by J. I. Greco
“Yes, yes I am.” Lock picked the chef’s knife off her lap and ran her thumb down the blade, slicing through her silver skin. Silver blood oozed out. Lock stuck the thumb in her mouth, sucked it. When she took it out, the silver blood was gone and the split flesh was whole again. “But in my defense, it’s what I’m good at. Been denying that, and all it’s gotten me is bored and restless. And that isn’t healthy.”
Roxanne swallowed. “So you are definitely here to…”
“Kill you, yes,” Lock said, nodding. “But don’t worry, I assure you, it’ll be as painless as getting a dull and rusty kitchen knife thrust repeatedly into your ribcage can be.”
Roxanne’s lips went thin. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” Lock flipped the knife around to point down at Roxanne. The coven’s blank black eyes collectively dropped to stare at Roxanne’s chest. “All right, let’s get this over with, shall we?”
Roxanne looked up at her coven. Tears flowed from Bernice’s black eyes down freckled cheeks.
Roxanne closed her eyes.
Lock raised the knife.
And there it stayed as Lock tilted her head at Roxanne’s stomach. “Oh, Vishnu’s… really?”
“What, so you’re torturing me now?” Roxanne asked. “Just go ahead and do it already.”
Lock lowered the knife. “Can’t.”
Roxanne’s left eye opened. “Seriously?”
“Afraid so.”
“This whole thing some sort of fucking mind trip? Are you just messing with me?”
Xanadu stretched out her hands, palms up, and Lock set the knife down on them. She jogged her head and the sisters all took two steps back away from the mattress. “No… no. I was gonna kill you. For reals.”
“And now you’re not. –Why not?”
“You know why.” Lock smirked at Roxanne’s stomach. “Props for not bringing it up yourself. A lesser person would have used it to beg for her life.”
“I wasn’t sure, I’m only late by a month.” Roxanne looked down past her chest at her own stomach. “But I am?”
“There’s definitely a couple hundred fresh cells clinging to your uterine lining. And the DNA feels familiar. Can’t kill someone I’m pseudo-related to, can I?” Lock asked with an annoyed huff. “No, I suppose not.”
Roxanne smiled. “I’m…”
Lock shrugged dismissively. “Congrats, I suppose. –Does he know?”
“He hasn’t run off to Argentina, has he?”
“So, he doesn’t know.”
“No,” Roxanne said, staring at her stomach, her grin not going away.
“This is just great.” Lock crossed her arms over her chest. “I had this all planned… kill you, take over the coven, use the coven to infiltrate the Sorta-Council, take over Shunk, show Rudy and Trip how to build and program a nano-generator and start churning out nanochines, convert the beer factory over to nanochine production, churn out clouds of nanochines to spread across the planet and zombie-fy the world…”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Something else will come up. Hopefully I won’t kill myself from boredom before it does.”
“Yeah… hopefully.”
Lock waved her hand over Roxanne’s chest. “Oh, come on, you’re still not over that whole me trying to kill you thing?”
“Still?” Roxanne sat up, stretched as the nanochines within released their hold and left her body as a fine mist spilling from her nostrils. “It was like two seconds ago.”
Lock raised her hand. The nanochine mist drifted against her palm and she absorbed it back into her body. “More like thirty.” She turned her head at the sound of a klaxon warbling to life outside. “–What’s that?”
Roxanne’s eyebrows crunched together. “The emergency siren.”
“I can hear that. What does it usually signify?”
“Either a tornado’s on its way or we’re under siege.”
“The Wasteland doesn’t get tornados.” Lock’s fingers snapped shut into a fist, grabbing the last of the nanochine mist. “Ooh! Finally–some real excitement!”
16
One Hashmark Away From Epic Fail
“Man, who’d have thought the Amish would be the type to hold a grudge?” Trip twitched to turn the windshield wipers off–all they were doing was making it worse, smearing the thick black mess around real good. Not like he needed to see where he was going, anyway. Trip was driving with his mind, seeing by way of a one-frame-a-second infrared headlight camera image relayed over the wireless gestalt with the Wound.
