by David Wong
Zoey said, “It’s been a weird week.”
Into some unseen communicator, Scott said, “They’re here. Ballroom.” Then he looked at Will and shook his head. “A fake bomb? What, did you make it out of papier-mâché? You know, you guys seem to have spent a long time on this plan and I got to say I got no clue whatsoever what it was tryin’ to accomplish.”
Will shrugged. “It looked better on paper.” Will made a show of looking at his watch. “Speaking of which, we should go stand somewhere else. Sooner rather than later. Like, say, in the next six minutes.”
Scott said, “I sense you’re just waitin’ for me to ask you what happens in six minutes. So…”
“A very big boom. The nuke was fake, of course, the fabricator doesn’t have the ability to create a city-destroying device. But the blast that vaporized Arthur’s warehouse, we can both agree that was real?”
Scott said, “Mmm hmm.”
“That’s because the fabricator does have, in its memory, the ability to fabricate a self-destruct device—one big enough to turn a city block into a crater. After Molech broke into his warehouse, Arthur set his machine to make just such a device. Well, about ten minutes ago, we set this machine to do the same.”
Zoey studied Scott’s face. It was interesting to watch all of the various stages of emotion wash over it. On one hand, the guy knew for a fact that Will Blackwater was a world-class liar and con man. He had no doubt been told by his own boss to automatically dismiss anything Will said as a falsehood or some other attempt at manipulation, no matter what it was. So the first expression was mild amusement, the way you react to the clumsy lie of a child.
But here’s the thing—lying would have become useless thousands of years ago if countering it was as simple as dismissing the liars completely. The really good liars were like chemists, brewing formulas that were mostly truth, the toxins undetectable in the mixture. So in just three seconds, Zoey watched Scott’s face transition from amusement to concern, as he started to weigh the possibility that Will was in fact telling the truth—after all, it was perfectly possible, and even logical, to do what he was claiming to have done. It would prevent the mansion from falling into Molech’s hands, along with whatever valuables or secrets were stored within, and would force Scott to make a call about what to do with his hostages. It was totally the kind of thing Will Blackwater would do.
To help drive it home, Will said, “I’m not going to let Molech move in and sleep in Arthur’s bed. Five minutes from now, this is going to be a crater, no matter what we do. So let’s not be stupid. Let’s get out of the blast radius and plug our ears. I liked Arthur a lot, but I have no intention of dying the same way he did. But I will, if you insist—as you said yourself, the alternative is months of slow torture at the hands of your rotbrain employer. An instant death that I don’t even feel? That’s pretty much my best-case scenario at this point. So which of us has something to lose?”
Scott shook his head, grinning. “I mean this with all honesty. People say Molech is bad, but you, Blackwater, you’re ten times worse. We may burn in hell but the devil gonna greet you like an old friend.”
Will sipped his drink. “You’re a smart man, Scott, and I respect you. You could have probably worked for us, under other circumstances. So I say, forget Molech. Let’s you and I work out an agreement to—”
Scott swung the pipe, and smashed it into Will Blackwater’s skull.
Blood sprayed across a nearby marshmallow snowman, and Will Blackwater collapsed to the floor with a sickening thud.
He did not move.
Zoey screamed.
SIXTY-SEVEN
She ran toward the caterpillar, or as much of a run as she could manage, anyway. Scott grabbed her by the back of the shirt, yanked her and threw her back across the room. She crashed into a peppermint elf, her shattered ribs sending jets of fire across her torso. She coughed up blood.
Scott said, “Why don’t you just sit tight for a sec. We’re gonna wait for Molech to get here, right about…” Scott held a finger in the air. “Now.”
The wall behind them exploded. Chunks of plaster rained down on Scott and Zoey, and a cold wind rushed in from the courtyard. Molech strode through the dust cloud, brushing bits of plaster off of his superhero costume. At least five henchmen had followed him, all of them looked greatly amused.
Molech glanced down at where Will was sprawled, then looked at Scott.
“What, you started without me?”
“What can I say. Juice don’t wait.”
“That it does not.”
Molech loomed over Zoey. She tried to back away, scooting backward on her butt, nowhere to go. Molech watched with annoyed disdain.
