by Rick Wayne
Vernal looked at her droopy eyelid. If it had been caused by simple mechanical damage, a tinker would have fixed it up quick, which meant it was something deeper, in her electronic brain perhaps. Vernal wondered what had happened.
The police cruiser passed on the nearby street and Yunique looked up as she held Vernal’s throat. The car rolled slowly and repeated the announcement over loudspeakers. The police were asking everyone to clear the streets for their own safety. That was unusual. Something big was happening.
“What’s going on?” Yunique put her mask back on.
Dobie appeared over the trunk. “Was he giving you lip?” He nodded to Vernal, whose face was red.
Yunique let go and Vernal sputtered and gasped. “I don’t like that awful voice of his. Why are the police here?”
Vernal coughed.
Dobie shook his head. “I don’t know, but from the corner it looks like they’re clearing everything south of Lex.”
Yunique rested a hand on the fighter’s arm. “Baby, we should go.”
Dobie nodded at the scoundrel. “What are we gonna do with him? Should we take him to Pimpernel’s?”
“Jeez, Dobe,” Vernal cleared his throat. “You’re such a moron.”
“Aww baby,” Yunique comforted the big man. “We can’t do that. He’ll just rat us out about the key.”
“Right.” Dobie looked confused.
Yunique waited for him to make the obvious suggestion.
Vernal couldn’t take it anymore. “You’re gonna have to kill me, stupid.”
“I know that, asshole!” Dobie punched Vernal in the head.
“Ow.” Vernal shook his head. He kept his eyes closed. They were watering from the sting. “You can’t do it here, though.” As if on cue, the police siren yelped again. “But I know a good place.”
“He’s trying to trick us,” Yunique warned.
“No,” Vernal sighed. “I’m not. I know a place outside South Carton. It’s abandoned, out near Hoosegow.”
“I have a better idea.” Yunique smiled and slammed the trunk shut.
Vernal heard doors open and close. The car rumbled to life and drove away. He wanted to yell for the police, but there was no way they’d hear through the trunk and over the sound of their own speakers. He looked around. It was dark. He could see little but the metal ribs of the car’s sidewalls. He smelled the gas and heard it jostle back and forth in its tank. He squirmed against his bonds. The tape cut into his flesh and constricted his blood supply. The nub of his severed finger burned. It was infected. His eyes kept watering and the tears dribbled down his face.
All he could see was Yunique’s dead eyes staring down at him. He’d be dead within the hour if he didn’t do something right now.
“Shit.” Vernal cocked his wrist and felt the larval stinger nick the electrical tape again. He wiggled his hands behind his back and repeated the motion, and in a few moments, his arms snapped free. He reached down to cut his feet loose.
The car skidded to a halt and Vernal hit his head against the bars of the back seat. “Shit.” He grabbed his head. Now it hurt on all sides.
There was a distant explosion. Vernal stopped. He held his breath. There was screaming. Lots of screaming. It was muffled, perhaps far away, but inside the thick-walled trunk it was impossible to tell.
The car shook as if on a trampoline. Vernal felt himself move into the air and fall again. Then silence.
He listened.
The car shook again. And again. And again. He could hear yelling from inside the cab. His captors were arguing. He felt the car speed up and slam to a halt, as if it had crashed into a wall. He hit his head. Then the entire car lifted into the air and started rolling end over end. Vernal flailed in vain for support, reaching for anything to steady himself as he spun like a load of laundry.
The battered vehicle slammed on its side and the trunk’s latch gave way. Vernal flew onto the road, naked. His open, screaming mouth slammed onto pavement. He chipped another tooth.
He was on his back as the megalosaurus standing over him crushed the front of a nearby bus and let out a primal bellow. Vernal felt a spray of shattered windshield. People were running and screaming. The panic in the air was tangible.
Vernal’s bloody mouth dropped open. It burned. “Fuck.” His hand hurt. His head hurt. He was dizzy. He started to feel sick.
