood and put her feet up on the railing.

  Yah Reza, bemused, made her way up the steps. “Been a long time, baby doll.”

  “Why you have that shit team do this?” Nyx said. “Mine could do it.”

  “Yours wasn’t as desperate,” Yah Reza said. “And lest you forget—you, child, tend to make a terrible mess of things.”

  “I saved them from the parrot problem.”

  Yah Reza pursed her mouth. “As I said.”

  “Ah,” Nyx said. “They weren’t supposed to survive that. How would you get your trinket?”

  “Trinket?” Yah Reza held it up and laughed. She tossed it onto the porch and ground it under her foot. It was surprisingly fragile, clearly not metal at all, and it turned to jagged bits of dust easily under the magician’s foot in a way it certainly hadn’t while traveling in Mahir’s breast binding. “It wasn’t the trinket, it was the boy. It’s done now.”

  “You all work on some other level up there,” Nyx said. “Someday I’ll figure it out.”

  “No, no, child,” Yah Reza said. “You don’t want that. If you do that, we couldn’t abide having you around anymore.” She patted Nyx’s cheek. “We prefer your ignorance.”

  “Thanks?” Nyx said.

  “You’re welcome,” Yah Reza said. Yah Reza put her hood back on and started down the steps.

  “You really calling away the parrots?” Nyx asked. “Cause if I’m—”

  “Already done,” Yah Reza said. She gestured to the ground-up trinket. “They’ve been released.”

  Nyx stood, walked down into the yard and watched Yah Reza go. Shifters bound to a temple, but why? Pulled there and kept in a prison? For who? To do what? And where would they go now? Fuck, she was glad getting paid didn’t involve understanding First Family catshit.

  She caught a whiff of smoke, and wondered if somebody was cooking breakfast already. The bluish haze of the first sunrise was still dim. Not even Rhys would be cooking that early.

  As she turned, Nyx saw the team coming out—Mahir first, squat Kasib, little Eli, and Ada with her sunny face. They looked happy, cheery, two words she would never use for her own team.

  Behind them, flames whorled from the open door of the house.

  “The fuck?” Nyx yelled.

  “Huh?” Mahir glanced back at the house. “Just tying up loose ends,” she said. “Come on, they have a bakkie. We can cut the filter and get out.”

  “You just . . . those people are still in there,” Nyx said. “Did you just fucking torch a house full of kids?”

  Mahir raised her brows. “We’ve murdered any number of people today,” Mahir said. “Children, women, men. What’s it matter? It’s the job, Nyx.”

  “They weren’t part of the job!” Nyx said, and her own ferocity surprised her. It seemed to surprise Mahir, too, because she took a step back. “Shit, Mahir, yeah, you do what you need to do for the job, but it’s over. There was no need for that. They don’t have to die for you to get paid. That’s just fucking . . . it’s not . . .”

  “Are you all right?” Mahir said.

  Behind her, the flames leapt higher. Her face was a fiery silhouette.

  Nyx had to look away. Her mind worked furiously, exhausted and dehydrated and sore as fuck and here she was with this blazing house of kids and Mahir was right, who cared? She had done worse things, hadn’t she? But those were on a job. A job. This was different, it was.

  She had brought these people here, yeah. But the homesteaders shouldn’t have been out here. Something was bound to happen to these people way out here at the edge of nothing, sooner or later.

  But Nyx knew the difference, now, as she gazed at their happy faces. The difference was, this killing wasn’t for the job. It was for their own pleasure.

  Mahir was patting her shoulder. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s head out. They would have been taken out by the next Chenjan raid. I was doing them a favor.”

  They piled into the bakkie, and Nyx followed, because what was she going to do, run into the house? Hitch a ride? Walk home? Ada took down the filter. Kasib drove until they got back to town, and the blue sun was up over the horizon. Kasib stopped outside a hotel, and as they all got out, Mahir pulled out some notes and stuffed them into Nyx’s hands.

  “Here,” Mahir said, “you deserve it,” but all Nyx saw were the smears of blood on the porch. “You all right?”

  “Think I’ll walk from here,” Nyx said.

  “Wait, what?” Mahir said. “Don’t you want to be part of the team?”

  Ada gazed at her from outside the bakkie, pleasant face all scrunched up. Kasib was sitting on the hood of the bakkie, eating a roti. Eli had their shotgun over their shoulders, standing watch outside the ratty hotel.

  “No,” Nyx said. “I’ve got a team. We’re square, though, huh?”

  “Sure,” Mahir said, “we’re even.”

