Anti-Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  Felicity? Where the hell is Felicity?

  Then I see her, lying to Kayla’s side. Unconscious? God, she better only be unconscious.

  I find my feet, my sword, my will to fight. I go in low and hard, charging, bellowing. Gran has a gun. Felicity has no one. A squid comes at her. I go at it hard and fast. Screw the fact that the beast is twice the size of me, this thing is not messing up my love life. I can do that perfectly well on my own.

  My blade snicker-snacks through whirling limbs. Then a blow to my forehead sends the world spinning and I go to my knees. But at this point in life I can say I’ve lived through worse. I’m up, still yelling. I hack and slash. I get Robert E. Howard on its ass. If Felicity, lying at my feet, was wearing a chain mail bikini instead of a pants suit, then this would be some teenager’s midnight fantasy.

  As it is, I just get bitch slapped in the face with a milk carton.

  I come up in a rising blow. My blade catches the thing where its guts should be, and I just rip, tear into it, feeling the resistance on the blade and yelling at the joy of it. I wrench the sword free. Bottle caps, and oil, and foul putrescent water splash out in a gush. The thing wavers for a second, a great toppling tree suddenly sprung up in this desolate wasteland, and then it crashes to the floor. Timber, motherfucker.

  I spin around. Kayla is standing over Gran and Tabitha. Another squid corpse is down.

  “I thought you said I didn’t have to feckin’ worry about Gran.”

  And maybe she has a point, but she’s lacking a sense of timing.

  “Later,” I say. “We have to get to that goddamned temple.”

  The mecha are still thrashing away at big daddy squid, but the fight’s almost been beaten out of them. Limbs hang at angles. Servos spit sparks. I wish we could help, but I don’t think we can. I bend down, pick up Felicity. “Let’s move.”

  “Yeah,” says Kayla, “but I still don’t know where that feckin’ fourth one is.”

  Oh shi—

  It comes out of the ground and smashes into Kayla’s side. Like a train car emerging from nowhere. She flies through the air. A broken bird.

  The squid skids over the surface of the landfill. Gran opens fire. His bullets rip uselessly through the loose body. It whirls, tentacles held out in a flat arc, whipping through the air at obscene speed. I glimpse rusting chains, bicycle cogs, glass shards.

  In the split second before it hits me, I think how I never really took the time to truly appreciate the way my head is attached to my body. The neck is truly one of the body’s great unsung heroes.

  Then the limb explodes. Trash and shit form a stinging rain that breaks over me, but which, very noticeably, does not kill me.

  I blink in surprise as the roaring in my ears registers. And then I see Gina’s mecha sitting up, its one functional arm raised and pointing in my direction, smoke drifting from the still rotating barrels.

  Static buzzes from the bead in my ear.

  “Yippee, Kay—”

  And then the monster squid’s tentacle erupts through the mecha’s chest in a spray of steel and wires.

  Gina’s voice goes dead.

  25

  “Run!” Gran bellows. “Dude! Run!”

  But I stand for a moment. Stare. At the monster rising out of the ground. Joel’s mecha bounces, broken, along its long body. Its whirling tentacles spear Gina’s machine, lift it high into the air, and then, dismissively, flip it away. Gina’s mecha lands like a meteor, metal booming and breaking.

  The squid circles, looking for fresh meat.

  “Run!”

  Finally life comes back to my legs. I spin, Felicity’s unconscious weight on my shoulder giving me momentum. Gran and Tabitha are dragged by Kayla as she accelerates at ridiculous speed toward the temple.

  I have to run.

  So I do. Felicity’s body bounces awkwardly, slowing me.

  Behind me—a roar like a speaker blowing out. A roar that I feel in my gut. And the monster squid has found its prey.

  “Run!”

  The temple is so close. I can see the distance between myself and its shadow shrinking. Shrinking.

  “Run!”

  Yes. Yes. I got that goddamned memo. But it is hot, and the ground is loose, and Felicity, though I would never tell her, is kind of heavy—

  “Run!”

  Hell to that. I dive, a short stunted arc through the air, skidding over the ground, ripping my suit and my skin on the jagged ground.

  I feel something massive move behind me. The whisper of the air the thing displaces.