The monster bellowed again and tore through the side of a building with the spikes encircling its head. Vernal covered his head as glass and sheet metal bounced off the sidewalk. Then the beast stepped on the trunk of the car and launched it into the air with its next stride.
Vernal hunched and vomited uncontrollably. He didn’t see the creature’s other foot dropping on top of him until it blotted out the sun.
(SEVENTEEN) The Perils of Domesticated Minotaurs
Gilbert’s mom was a circus contortionist and secret double agent who had introduced his dad to the Black Hand. She was an excellent cook who spoke seventeen languages. She was a weapons expert who had invented a new kind of undetectable poison that auto-lobotomized anyone who ingested it. She could sing opera but would do so only for Gilbert. She was beautiful and had modeled briefly before settling down to raise a family with Carl Tubers.
At least that’s what Gilbert had told himself as a child. Certainly he had no evidence that any of that was not true. But whether she was a contortionist or not, he was certain of one thing: His mother was not a soldier in the fascist Second Army of the Master Race. She couldn’t be, not least because of the strange biology required, but also because Amazons would never tolerate a half-breed.
“Tell me, Gilbert, what do you know of my people?”
Colonel Sryn walked behind Gilbert as he stood on a high metal catwalk overlooking a line of female mechanoids on the floor below. They were queued in front of a large vat, and one by one, the woman at the front would remove her undergarments and empty her tank into it. Several of Pugs’s burly minotaurs, complete with electronic shock collars, kept watch over the scene. An industrial furnace rumbled in the corner.
“What?” Gilbert hadn’t been listening. The pain in his arm was a constant distraction, as was the surreal scene before him. The vat looked to be full of semen, milky and congealed.
“Amazons. What do you know of us?”
Gilbert wanted to mention fascism, genocide, The Great War, all the things he learned in school, but none of that seemed like good topics to broach with rifles pointed at his back. He looked at Lette, who stood surveying the scene and smoking a cigarette, eyes shrouded by sunglasses, skin white as ivory, lips black as death. For a moment, Gilbert thought he saw her hands shake. “I know if any of you are . . . touched by a man, you turn into that.”
“Typical,” the colonel snorted.
“What?”
“Nothing about our contributions to literature, to science, to music. But I suppose I can’t blame you. You were never taught any different.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“What do they tell you about The Great War?”
Gilbert glanced at Lette again. “That a lot of people were killed.”
“And that was our fault?”
Gilbert shifted his weight without thinking and pain stabbed through his broken arm. “I don’t know.” He grimaced.
The colonel stood at the railing and surveyed the line of mechanoids. “It’s not ‘touching’ that causes the metamorphosis. Calling it that makes it seem so genteel. Have the balls to call it what it is, for Kraxus’s sake. Those women were raped.”
Gilbert didn’t respond.
“Did you know that during the war, soldiers were encouraged to rape any Amazon they encountered, soldier or not?”
Gilbert shook his head.
“Posters were circulated—I’ve seen some of them, antiques—they showed voluptuous women in traditional dress, which for us is no more than animal skins, a display of our hunting prowess. It’s warm in the jungle, so there’s no need for us to cover
our breasts, or to wear underwear, facts the Therian propagandists exploited artfully.”
“I didn’t know that.” Gilbert just wanted the conversation to end. He wanted to look for an escape but dared not turn his head.
“There was a time without Furies. We were peaceful, happy, playful. But we were coveted, enslaved, forced to serve, like those creatures down there. Our numbers dwindled.”
“I didn’t know that either.”
“Ma’m Colonel,” Lette interrupted. Her hands were definitely shaking.
The colonel saw it. “The baths are wearing off faster, aren’t they?”
Lette nodded. She grabbed her own trembling arms. “It burns . . .” she whispered.
“Go.” The colonel nodded. “But return quickly. We’ll be leaving soon.” She watched her Fury move past the mechanoids and out the loading dock.
“What’s wrong with her?” Gilbert asked.
“She’s losing control,” the colonel replied. Lette had been woken too early. It was an accident. The others wouldn’t share her flaws. “Bathing in the blood of her victims temporarily eases the pain, and the blood lust.”