“Tell me, piglet, what story were you telling yourself up to now? What world did you think you were living in? Don’t you get that I’ve been preparing my whole life for this? What have you been preparing for? Don’t bother—I actually know the answer to that question, and you don’t. See, a gazelle goes out and eats grass because it thinks it’s feeding itself. But it’s not. It’s feeding the lion. It’s fattening itself up, to be food. It doesn’t know it, but it was born to be prey—that is its only purpose. So what purpose do you think a dumb trailer turd with no self-esteem and big tits serves, in a world of true men? Maybe I’ll let one of my boys show you. Maybe I’ll let all of them show you.”
Zoey said, “It’s like you have Rape Threat Tourette’s Syndrome.”
“My favorite part? It’s that exact moment when the defiance turns into terror. About fifteen seconds from now, I’d say.”
Zoey reared back and kicked him as hard as she could in the groin, but it appeared the codpiece wasn’t just decorative. Molech didn’t even flinch.
“Well,” he said, “just for that…”
Molech raised up a boot, brought it down, and effortlessly snapped Zoey’s right leg below the knee. Both bones splintered, jutting out of the skin. Zoey was unable to scream, she had torn up her vocal chords too much. She could only lay there, and squeeze her eyes and try to block out the pain. To block out everything.
On the other side of the room, the caterpillar clunked and hissed and wound down. A beep announced its production of object “Zoey” was finished. A little late for that, she thought.
Zoey forced herself to look down and, for the first time, saw part of the inside of her own body, white bone jutting out around ragged muscle and fat from her lower leg, blood soaking through her ripped jeans. She felt herself about to pass out, when she heard a soft meow. Stench Machine had arrived, having tracked down his wounded owner a second time, there to offer whatever assistance he could. It didn’t amount to much.
Zoey hugged him and Molech said, “T-Bone, kill that goddamned cat.”
Zoey’s scream of protest was barely a sound, but she couldn’t stop it. The henchman known as T-Bone reached for Stench Machine, but the cat slipped out of his grasp, streaking away through the ragged hole in the wall Molech had punched open.
T-Bone giggled as he watched him go, but Molech said, “No, go get it. I want you to pull it apart in front of her.”
Zoey said, “Please don’t. Just … please.”
“Go get the cat.”
T-Bone obeyed, chuckling as he ran into the courtyard.
To Scott, Molech said, “You got the camera? Good. Frame me up. This is about to become the Zoey Show.”
Scott brought up the camera, and they arranged the scene to get Molech in the foreground, with the shattered Zoey in the background. They had to pause to move a table out of the way. Then Molech insisted on getting the feed to play on the wall, so he could check it from time to time, see how it all looked.
Finally they got it arranged to Molech’s satisfaction and he said into the camera, “All right, everybody, we got a little off track with our show, but’s all good now. I’m glad this happened, really. I prefer things to be a bit more intimate, if you know what I mean.”
T-Bone reappeared at the ragged hole in the wall an
d said, “Man, there’s a bunch of trees and stuff out there. That cat is gon—”
There was a roar, and a white blur, and suddenly everyone was shouting.
T-Bone was on his back, with a white Siberian tiger on top of him, ripping his throat out.
Amidst the chaos, Zoey rolled over, and tried to move. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. The pain had blown out the circuits in her brain, she couldn’t even tell if she was feeling it anymore. She dragged herself on her elbows, toward the caterpillar. One of her splintered leg bones got caught against a chair leg, and she passed out.
She had no idea how long she was out. Maybe a few seconds. When she woke up again, it was to the sound of screams, tiger roars, and heavy, meaty punches. She dragged herself again, toward the caterpillar, toward the chute at the end. Nothing on her body worked other than her arms—everything was either numbness or blinding pain. She pulled herself along the black and white checkerboard tile, so slowly, the second time in this ordeal she had felt like she was living one of those nightmares where you run and run and never reach the end of the hall, some horror lurking behind you.
Zoey reached the chute, stopped to breathe, and to try to focus her eyes. Behind her, she heard horrific sounds of a man killing a wild animal. She glanced back and saw Molech stand and laugh, blood on his metal fists. She didn’t have much time. She had no time. They would notice her; they would be on her in one second.