Rudy plucked a stray gray feather from his tee-shirt, flicked it out the open passenger side window. “At least they didn’t build us into a flameless fireplace.”
“But tar and feather the Wound?” Trip asked, and patted the dashboard. “What it ever do to them?”
The Wound roared recklessly down a winding mountain two-lane, her adaptive tires puffed out for extra grip on the fist-sized asphalt rock of the road. The car was covered in a tacky black goop mixed with mega-chicken and eating-pigeon feathers.
Rudy shrugged. “It’ll scrub off. Robots can do it.”
“Damn right they will.” Trip lit a cig and leaned back, resting his arm out the driver’s window without thinking. Got tar all over his tux sleeve. He lifted his elbow, watched tar slowly drip off the elbow onto his lap. With a derisive snort, he put his arm back out the window. “I wouldn’t mind so much if they’d agreed to join the Axis.”
“The robots?”
“No, the Amish.”
“Oh, yeah, that makes more sense.” Rudy puffed at his Calabash. “About that name… you sure Axis of Ultimate Super Greatness Determined to Preserve a Fair and Balanced Post-Capitalist Anarcho-Commune System of Self Government and Keep the Wasteland Free for Drunken Orgies and Enterprising Free-Market Cyborgs is the best name for our little coalition?”
Trip scowled over at him. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s not long enough.”
Trip grunted. “Go over the list again.”
“What’s the point?”
“Just tell me, who haven’t we talked to yet?”
Rudy jammed the nib of the Calabash between his back teeth and grabbed his Moleskine from his waistband at the small of his back. “Nobody,” he said, flipping the notebook open. He ran his finger down the list of names. Each had a line drawn through them. “We’ve talked to everybody. We’ve been to every little crapy city-state and parlayed with every minuscule Wasteland power-bloc–we even hit up the Magnums. And none of them want any part of this.”
“You know, I really thought at least the Magnums would have gone for it. They’re always up for a fight.”
“They’re mercenaries. For the right price I’m sure they would have. Maybe you should have offered them actual money.”
“Look, I’m all for revenge, but not if I have to break the bank to do it. We’re sticking to the budget–I’ve got my retirement to think of. I’m not going to be young forever, you know.” Trip twitched and the Wound turned just in time to avoid skidding off a hair-pin into a ravine. “Anyway, the Magnums would have had plenty of corpses to eat after the battle, no matter who wins. That’s better than cash. Salt the corpses up and they would have food all winter.”
Rudy slapped the Moleskine shut and stuck it back in his waistband. “They’re not long-range thinkers, the Magnums.”
“I don’t get it. Does my breath stink of all sudden?”
“All of a sudden?” Rudy stared at the smoke curling above his pipe. “No.”
“So what is it then?” Trip angled the rear-view and smiled lovingly into it at his own reflection. “My hair’s perfectly coiffed. My tux is all freshly pressed. My elbow patches are all shiny. Well, they were. My jeans are appropriately tight in the crotch, showing off my impressive goods. They should be falling over themselves to get into the Trip business.”
“Maybe you’ve lost your charm.”
“Well, that’s highly improbable. It�
�s probably you.” Trip twisted around to shout at the trunk. “Or that damned robot!”
“Yeah, sure,” Rudy said. “It was us. ‘Cause of course it couldn’t possibly be your argument.”
“What’s wrong with my argument?”
“Couple things,” Rudy said. “One, the power-blocs are all afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“The Red Chinese have a rep. A well-earned rep. They invade someplace, they invade it. Hard. They don’t lose. And each place they invade only makes them stronger. The city-states have spent a hundred plus years at relative peace, and the wars they have had have been with each other, one disorganized army flopping up against another, usually ending with both sides surrendering before anybody actually gets hurt, or with a nuke.”
“In which case everybody wins.”
Rudy nodded. “Wastelanders aren’t used to fighting, not real fighting, so the prospect of going up against a massive veteran armed force has got to be just the slightest bit daunting.”
“But the Red Chinese aren’t really invading, are they?” Trip noted. “And we wouldn’t be taking on all of the Red Chinese. Just Hu’s forces. And only long enough for us to do some damage, trim her army down, throw a monkey wrench in her Nova Scotia plans, embarrass her in front of her peers and superiors, and send her packing in shame back to the mainland. Rue served.”