  A tidal wave of trash hits my legs, barrels me forward, rolling me over Felicity, her over me, driving us forward. Into darkness.

  There is a crash as the leaping squid lands on the far side of the temple.

  Felicity and I lie just inside its doorway. I pant, gasp, and bleed.

  Someone comes and stands over me. “Come on. Get up then. We haven’t got all feckin’ day.” Kayla.

  “You know,” I say, once I have finished getting up, and groaning, and making sure nothing is going to try and kill me in the next two seconds, “I think I preferred it when you were more belligerent and less lippy.”

  “Never underestimate my ability to remove your balls any time I feckin’ choose to do so.”

  I decide to abandon conversation and get my bearings.

  The temple, such as it is, is really just a small dark room that smells like shit. On the plus side, the squid seems reluctant to come in.

  Felicity is still unconscious at my feet. I kneel and press a hand to her forehead. It is damp with sweat, but I can see the gentle rise and fall of her chest. “Do we have any water?” I ask.

  No one answers me. I glance over my shoulder. “Is everyone OK?”

  Tabitha and Gran are crouched against one wall. Tabitha leans forward, looking around Kayla. “All right,” she says. “No thanks to you.”

  This, I feel, is kind of unjustified. “I seem to remember hacking apart several more squid than you did.”

  “Funny,” she says. “None of the ones threatening me.” She snorts. I can’t tell if it’s of anger or derision. “Felicity did OK.”

  This again?

  “Kayla had you,” I protest.

  “Priorities,” is all Tabitha says in return.

  “Look,” I say, standing up. “We are standing in what is supposedly the home base of a man who just sent magic trash squid to kill us, is this really the time to do this?”

  “Dude has a point,” Gran says.

  Tabitha growls, but seems prepared to let the subject drop. Which lets me get back to the important concern of my unconscious girlfriend.

  “Dude,” says Gran, as I kneel, “is it really time for that?”

  I look over at him. “She’s our director. And there’s nothing here. We’re trapped in a trash temple, and I think her consciousness could really help us.”

  “There’s stairs,” Kayla says.

  “What?” I peer into the gloom. It’s a one-story structure. I have no idea what anyone is talking about.

  “Shaw. Only eyes for her. Self-imposed blindness.” Tabitha, it seems, is not completely over that.

  “In the floor, dude,” Gran says. “Next to me and the dudette. This place goes subterranean, man.”

  So we need to entomb ourselves in crap to find Clyde? Fantastic. Still, I’m not sure that devalues my original point. “We could still use Felicity’s help.”

  “We should get this job done, man.”

  He’s being insistent. And he had my back with Tabitha despite their… well, who knows what that relationship is exactly. But I would guess they are further along the sliding scale of intimacy than Bert and Ernie. So maybe he’s coming from a fairly rational point of view.

  “Someone will have to carry her,” I say finally.

  “Not a problem.” Kayla bends and hefts Felicity without apparent effort. She looks a little bruised and battered in the dim light, but otherwise she seems no worse for wear.

/>   “All right then, let’s do this.”

  We descend. The smell, and the heat, and the darkness intensify. Felicity lets out a dull moan, but when I check her, she’s still out. I whisper her name. Kayla shushes me.

  Gran produces a flashlight with a red bulb. He sweeps it down the stairs, lighting a corridor.

  “Dudes, you smell that?” he asks.

  “Way too much,” I whisper back.

  “No, man.” He shakes his head. “Not that. Something sweet.”

  I have been doing my best to avoid inhaling. After a moment to steel myself, I take a sniff. The pungent smell of decay is still nearly overwhelming, but he’s right, there is an edge of sweetness to it. Something almost floral.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  We hit the corridor. It has distinct mine shaft qualities. If the tunnels in mine shafts were dug through geological strata of human shit, anyway. Here is a rich seam of old batteries. Here we can extract all the decomposing orange juice cartons we’ll ever need.

  After a short distance the floor grows spongy. Just as my gag reflex is about to kick in, Gran flicks his light down and I see… “Is that moss?”

  Gran reaches down, touches it. He is a braver man than I. He pulls up a tuft and holds it to his nose. “Yeah, dude. Smells fresh.”

  How did Alice get out of Wonderland again?

