Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick

by David Wong

  “It’s seven,” said the mortician. “Seven other lives, eight total, were saved due to Tilley’s donations.”

  “Rich people’s lives,” said Zoey. “Those organs were sold, not given.”

  Will said, “And the proceeds from those sales were used to buy more organs, so more lives could be saved. Plus Shae and her mother have a new home—”

  “Sure, sure,” interrupted Zoey. “One question. What’s the profit margin on this, for me? Like if they make four million dollars in profit from this deal, what’s my cut, how much actually goes into my pocket? Ten percent? Four hundred thousand dollars?”

  “No, it wouldn’t be anything close to that. Margins are much—”

  “One percent?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is it twenty-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-three dollars?”

  “What?”

  “What I’m asking you, Will, is did a poor, distraught man die, and give up his organs, so I could get rid of an annoying noise in my air conditioner?”

  Will looked genuinely exasperated. “You can’t look at it that way.”

  “Why not?”

  Echo said, “The Midnight Feast feed is going live.”

  Will glanced at his phone, then walked out and brought the feed up on one of the big monitors in the comfy room. A room where, Zoey now realized, people came to party, knowing that they would never see the sun again. The last walls they’d ever set their eyes on.

  Zoey jumped to her feet and was moving toward the monitor when Echo moved quickly to get in the way. “No. Turn around. Will, shut it off.”

  Zoey said, “No, I have to watch. I’ve changed my—”

  “No. There’s nothing to be gained. Will?”

  Will studied the monitor, narrowing his eyes like he was looking for clues, trying to see the truth behind what was on the screen. Thinking. If he’d heard Echo, he showed no sign.

  Echo spun Zoey around and hustled her farther back into the surgical suite. A voice on the feed welcomed everyone, announced that the slaughter was about to begin. Zoey squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in Echo’s shoulder. She smelled like sweat and fruity skin cream.

  She would fix the memory of her cat in her mind, and that’s what she would cling to. Curling up with him, pushing her face into his fur. Not these kids doing … whatever they were about to do. Holding him down, breaking his neck, skinning him, cooking him …

  “I’m so sorry,” said Marti, from somewhere behind her. “I’m so sorry.”

  Echo said, “Will! Turn it off.”

  She yelled it this time. Zoey had never heard that tone from her before.

  Will said, “All right, all right,” but before he could cut the feed, Zoey heard a scream.

  A human scream.

  Zoey’s scream. Her own voice, coming from the monitor, begging them to stop.

  She said, “Wait,” and pushed away from Echo. She moved into the lounge and saw on the monitor a video feed that was clear and crisp. Too much so, a sheen of artificiality. It was a feed from within the digitally-generated world of the Hub.

  A bunch of The Blowback dickholes in their elaborate armor stood around a banquet table. Lying on the table was the cow-spider monstrosity that was the Hub version of Zoey Ashe. One of The Blowback kids was gleefully stabbing into her body with an elaborate dagger.

  Zoey, the real one, said, “What the hell is this?”

  Marti seemed confused by the question. “They’ve got you. There’s nothing you can do. They’ve severed control.”

  “I’m several layers of confusion behind even that. Is this the feast?”

  “Well … yeah.”

  On-screen, one of Spider Cow Zoey’s hooves were being sawed off by another guy with a butcher knife, while the digital Zoey shrieked. He took a cartoonish bite out of it. A three-digit number appeared in midair and floated away, like a ghost.

  “I don’t know what I’m looking at. They’re eating my Hub avatar? Why?”

  “They won the Battle of the Molten Sea. They overran your estate. Over a thousand users, each commanding a division of a thousand NPC warriors, a million ground troops versus nearly half a million in the garrison. Took it with a flanking maneuver that locked up the AI on most of your bots until the wyverns could burn their supply caches. Fought all the way through them, breached the walls, took down the elite throne room guardians. Captured you, paraded you through the city. Did you not stay logged on for any of that?”

  “I don’t even know what any of that means. What are those numbers?”