“Can’t tell the city-states that, though, can you?”
“No.”
“Too clever for your own good, this time.”
“Perhaps,” Trip said with a grimace. “You said a couple things?”
“You’re not really offering the power-blocs any incentive to stop this little fake invasion, are you?”
“No incentive? They get to protect their shitty little Wasteland… Oh, I can see where this is going.”
“Exactly.” Rudy banged the Calabash against the dash ashtray, emptying the bowl of ashes, and slipped the pipe into his bandolier. “You can be as charming as Shatner, bro, but the end of the day, considering all the benefits the Red Chinese bring to the invaded, there’s really very little point to resisting an invasion.”
Trip smirked. “Convinced Morty, didn’t I?”
“And now we come to the crux of the problem with your whole cunning scheme. The non-drunken Sorta-Kings and clan rulers you’ve hit up with the same argument you used on Morty all saw that preserving the Wasteland won’t be half as fun as just letting the Red Chinese take over. Sure, they maybe realized that in the long run, it might mean the end of the Wasteland and more cycles of war–real war this time, with death and everything–but in the short term, it definitely means a huge Red Chinese-imposed spike in the quality of life. And temporary or not, why wouldn’t they want to simply let that happen?”
Trip’s shoulders sagged. “Right. And who can blame them? If Hu didn’t need to be made to rue the day, and the Red Chinese actually wanted the Wasteland, I’d be first in line to offer my negotiating skills for the surrender, for my usual sixty percent. The Wasteland needs civilizing, and bad. Indoor plumbing, at the very least.”
Rudy nodded. “There you go.”
Trip rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “Is it too much to ask that once–just once–people go along with one of my crazy schemes, no questions asked?”
“Probably.”
“Yeah. Damn it.”
“It’ll be okay, bro. –So can we go home now? I haven’t seen my wife in two weeks. She’s pregnant, you know. Oh, Shatner, I think I missed her birthday–”
“And give up?” Trip twitched and the Wound’s brakes slammed on. The inertia slid Rudy off his seat and his chest against the dash, his head whacking against the windshield. “How long have you been my brother?”
Rudy pushed away from the dash, separated his cheek from the windshield. “Too long.”
“And have I ever given up?”
“All the time.”
“Not this time. No. Hu has got to rue.”
Rudy sat back, pushed at his jaw until it cracked back into place. “Honestly, I don’t see how you’re gonna make that happen.”
“And that’s why,” Trip said, his left eyebrow twitching, putting the car into reverse, “you’re the sidekick.”
“Sidekick my ass.”
The Wound took off, backwards, and at a twitch from Trip the steering wheel jogged hard left, sending the car into a Rockford, spinning around 180 degrees. Rudy’s head went banging against the passenger door frame.
“Would you please knock that off? –Where are we going now?”
A maniacal glint to his eyes, Trip grinned at Rudy and twitched the Wound full into drive, her wheels kicking up bits of crumbled asphalt as she lurched forward. “Cthulists enclave.”
“Why bother?” Rudy asked, rubbing the side of his head with his palm. “The Cthulists aren’t stupid–they’ll see through your little con pretty instantly. And even if they don’t, they’re neutral. They’re not gonna want any part of a war. A real war, anyway.”
“Oh, yeah… in all the Hu excitement, forgot to tell you about that. The Cthulists ain’t neutral. They’re just biding their time.”
“What?”
“Yeah, turns out my feigned indignation and fake suspicion was on the money. Must be intuition. Damn, I’m good.” Trip smirked at himself in the rear view. “Anyway, the Cthulists… they’re evil. And trust me, they’re definitely gonna want in on this. And they won’t need to be conned.”
17
We’re Coming To Get You
“So, are they still out there?” WB-3 asked.
WB-4 crouched back down behind the stack of crushed, concrete-filled cars that served Shunk as a city wall. He dialed down the volume on his boombox head and pointed his speakers at his fellow robots, crouched along the raised scaffolding walkway that ran along the inside of the car-wall. “What do you think?”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” WB-3 said. He stood up, rubbing his knobby hydraulic knees. “I’m getting cramps.”