Zoey pushed herself up on her hands, unable to stand. She pulled herself up so she could reach into the into the caterpillar’s delivery basket. She reached in, blindly, and grabbed the object the catalog of schematics knew only as “Zoey.”
It was a football helmet.
Zoey thought, that bastard, and blacked out.
SIXTY-EIGHT
She forced her eyes open. Once more, she had no idea how much time had passed. She looked over and found Will Blackwater on the floor, limbs askew, his head oozing blood. Not far away, the white tiger lay dead, along with two shirtless men. Molech’s numbers were only increasing, though—ten or so henchmen had joined the party. Not that Molech needed their help.
Zoey sat up, her back to the caterpillar, the stupid football helmet in her lap. It didn’t even look like a real, regulation helmet. It was like a toy one, for a kid. She wanted to cry, but didn’t have it in her.
Molech noticed the movement and strode up to her, clenching his bloody robot fists. Scott was tracking him with the camera.
“I want to thank you and your tiger-owning father for giving me the most amazing piece of highlight video I’ll ever make. I’m probably the first human in ten thousand years to punch a tiger to death. Now, I hope you’ll forgive the delay, while you were out, I let my fans vote for what I would do to you. Want to guess what the overwhelming majority voted for? Because it’s winning by a ten to one margin over the next choice.”
A couple of the henchmen laughed. Zoey’s looked down at her ruined leg, transfixed by the sight of the leg bone’s exposed gooey pink center. Her vision was pulsing red, blooming with each heartbeat.
Scott said, “Skyline feed is back, too. We’re now live, everywhere. All the feeds consolidating right here, right now. Audience is sitting at one billion, with a ‘B.’”
Zoey tried to think, but the thoughts were shadowy figures barely glimpsed in a thick fog of pain. She could think of nothing else but the original plan. The one that so far hadn’t exactly been a raging success.
She swallowed a pint of blood and said, “We have … a kill switch.”
“Piglet, if that existed, you’d have punched it already. Now, I have a strangely specific request from my fans here. I’m going to need you to roll over.”
“Wait!” Zoey jammed the stupid football helmet on her head. It was still warm, from the machine. “This, uh, helmet! It’s the magic protection helmet! You can’t hurt anybody wearing this!”
Molech held out his metal hands. “Come on. This is just sad.”
He reached down, grabbing her blood-soaked shirt, as if to tear it off.
“No! Stop! STOP!”
Zoey squeezed her eyes shut, and waited.
And waited.
For a moment that never came.
After ten seconds she pulled her swollen eyes open again, and Molech was standing there, completely frozen. Every part of his body, save for his face, which was contorting itself in rage and confusion, fist still clutching her shirt.
Scott, sensing his boss was in distress, rushed over.
Zoey turned toward him and again said, “Stop!” and he, also, stopped.
She backed up on her elbows, pulling her shirt free of Molech’s frozen fingers.
“Oh. Oh, wow. Oh my god. It works. The helmet … oh my god our stupid lie was true. It really was. Okay. It’s voice operated. Um … everybody freeze.”
The dozen henchmen froze, almost comically. One guy was frozen in mid-run, like a living sports poster a kid would have on his bedroom wall, and immediately toppled over. One guy’s hand was frozen on his crotch, like he’d been in the middle of scratching himself.
Their mouths still worked, as crotch guy squinted and said, “Am I the only one who’s paralyzed right now? Is there a reboot or something I need to do here…”
Zoey said, “Okay. Um … everyone start spanking yourselves.”
There was no response to this command, as that one apparently hadn’t been programmed into the system. Zoey was deeply disappointed in Arthur but realized she needed to keep her eyes on the bigger picture.
Molech said to her, “Just deactivate the implants. Just turn them off completely. I’ll take on everyone you’ve got with my own body, my own brain. Come on, me against whoever you can summon with your daddy’s money. Take away the gadgets, I’ll show you who the better man is.”
Instead, Zoey said, “Scott, throw the camera.”
He didn’t. Another command that his body apparently didn’t understand.