  Nyx turned her back on them and walked and walked as the sky began to brighten. She stopped at a mosque where the muezzin was stepping out onto the sidewalk to head up into the minaret to call prayer. Behind her was a mullah.

  Nyx held out her hand to the mullah. “My tax,” Nyx said. “For the waq. My mother was on the waq, the dole. Giving it back, maybe, for somebody else.”

  The mullah raised her brows.

  “I’m a pretty bad person,” Nyx said.

  “I’m sure you like to think that,” the mullah said, and took the money.

  Nyx came within a couple blocks of her storefront just as, at her back, the big orange demon of the second sun crested the horizon. She waited, not sure if she could go back there, to either team. Sunrise warmed the city and the call to prayer sounded. The heat bathing her back soothed the muscles there. Her ass and thighs still hurt from all the fucking, and she looked forward to lying on the roof and soaking up more heat before it got too hot to bear.

  It was the promise of the warm roof that decided her.

  As she came up under the awning of the storefront, she saw that the front door was open. She froze and pulled her pistol. Nyx crept to the doorway. She went in pistol first.

  Anneke was in the foyer, passed out on the divan. Nyx knew she was passed out, not dead, because she was snoring like a fat old dog. A bottle of whisky sat at the head of the divan, and smears of sen shown on Anneke’s fingernails.

  Nyx lowered her pistol, but kept it out. Someone was banging around the keg, and whistling. She walked to the curtain over the partition between foyer and keg and gently pulled the curtain aside with the barrel of her gun.

  Khos cleaning up the remains of Nyx’s dinner with Mahir; she’d completely forgotten about it. Grease smeared Taite’s workbench, and some of the whisky in the bottle had leaked all over one stool and onto the floor. Behind him, Taite was at the com, already plugging in the scents to call and direct another day of hacking communications associated with their bounties.

  She didn’t get much further into the keg before she saw Rhys bent over in the little nook he called a bedroom rolling up his prayer mat after morning prayer.

  “What the fuck you been up to?” Khos said, wiping at the table. “Looked like you had company.”

  “Not too much,” Nyx said, holstering her pistol. “Just the usual, you know? Painting the town bloody red as a wound.”

  “I’d expect nothing less,” Khos said, tossing her the rag. “Could you help me paint this one a little less greasy?”

  “No problem,” Nyx said, and she saw the surprise on his face at her quick acceptance. She’d like to tell him she’d be a better person, clean up more, look after herself, give a shit about them publicly, but that would be a lie. And she didn’t like
lying to them, or to herself. Not unless money was involved. Not unless it was part of the job.

  “You’re back,” Rhys said, moving past her toward the foyer. “I really did not miss your face.”

  “Didn’t miss yours either,” Nyx said, and kicked out of her sandals. She began to disarm, pulling the scattergun, the pistols, the sword, and laying them all out on the workbench. Khos watched her do it. He didn’t say a word. He simply reached out, and wiped away a bit of blood from the back of her hand.

  It was good to be home.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  KAMERON HURLEY is an award-winning author and advertising copywriter. Hurley grew up in Washington State and has lived in Fairbanks, Alaska; Durban, South Africa; and Chicago. She has a bachelor’s degree in historical studies from the University of Alaska and a master’s in history from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, specializing in the history of South African resistance movements.

  Hurley is the author of the space opera The Stars Are Legion and the Worldbreaker Saga, which is comprised of the novels The Mirror Empire, Empire Ascendant, and The Broken Heavens (forthcoming). Her first series, the God’s War Trilogy—which includes the books God’s War, Infidel, and Rapture—earned her the Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer and the Golden Tentacle Kitschy Award for Best Debut Novel. Hurley is also the author of the essay collection The Geek Feminist Revolution, which contains her essay on the history of women in conflict “We Have Always Fought,” which was the first article to ever win a Hugo Award. Her nonfiction has appeared in numerous venues, including the Atlantic, Bitch magazine, the Huffington Post, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, Writers Digest, and Entertainment Weekly, and she writes a regular column for Locus magazine.

  Hurley has won two Hugo Awards, a British Science Fiction Award, and a Locus Award, and has been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke and the Nebula awards. Her work has also been included on the Tiptree Award Honor List and been nominated for the Gemmell Morningstar Award. Her short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Popular Science, Lightspeed, Vice Magazine’s Terraform, Escape Pod, Strange Horizons, and Amazing Stories as well as anthologies such as The Lowest Heaven, The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, Year’s Best SF, and Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her work has been translated into Romanian, Swedish, German, Hebrew, Chinese, Turkish, Spanish, and Russian.