  Marti looked at her like she had just asked which end of the human the pizza goes into.

  “Spoils. The currency, in the Hub?”

  “Okay?”

  “You were worth over ten million of them. You lose it all, forever, there’s no way to get it back. You have to start all over with a new character. You’ll start as a naked peasant.”

  “I don’t care. Like I said, I don’t ever go in there.”

  “Then who was controlling your side?”

  “I don’t know.” Zoey watched as an entire leg was removed and cut into smaller pieces for other diners.

  “Okay, then what did you think this was?” asked Marti. “The feast and all that?”

  “I thought they were going to eat my cat.”

  “What? No. Ew. Who eats cats? What is it with the cat?”

  “They sent people to my house. They had a drone, it flashed a big hologram meme at me.”

  “Well … yeah. To rub it in your face, that you were getting owned in the Hub. Wasn’t that obvious?”

  Zoey turned to Will. “So this whole thing was happening in the Hub. You know, the place I kept asking you to infiltrate, and you kept blowing me off because you thought it was dumb and pointless?”

  Echo said, “Hey, the VOP just figured out the fake helicopter is fake. A, uh, stray dog came along and dragged the tarp off. With a little work they’ll be able to reverse engineer the path the real helicopter took. They’re coming.”

  “Recall ours,” said Will. “Have it pick us up as close to this building as possible.”

  Marti asked, “Am I free to go?”

  “You can go when I get my cat back,” said Zoey, sharply.

  Echo said, “Zoey, we can’t keep him.”

  “No, she’s right,” said Will. “There’s no reason to give him up without getting something in return, especially if Chobb has Budd and Andre. One way or the other, we need to force Chobb to the table. Work out a deal, get him to call this off.”

  “And by call this off,” said Zoey, “you mean call off not giving my cat back.”

  That reminded Zoey—Knockoff Stench Machine needed water. There was a sink in the surgery room. She filled a shallow metal tray from the sink (it was probably used to weigh organs or something, but he wouldn’t mind) and let him out to get a drink.

  Watching her, Marti said, “I really don’t think my dad has your cat.”

  “Then he’d better find him, if he wants his son back.”

  Marti paused for a beat and said, “I don’t think that’s as scary a threat as you think it is.”

  “What does that mean? That your daddy doesn’t love you? Well guess what, Marti, he’s mobilized an entire army to come wipe us out because we have you.”

  “My dad is coming for you because he can’t be seen as weak. He hates weakness. He hates me. This whole thing he’s had to do with the liver … he acts like it’s my fault. Like I didn’t try hard enough.”

  “That’s very sad for you. My father abandoned me and my mom to a life of poverty, then when he died he bequeathed me a city full of powerful enemies. People like your father, in fact. And while your father may not care about you, I do care about my cat and I care very much about psychopaths taking my loved ones because they think it’s some kind of game. Well, if your dad wants to play, I’ll play.”

  Echo said, “I’m getting a call from the estate.”

  Zoey grunted. “Oh,
what fresh hell is this?”

  Zoey, Will, and Echo crowded around Echo’s phone. On the screen appeared Carlton the butler.

  He was holding Stench Machine.

  35

  Marti leaned over to see and said, “Isn’t that your cat?”

  “Is that really him?” gasped Zoey. “Oh my god, how did you do it? Oh my god…”

  “I was preparing a late dinner for myself,” said Carlton, “a nice piece of trout. He must have gotten hungry. Came out and hopped onto the counter.”

  “Where in the hell had he been?”

  “I of course do not know.”

  “Why was he hiding this whole time? Why wouldn’t he come out before, when we were looking for him?”

  “Of course I cannot know that, either, but I would daresay that your cat may be something of an asshole.”

  Zoey felt a relief so profound that she was almost floating. It didn’t last.

  “Wait, so, this was all for nothing? Everything we did?”

  Wu said, “We should be thinking in terms of extraction right now. How far out is the helicopter?”

  Echo checked. “Two minutes.”

  Zoey motioned to Marti. “All right. Go home to your dick father. I don’t care.”