“Uh … throw your left arm forward and open your hand.”
That worked. He chucked the camera past Zoey, where it crashed against the caterpillar. Up on the wall feed, the view scrambled and went to black. Blink immediately switched to the second most popular feed—incredibly, it was inside the League of Badass van, which was at this moment rumbling toward the courtyard. These idiots just did not give up.
The van slid to a stop near the gazebo, the group bumbling out of the sliding side door with their medieval weapons in hand. Zoey saw for the first time that they were chasing two figures—Andre, still in his stupid costume, and Echo. They had led them back to the estate, either accidentally or on purpose, and had ditched their escape motorcycle outside the fence. Andre, Zoey noted, still had a single cat stuck to his back.
To Molech, Zoey said, “What would you do, if you were me, right now? Command your robot hands to rip out your own throat? Pull your head off? Maybe do it slow, have you pull your own guts out of your belly? Spread the video of it far and wide, so everybody knows not to mess with me?”
Molech said nothing. His muscles were flexing, veins popping, trying to move the frozen machinery in his joints. At best, he could just wiggle his shoulders slightly.
Zoey continued, “And then some cohort of yours, some ’roided up lizard brain who’s sitting on his sofa right now cleaning his guns, he sees that video and he comes to get payback. And then the whole thing starts all over. Forever and ever, blood on top of blood, until somebody finally takes a breath and decides to just … let it go.”
There was a ruckus behind Molech as Andre stumbled through the hole in the wall, eyes wide, trying to make sense of the bizarre, frozen standoff taking place between Zoey and the array of shirtless men menacing her. Echo popped through immediately after, but there was no moment of confusion on her part. She saw the injured Zoey and flew toward her, actually skidding the last few steps, sliding on the tile floor and gracefully ending up in a kneeling position next to Zoey. The bitch trying to upstage her.
Echo said, “We
have to get a splint on this—”
Zoey waved her off. “All right,” Zoey said to the frozen Molech, “we’ve got a brief window of privacy before the audience joins back in. Here’s what’s going to happen. Those dumb people in the van are going to pile through that hole in the wall at any moment. At that point, you can surrender and apologize, or threaten them and get shot with arrows. But it’s your call. Each of you. Stand down and live, or go out in a blaze of supervillain glory. I don’t care either way. I’m going to pass out now.”
Zoey lay back, wondering who all had been watching this ordeal. Her mother? Caleb? Bella? Carla Dubois, the slut who had stolen her boyfriend in eighth grade? Stench Machine sauntered up, sniffed her mutilated leg, and curled up and went to sleep at her hip.
As she slipped out of consciousness, Zoey heard the faint sound of shouted warnings, angry threats in reply, and primitive weapons impaling flesh. The last thing she heard was Black Scott saying, “Nah, man, I don’t even know these assholes.”
SIXTY-NINE
The cast on Zoey’s leg was always gently vibrating, something about using ultrasound to stimulate the growth of bone tissue, they’d said. It was barely noticeable unless you laid your hand right against the cast, but the effect was still maddening. The leg had needed one six-hour surgery, her rib another. But her face and teeth had needed three times as much work—everything from the neck up was bandages or purple bruises. But at least her face wouldn’t require six weeks of physical therapy, as she was told the leg would.
She was doing her recuperating at the Casa De Zoey. They had turned one of the guest rooms into a hospital room—complete with adjustable bed, monitoring equipment, and a handsome around-the-clock nurse named Abel. Which wasn’t as sexy as it sounds, considering he had to help her to the toilet six times a day.
Otherwise, Zoey was keeping to her New Year’s Day tradition of watching nine straight hours of basketball. It was the third quarter of the first game of the triple-header, Zoey’s Denver Nuggets on the road versus the Chicago Bulls. Andre was in a chair next to her, his feet propped up on her bed. Andre was eating a burger Carlton had made for him, one whose bun was somehow constructed of two flat lumps of fried macaroni and cheese. Zoey, fresh off of two rounds of oral surgery, was on an all-liquid diet, and had somehow gained three pounds as a result. Right now the liquid was some Russian imported beer Andre had brought with him.