  The tunnel twists and turns. I lose my sense of where we are. Tabitha flicks open her laptop and eyes it like it’s a Geiger counter. “Wireless signal. Still none,” she says. She’s clutching her foil bonnet in the same hand that holds the laptop.

  Another twist in the corridor, and suddenly we can see faint light coloring the walls. The edges of old crisp packets glisten in reflected light. The moss feels thicker.

  “What the hell?” I say.

  We approach the turn cautiously. But there’s no denying it. Light is shining. It has a blue, slightly harsh edge. Like sunlight on an autumn day. It would be out of place on top of the landfill, let alone this many feet beneath its surface.

  “Lock and totally load, man,” says Gran, pulling his pistol.

  I seem to remember him promising me we would try and talk to Version 2.0 first. Still, wariness is probably the better part of valor. I pull my gun too.

  We go round the corner as a pair, guns extended. But there is no boom or crash. There are no golems leaping out of walls. No mindless men.

  There is a garden.

  The ceiling is lined with lightbulbs. The same natural light ones Felicity has in her windowless office to keep her orchids healthy. But so many more. It turns the filthy roof into an artificial sky. Beneath it, roses bloom, bushes thrive. Azalea, hydrangea, lily, species that exceed my grip on plant names. The place is lush and suddenly the warmth seems almost comforting. I reach out and run my hands through spiky leaves of a yew bush. They feel soft and delicate against my palm.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “Trap,” Tabitha says, but she sounds hesitant this time.

  “I don’t know, dudette.” Gran looks around, a puzzled look on his face.

  I look up at the fake sky once more. Bulbs. Which means a power source. And if this is Version 2.0’s true home, he is not a man who wanders among the rose bushes. He is a machine. A program. He needs computing power. I shield my eyes from the glare, and try to look beyond, to the truth beneath.

  “Electric wires,” I say, pointing. “Leading that way.” My finger follows the path of the wires toward the back of the garden cave. “They’ll lead us to him.”

  Guns still drawn, we press on. Our path takes us down a second corridor floored with moss. It has ivy walls too. The same flat bright light as the garden has above us. I can see how filthy we look, how out of place we are surrounded by this beauty.

  Two more garden caves, each beautiful, but we’re heading downhill the whole way, so I’m not yet convinced this is a wild goose chase. And finally, a door, wooden, covered in chipped turquoise paint—the sort that you find in either a high-end catalog or in a rotting shed at the back of an overgrown yard.

  “If that’s another one of those feckin’ DARPA locks…” Kayla starts.

  But I turn the handle and the door opens easily.

  The room beyond is oddly devoid of leaves, petals, and roots. It almost comes as a surprise now. And a disappointment. Not that the room is a return to the refuse world we descended through. But now organic lushness is replaced with old world opulence. Heavy furniture thick with scroll work is scattered about the room. Thick rugs lie on the floor. Tapestries hang on the walls.

  Against the far wall, raised up a little, like a throne upon a dais, is a daybed. Velvet pillows and cushions are piled upon it. And there, perched in this fabric nest, reclines a young girl.

  The girl stares at us, serious and unsmiling. She is Mexican, I think. Around eight or nine—round cheeked, and her black hair cut in a bob, held back by a black velvet headband. She wears something that resembles a school uniform.

  She looks up as we come in.

  “Oh good,” she says. “You made it. I was a bit worried.”

  26

  I push sweat-slick hair from my eyes, and consider whether I am really the sort of man who can point a gun at a child. I am not. But I don’t put the thing back in its holster.

  The girl blinks. “OK, I can see, given what you had to go through to get here, that might seem a little disingenuous, but I really am glad. Cross my heart. I really promise that I did want to see you all again before the end.”

  “You’re, like, under arrest,” Gran informs the girl.

  Except it’s not a girl, is it? Oh, Clyde. Oh, Jesus. A girl? A child? My fists are shaking. What was she doing? What made that seem OK?

  “Not to be overly antagonistic,” says the child with Clyde’s clear plummy English tones, “—and I do realize that’s a little hard to totally ignore but if we could—de-emphasize it—what I was going to say is that you can’t arrest me.”

  Gran makes a scoffing noise.