  Will said, “That’s the wrong move.”

  “We’re not making moves anymore, Will. Our moves just make things worse. If they really do have Budd and Andre, we’ll work something out. Maybe he’ll see this as a show of goodwill. No capital W there.”

  Echo said, “Just to confirm, it does appear that every available Vanguard of Peace vehicle and operative in the city has been rerouted to this location.”

  “Right. Let’s get out of here.” Zoey nudged the stray cat back into his crate and headed up the stairs.

  “This isn’t complicated,” said Will from behind her. “Chobb has to strike back whether we give back his son or not. The transgression has already occurred and has become public.”

  “So?”

  “So, an army is closing in on us and if they know Marti is on board the helicopter they won’t shoot it down.”

  “Well, then you’d better come up with some other way to keep them from doing that.”

  They all emerged onto a sidewalk and were greeted by a solid wall of human backs, most in some kind of costume. The crowd was now packed along the street, waiting for the Black Parade.

  “How far out did you say the helicopter was?”

  Echo was on her phone, with an expression Zoey immediately hated.

  “Okay, what now?”

  “Well, this isn’t good.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not coming. It’s, uh, returning to its owner. The rental period ran out and nobody paid for an extension.”

  Will clenched his jaw and muttered, “If Andre is still alive, I’m going to kill him.”

  Zoey, still staring at the sky, said, “What do we do?”

  Will studied his surroundings, trying to think up options. He didn’t look like he was succeeding.

  “I think they’re going to take us. Chobb’s people. I don’t see any way around it.”

  “That’s not an option,” said Zoey. “Maybe it is for you, but it isn’t for me. Not for Echo, either. If you don’t understand why, you haven’t been paying attention.”

  Wu said, “If I need to extract Zoey apart from the rest of this group, then that’s what I will do. So if you don’t have a plan, then we will be on our way.”

  It was getting hard to hear him—a blast of thumping party music was approaching from Zoey’s left. A small vehicle that looked like a glass capsule on wheels was rolling down the street. A scrolling message was flashing around the exterior, advertising the services of a booze misting pod. For a few hundred bucks you and half a dozen friends could sit in one and get a rolling tour of the city while slowly getting drunk breathing alcohol vapor.

  This one veered off the road and the crowd parted as it bumped up onto the sidewalk, drunken people cursing it every step of the way. It rolled to a stop and the glass bubble opened, separating and rising like the sections of an orange. Sitting there, in white overalls that looked kind of like biohazard suits, were Budd and Andre.

  Andre said, “Get on!”

  They all started climbing aboard, leaving Marti behind, standing next to the crypt keeper by the front door.

  Zoey turned to him. “Tell your dad I said hi. Hope the liver works out for you.”

  Andre pushed a lever and the segments of the glass bubble descended and sealed them off. The noise of the crowd outside was instantly muted as the cart rolled back onto the street. Andre and Budd both stank so badly of smoke that it stung Zoey’s nostrils.

  “We, uh, own this now,” said Andre. “Only transportation we could come up with that could accommodate everybody under the circumstances. We tracked the chopper here, but I don’t get a signal now…”

  Will said, “Your buddy recalled it because the rental expired.”

  “Ah, right. Damn. Yeah, I got tied up due to events at the Screw.” He gestured to the cat crate in Zoey’s lap. “Is that Stench Machine?”

  Zoey said, “No, it’s a long story. What the hell happened back there?”

  “So,” began Budd, “it turned out the Rhodes Scholar residents of the Screw had stored some propane canisters behind that electrical box. After it overloaded, they ignited. It fried the drone, which happened to be right there, because that’s our luck. Also set that side of the building aflame. So we felt compelled to go to the grounds ourselves to help evacuate the building. Think everybody got out okay, I know some got taken to the hospital on account of the smoke. Andre got some burns on his back from a piece of hot railing that fell on him. We’ve both been coughing up black mucus. Anyway, it gave us a close view of everyone who passed. See what they were carrying, in terms of critters.”