Gilbert wanted to know who she was going to kill, but he noticed the minotaurs shuffling. Everyone was less stiff without the Fury around.
“Furies, like Lette, saved us from extinction, but not without sacrifice. According to scripture, the Holy Mother, Dame Althea Altharius, traveled to Mount Arat to see the Oracles of Goyen, where she immolated herself on top of their sacred sepulcher in protest of the silent god. Legend says as her blood seeped into the stone the Infinite Clockmaker was moved, and He modified His creation. From thence forth, if ever the seed of a man touches Amazonian flesh . . . well, you know the rest.” Colonel Sryn turned to one of her lieutenants, a sleek, beautiful soldier with dark hair and blue eyes. “Radio the truck. Tell them we’re almost ready.”
The soldier saluted and retreated down the steps.
Gilbert watched her leave. Other than jumping, those steps were the only way off the catwalk. Leaping to the floor was suicide. Even if he didn’t break his neck, he’d be left hobbled and unable to flee. The minotaurs were on the ground, and they were beginning to throw their weight around. Tension was palpably increasing.
“You see how we’ve resorted to sperm-mongering.”
Gilbert had been right. The mechanoids must be whores from LaMana’s brothels, maybe Pimpernel’s too. If Iku hadn’t ejected her tank at Kosi’s, he realized, his own semen might have made it in there. His stomach turned. He looked away. That’s when he noticed the working girls were being paid as they left. “That’s a lot of semen.” He wondered if the contents of the vat could break his fall.
“That’s why we are here, Mr. Tubers. Men bring it from all over the Empire. Even some aminals sneak in. Gambling and sex are the only reasons anyone comes to the frontier. Semen is the one thing this city produces in quantity, and the criminal syndicates have a lock on the supply.”
Gilbert nodded. The colonel was making it clear she didn’t like working with gangsters; criminals were undesirable in a utopian society.
A loud beeping broke his concentration. A tanker truck backed into the basement of the building. The Amazons were about to haul it all away, he realized, and Gilbert’s heart beat faster. That meant it was almost time to go.
“That’s enough,” the colonel said to another subordinate. “Tell the rest of those creatures to leave.” She turned back to Gilbert.
“What are you going to do with me?” he repeated.
“Although it’s odd to consider it, you are half Amazon, which means you are exceedingly intelligent. I think you know.”
He looked at the vat and the disappointed, departing mechanoids. If he was going to jump, it would have to be now.
“You were part of something magnificent, Gilbert, the preservation--no, the rebirth of the Amazon race. Unfortunately, sacrifices must be made, although I’m sure that’s small consolation.”
“You haven’t told me why I’m this way.” He needed more time. “Please.”
The colonel watched a minotaur snort at a passing soldier. “Unfortunately, we’re out of time. I’m sorry, Gilbert. I truly am. I can only imagine how disappointed you must be. I take no pleasure in this.” She nodded to a nearby soldier, who squirted liquid from the end of a syringe.
Gilbert thought about his dad, pressed to the wall of that elevator by all those commuters too oblivious to help the dying workman sweating and silent at the back. He wasn’t going to die that way. He wasn’t.
He stared at the tank of semen, gathered from an unknown quantity of men. This was it. He had to act.
Gilbert Tubers was an engineer. He knew exactly what happened when high-energy radiation streamed through a long metal conductor. You got radio waves. Broad-spectrum radiation should produce broad-spectrum radio. He hoped it was enough.
Gilbert removed his glove and grasped the metal railing of the catwalk. But nothing happened.
“What are you doing?” The colonel squinted.
Gilbert’s hands sweat, and that’s when it hit. Every minotaur in the room shrieked as their shock collars blinked on. The Amazons froze. The mechanoids screamed as five-hundred-pound horned behemoths began tearing at everything around them in a rage.
“Damn!” Colonel Sryn pulled a revolved from her lieutenant’s belt and beat Gilbert’s hand with the butt.