  “Well,” Version 2.0 says, “there’s the whole issue with jurisdiction and you not having it. And anyway, I am not here to fight you, no matter how this seems. I’m here as an ambassador.”

  “Technically and stuff,” Gran says, “you have to be, like, recognized as a state by the UN to have an ambassador.”

  The girl that is Clyde cocks her head. “I don’t want to be a wording maven. Though I’m sure they have their place in society. No judgment on their chosen craft, just not something that coincides with my current interests. But, what I was trying to say is—do you really think you are going to be able to negotiate better terms with me based on a lexical technicality?”

  I keep staring at the little girl speaking another man’s words. Like a human loudspeaker. It makes my gorge rise. “What the hell, Clyde?” I say. “What the hell?”

  “Well…” the girl says, “technically speaking I’m not the Clyde you are referring to.” She is very self-assured. Very calm. “I realize it’s a little confusing, and I wish I had the time to explain everything fully, I really do, but for now let’s suffice it to say that I am just an affiliate of the one you called 2.0. An incomplete copy of the whole.”

  An affiliate? Jesus. Version 2.0 is franchising his brain now?

  And somehow none of this seems to have distracted Agent Gran from his lexical arguments. “Little dude,” he says, “if you think this is a negotiation, you should be, like, aware that the US government totally doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

  The girl sighs. It’s an overly dramatic gesture. A little girl’s gesture. Jesus.

  “Again, I am going to have to get all definitional with you. And I’m not trying to insult anyone’s intelligence, or anything at all like that. Please don’t think I am. I just want us to be clear about terms. There could totally be confusion on my part too. I’m more than happy to admit that. But when you call me a terrorist, Agent Gran,” says the girl, “that, to me at least, suggests you think there’s a power
differential in your favor. And I really want to assure you that’s not the case in any way. And this is very presumptuous of me, I know, and I’m sorry about that, but I think you’ve got this all backwards. It’s typical of me really. Not explaining things right. I should begin at the beginning. Set out precedents and all that.”

  God, it’s so like listening to him it hurts. If I closed my eyes I could almost believe that this was the old days, Clyde doing some eerily accurate impression of a little girl.

  “So,” says the little girl that is Clyde, “with apologies for being such a stickler about this, but just to make sure we are all clear on this: I am not negotiating my surrender with you. You are negotiating it with me. Does that make sense?”

  “Can I kill it yet?” Kayla asks. She’s lain Felicity down and has her sword gripped in two hands.

  Maybe I should say yes. Everything about this feels wrong. The world spinning on the wrong axis.

  “What’s going on, Clyde?” I ask. “Why are you doing this?” It feels wrong to call the little girl Clyde. But what else do I call her?

  The little girl turns to me. And there is a look of such fondness on her face. It’s an awful thing to see.

  “Oh,” she says. “The whole questions and motives thing. I skipped that, didn’t I? And that’s the whole point of this in a way too. So you can understand. It probably shouldn’t be important to me, but it is. You and me… Well… We were good friends, right, Arthur?”

  “I…” My throat is thick. I can’t get words out. “I…” I try again. “My friend,” I manage. “This.” I gesticulate at him. At her. At the body. “He wouldn’t do this.”

  I sound like Tabitha. Maybe, despite appearances, she is actually frozen in the grip of overwhelming emotions twenty-four-seven.

  I glance over at her. And she is frozen now. Her mouth works slowly. Something is building in her, I think. And when it blows, it will not be good.

  “This girl?” Version 2.0, or the franchise of it, or whatever, is addressing me. “Do you know what this girl’s future held, Arthur? I mean, she was barely held together when I found her.” There is the sound of outrage in his voice. More emotion and anger than I’ve ever seen in Clyde before. “She grew up here. In this filth. Her whole life drowning in the toxins of humanity. She was more disease than human. She was dying too. Slowly and painfully. Day by day. She has cancer, Arthur. She’s riddled with it. She’ll last another week or two. And it would have been awful. Awful. And now she doesn’t feel anything. She doesn’t know. She’s not here anymore. I gave her peace, Arthur. It was the only thing anyone decent could give her. And there are no decent people here, Arthur. None at all. And I know you had to go through hell to get here, and I’m sorry for that, but all I can say is that you don’t guard your home with squid golems when you’re surrounded by wonderful people.”