  Andre said, “But then another truck came along, heading toward the grasshopper factory, and I guess the VOP guys thought it was another attack. Fired a projectile intended to short out the motor. It should have just rolled to a stop, but instead the battery ruptured and the thing turned into a flaming wreck. It tumbled over and spilled its cargo, which was several hundred thousand bugs.”

  “This,” continued Budd, “created something of a stampede in the crowd, and the rumor that this was all an act of sabotage, which it kind of was and kind of wasn’t. We obviously were not tryin’ to burn the building down.”

  Zoey said, “Well they surely knew we’d remotely hijacked the pee truck, it’d have been too much of a coincidence that the accident happened right when they were preparing to do their big Devil’s Night feast.”

  Andre seemed mildly insulted. “We did no such thing. That would have been obvious. No, the truck was driven by a human, lots of trucks still are. Budd just paid the driver to get drunk off his ass and do the wreck. Guy had stumbled out slurring about how he steered to miss an armadillo in the road. Remember, the original plan was to come and go without them ever knowing we’d been there at all.”

  Zoey said, “Yeah, I guess that was a better plan.”

  “Not really,” said Budd. “Melvin—that’s the driver—spilled the beans to the VOP just minutes later. Told them everything, pointed us out while we were still tryin’ to help people out of the building. We wound up getting chased through the fire and the crowd and the smoke and the plague of grasshoppers. Eventually got hit with stun sticks and put on board a transport to their headquarters. But lucky for us, and I’d say this was the only time luck smiled on us all night, Kowalski had been listening in on their radio chatter and made to intercept the vehicle. This resulted in something of a shootout between their security team and ours. I got grazed in the thigh and one of Kowalski’s vehicles got blowed up. But long story short, we managed to get away in the end.”

  Andre said, “I don’t know if you heard my last message but you’ve probably deduced that neither of us have got your cat in one of our pockets.”

  Zoey waved a hand
. “Oh, it turned out Stench Machine was back at the house the whole time. Carlton found him.”

  Andre and Budd stared at Zoey in silence for what seemed like a very long time.

  She asked, “Why are you wearing those outfits?”

  Andre looked down at the white coveralls. “Oh, these come with the cart. Alcohol mist will mess up your clothes otherwise. Want me to turn on the vapor? It’s gin, I think. Just don’t light a match.”

  Ignoring the offer, Zoey pulled out her phone and found her mother’s number on her contact list.

  Echo said, “So, Titus Chobb’s entire army is converging on this spot and we’re rolling slowly down the street in a fragile glass booze cocoon.”

  “What favors do we got left to call in?” asked Andre. “Alonzo’s got a convoy of treaded vehicles, look like tanks…”

  Will said, “No, he wouldn’t get here in time.”

  “If someone doesn’t come up with a plan of action in the next thirty seconds,” said Wu abruptly, “I am leaving with Zoey.”

  Zoey got no answer from her mother, as usual.

  “Does anyone know where my mom is?”

  Budd said, “Her plan was to spend the evening carousing along the parade route. People set up beer tents in various spots, she was at one of them. Or all of ’em. We’ve had one of Kowalski’s people monitoring her.”

  “All right, tell them I need to get a message to her. Tell her to pack and meet me at the estate. We’re leaving. Like she wanted.”

  Will said, “You are?”

  “Yep. Of everyone in my circle, she’s the only one whose advice actually makes sense. I never wanted this. Things aren’t getting better. Wu, your job is now to get me safe passage to the estate and then out of the city.”

  Will made no effort to hide his annoyance. “So we’re doing this again? This thing where you threaten to quit and then somebody has to talk you down? Is this just your process?”

  “FUCK YOU!” screamed Zoey, and everyone flinched.

  Well, everyone but Will. His expression didn’t change. Zoey took a moment to gather herself.

  “I … don’t like what this life is doing to me. And my worst fear is that I’ll start to like it. That I’ll follow your advice and become the kind of person, the kind of thing, that thrives in this world. The kind of person who’ll steal the organs of the poor to buy a boat. The kind of person my father was.”