“What are you doing?” WB-2 asked as WB-3’s television head crested the top edge of the car wall. “Didn’t you hear 4? They’re still–”
“Pfft,” WB-3 said, and turned his betacams out over the wall, “they’re not still–”
There were thousands of them. Tens of thousands. A thick rabble of All-Mart refugees huddled around the city-state’s wall. Men, women, children. In tattered clothes, some still wearing the blue vests they wore as Associates within the All-Mart. And each and every one stood dead still, dirty, moonlit faces turned towards Shunk and droning this throaty, buzzing monotone.
WB-3 let out a startled shriek and ducked back down, throwing his arms over his head. “They’re still out there! Why didn’t somebody say they were still out there?”
“We need a plan,” WB-5 said. He opened his refrigerator stomach door.
“What we need is an escape route,” WB-4 said.
WB-5 pulled a Monopoly board from his vegetable crisper. “What do you think the plan is for?”
WB-3 took his arms from his head as WB-5 set up the game in front of them. “Plan or no plan, they’ve got the entire city surrounded. –Can I be the horsey?”
“We could dig a tunnel,” WB-1 suggested, a kitchen fork popping out of a slot on the top of his domed head.
“We wouldn’t get very far with that, I’m afraid,” WB-2 said.
“Oh…” WB-1 said. “Hey, I know! We could fly out.”
“Right, sure,” WB-4 said. “We’ll just flap our arms and hope gravity takes pity on us.”
“What?” WB-1 asked. “You don’t have jets?”
“You have jets?” WB-2 asked.
“Yeah, duh.” Flaps on either side of WB-1’s cylinder snapped open and out popped tiny cone-shaped rockets on flexible armatures. “See?”
“Well I’ll be… do they work?” WB-4 asked, poking one of the cones.
WB-1 giggled and wheeled back out of WB-4’s reach. “Probably.”
“Probably?” WB-2 asked.
“You don’t know?”
“Never tried ’em.”
“How could you not have tried them?” WB-4 asked. “They’re frickin’ jets.”
WB-1’s dome light dimmed sheepishly. “What if I’m programmed to be afraid of heights?”
“Just try ’em already,” WB-4 said. “If they put out enough thrust you can fly us all out of here.”
WB-1’s voice was unsure. “Okay… if I have to.” He retracted his middle third leg and straightened.
With a snapping hiss, bright blue flame erupted out the ends of the jet cones. A second later, WB-1 went screaming up a thousand feet into the night sky, arcing out over the wall, his cylindrical body spinning uncontrollably. After a brief ten-second flight, he crashed in the middle of the wheat fields beyond the throng of All-Mart refugees.
“Ooooouchhhhhh…” WB-1’s pained voice echoed through the valley.
“Huh,” WB-2 said, watching the twin smoke trails disperse in the wind, “so that’s why planes need wings.”
WB-5 tossed a pair of miss-matched dice onto the Monopoly board. “I wish Hunt-R was here.”
WB-3 looked up from counting a fistful of multi-colored Monopoly money. “He wouldn’t have a clue what to do, either.”
WB-5 picked up the shoe, moved it forward three spaces to Reading Railroad. “No, but we could set him on fire, toss him over the wall, and then run away in the confusion.” He held four blue fifties out at WB-2. “–Buying it.”
WB-2 took the money and handed him the card. “Figures he’s not around when we could actually use him.”
WB-6 bent down and scooped up the dice. “How flammable would you say you are?” he asked WB-2.
“Fuck off.” WB-2 put three of the fifties into the banker’s tray, surreptitiously slipping the fourth behind a hubcap breast. As a distraction, she glanced back towards the wall and asked: “What’s that sound they’re making? It’s really getting on my nerves.”
“It’s the Voice.” Lock stepped off the ladder onto the walkway, right onto the Monopoly board, crushing the stack of Chance cards under her kicker boot heel. “Or as close an approximation as human vocal chords can make, anyway.”