He yelped and hit the floor as she trained the gun on his head. The pair stared at each other through the round visor of Gilbert’s hood. The colonel handed the gun back to the soldier—she knew what would happen if his tissues were too damaged. His arm was already broken thanks to that idiot Pugs. Gilbert was a walking nuclear bomb. He had to be disposed of properly.
Pandemonium erupted. An Amazon was gored and thrown against the wall. Her compatriots opened fire with automatic rifles. The bullets ripped into the minotaurs’ flesh but still they came.
Colonel Sryn raised three fingers above her head. Somewhere, a sniper began shooting the rampaging beasts through the skull. A puff of red and some fragments of bone were the only visible evidence of the high-powered shots, and one by one, the behemoths dropped. The Amazons had come prepared.
The colonel walked down the steps. “Bring him!” She motioned to Gilbert and strode to the door. “And clean up those bodies. No trace.”
“Ma’m.” A stunning redhead in a crisp black uniform stepped down from the cab of the tanker. “The Empire has arrived.”
Colonel Sryn walked past the truck and looked up at the sky. “Right on schedule.”
Gilbert stumbled down the stairs on purpose. His suit protected him from the worst of the fall, but the pain in his arm was unbearable. He yelled. The Amazon with the syringe held it in the air and bent to grab him. That’s what he had been waiting for. Gilbert ripped her narrow-barreled sidearm from its holster.
“STOP!” But he didn’t point the gun at any of his attackers. Gilbert held the gun to his own head. He pulled off his helmet for effect. He was flushed and sweating. Every breath throbbed through his arm. “Just, stop.”
The room was clearing. The last of the mechanoid whores, those who had been cowering in the corner, scurried away in squeaks. The minotaurs lay on the ground. Some were still panting. All were dead or dying.
The soldier with the syringe, a buxom brunette with dark green lipstick, stepped toward the radioactive man.
“Halt,” the colonel commanded. “Gilbert, what are you doing?”
“I’m not going to let you poison me. If you come close, any of you, I’ll pull the trigger. You know what will happen. You’ll die. Your soldiers will die. Maybe you don’t care about that. I don’t know. But I bet you care about your mission. The tanker,” he motioned to it, “and everything in it will be vaporized.”
Colonel Sryn spread her arms wide. “Everyone stay back.”
Gilbert began to back out the large delivery door, gun to his head, walking free as his own hostage. His broken arm pressed hi
s hood to his body. It hurt. “And I don’t want anybody following me!” His voice and hands shook.
A long, black car screeched to a halt in the alley. Marcelline opened the back door. She’d been waiting for him to complete his assignment. She didn’t look happy.
Gilbert paused for a moment and ducked into the car. The nearest Amazons rushed forward with rifles raised.
“Stop,” the colonel called.
Her soldiers watched Gilbert disappear down the alley. They turned back, confused.
“Took him long enough,” the colonel complained. “As soon as Lette returns, she will track and destroy him. Right now, the last shipment is our only priority. We need to get it out of the city before the Aminals attack.” She looked again at the white Imperial zeppelin casting a shadow over the skyline.
The tall, graceful soldiers nodded and went straight to work securing a long hose between the vat and the tanker. Within minutes, Lette strode back into the building with a sigh and a smirk. She looked drunk. Blood dribbled down her lips.
The colonel waved her over. “Mr. Tubers has escaped. Track him and kill him. Then meet us back at base.”
Lette smiled. She put her glasses over her black eyes and wiped the blood from her lips with one finger. “Which way?”
Colonel Sryn pointed and watched the Fury saunter after the radioactive man. Everything was proceeding as planned. Lette was damaged and losing control. That was unacceptable. By his death, Gilbert would do the one thing no one else in the world could, and two loose ends would be eliminated at the same time.
“Goodbye, Gilbert,” the colonel whispered. “We won’t be seeing each other again.”
The tanker rumbled to life and the colonel climbed into the cab. As the truck pulled away, plain-clothed Amazonian agents dispersed in a dozen different directions and disappeared into the city.
