《Ruin: Saga of the Apocalypse》 Chapter 1 FOX CADENA It was one of those nights when Virgil got to drinking and the mood suddenly turned from jubilant to dark, and all Fox could do about it was try to stay out of the old man¡¯s way. Virgil had insisted they stop the camper in a little flat valley and set up what he called a ¡°recreational fire,¡± even though the readouts said they were in an exozone that was likely to host dangerous creatures -- maybe even a Monster. ¡°Let ¡®em fuckin¡¯ take us, then,¡± he said, ¡°I had about enough¡¯a this world.¡± Now they were sitting on opposite sides of the fire, Fox keeping a cautious eye on his master, who gripped the neck of his rot-gut in one hand and used the other to scratch the left side of his face over and over, his fingers rasping through the white, wiry hairs of his beard. ¡°I¡¯ll tell ya this,¡± he said. ¡°I¡¯ll tell ya somethin¡¯, kid. I¡¯ll tell ya somethin...¡± The old man¡¯s voice trailed off. The fire glinted off his eyes. ¡°Please do,¡± Fox told him. He crossed one leg over the other casually. Virgil¡¯s shoulders seemed to go tense, and he looked up sharply. ¡°Huh,¡± he said. Then took a long swallow of liquor and muttered to himself. ¡°Yeh. Yeh. Please do, he says. I tell ya, kid, you got a real political way about you. Is that what you think it takes to do this fuckin¡¯ work? Huh? A fuckin¡¯ affectation of neutrality?¡± He emphasized the last word like a curse. There was nothing to do, here. Fox shook his head slightly to himself. He had lived some version of this night many times since becoming Virgil¡¯s apprentice seven years earlier. Everything he said next would be wrong. Any response would only make the old man angrier. It was like being caught in a trap from which there was no escape. He took a little comfort in knowing the foul atmosphere between them would only last until morning. When Virgil awoke tomorrow it would take him several bitter hours to become fully himself again. And then things would be all right for a month or so... Though no apology would ever actually come, Fox knew the old man was always sorry, afterwards. That got expressed one way or another -- a week of abnormally effusive praise; a few extravagant meals; and once, a night with a prostitute that Virgil had called ¡°the jammiest little swipe a¡¯ jam in the cupboard.¡± Fox had never felt right about that one. He estimated the girl was about a year younger than he was then. Her face was soft and clear, somehow devoid of scars, sun-damage, the tell-tale signs of dehydration. She¡¯d been well taken care of before ending up in that shitty hookhouse in a village called New Carbon. A great deal of noise was made about how Fox was her first customer, and what a great opportunity this was to tenderize that sweet young meat. Virgil had grinned at him with his big yellow teeth, affectionately bumped his body to the side, tousled his hair. ¡°Whaddaya think¡¯a that shit kid? You¡¯ll be the first!¡± Fox said, ¡°Sure, great,¡± in a tone that contained neither sarcasm nor excitement. ¡°Come on, boy, go get your man-bars,¡± he said -- whatever that meant. Once in the room, neither Fox nor the girl, whose name had been advertised -- preposterously -- as Fleur De Lis, spoke. If they had, they might have expressed exactly the same degree of enthusiasm about what was about to happen, and then about what had just happened. There was a fleeting moment in which Fox considered telling her, ¡°You don¡¯t have to do this, let¡¯s just sit here for a little while and then go out and pretend it all went exactly according to plan.¡± But he didn¡¯t know what she might say about that or how Virgil might react to it if he found out that Fox had just wasted his fucking money. The world was what it was. Virgil had certain expectations for Fox -- the same way that older men in general seemed to have certain expectations of their younger counterparts. They got angry and suspicious if you weren¡¯t exactly as brutish as they were. So he¡¯d done what was expected of him. There was a long silence as Virgil glared at Fox across the fire. He clearly had the expectation now that Fox would forthcome with a goddamned answer to the question Is that what you think it takes? ¡°I hope I¡¯m learning what it takes from you,¡± Fox said. ¡°I don¡¯t have it all figured out yet.¡± ¡°Huh.¡± Virgil grunted. Then he stood up, squished his dick loose from his pants, and relieved himself into the fire, which spattered and popped against his piss-stream. Fox looked away. The thing that bothered him most about men was their neverending fucking relentless shitty grossness. They seemed incapable of just being well-behaved. They always had to invade your world with how gross they could be. It was like a contest where the goal was to be the person who finally wore away your last shred of decency. Being around other men, or males in general he supposed, was to be assaulted with vulgarity. It was no different for boys of prepubescent age. Only the topics of discussion changed. ¡°Well,¡± Virgil said. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you somethin.¡± He jammed his cock back into his pants. ¡°Yeah, I wish you would.¡± Virgil sat back down and took another pull on his rot-gut. ¡°You may as well know,¡± he said. Fox forced himself not to sigh. Just get on with it, old man. ¡°For six years you been learnin¡¯ everything you could from me, that¡¯s the way it works, see, you¡¯re my apprentice.¡± ¡°Yep.¡± It¡¯s been seven years, you old fuck. Your brain¡¯s turning gentle on you. ¡°But at the same time, kid, I been learnin¡¯ from you. And what I¡¯ve learned from you is, you ain¡¯t got what it takes to do this work.¡± Virgil shook his head vehemently. ¡°You¡¯ll never be a Fixer, and you may as well fuckin¡¯ know.¡± For a second Fox¡¯s heart jolted. Then he scowled. This was a new level of cruelty, even for Virgil. To threaten to take away the only thing Fox wanted -- the thing he had been working toward since he was ten years old, and the reason for enduring so many belligerent nights like this one -- it was so shitty. He rubbed his hands together. The heat from the fire penetrated into his knuckles. It was so shitty of the old man to make him feel this awful over nothing -- some meaningless gesture of capriciousness that would be forgotten in the morning anyway. Fox thought of Virgil as two different people. There was Virgil, just Virgil, his master, guardian and friend, and there was Drunk Virgil -- sometimes he thought of him as Dark Virgil. He had always hated that second asshole. But now his hatred had graduated, finally, to a new level of venom. He wasn¡¯t sure they could come back from this. Wasn¡¯t sure he could ever look at just Virgil the same way, even though it was Dark Virgil talking. His anger pulsed in his ears. It buzzed against the skin of his fingers. Virgil squinted across the fire at him, his narrow face winched into a hawk-eyed squint, studying his reaction. So Fox decided he wouldn¡¯t react. Neutrality bothered the old man so much? Fox would be the perfect example of neutrality. He kept his face blank and looked back at his master. ¡°Hmmm,¡± he said. ¡°I guess you¡¯ll be dropping me off, then, when we get to wherever we¡¯re going next. Camelot, was it?¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Virgil said. ¡°Leavin¡¯ you in Camelot. Pains me to say. But they tell-tale it¡¯s the biggest city in the world. Must be plenty¡¯a opportunities there for a young strap like you to take ta their full advantage.¡± Fox nodded. ¡°You¡¯ll give me back the deposit my mother gave you on my training, I assume.¡± ¡°Course I will, kid, I¡¯m a man of honor. Little sum to help you set up your next life.¡± ¡°I believe you agreed to return me to her in the event of this not working out.¡± ¡°Now look, I¡¯m not a magician. Your mother¡¯s ten years back somewhere. And besides which you¡¯re a grown man, now. Then you was a kid. It¡¯s different.¡± Now it was ten years? Fox noted the old man¡¯s disunited powers of recollection and wondered if there might be something else wrong with him, aside from just being fucking ossified. ¡°Okay,¡± Fox said, rising to his feet. ¡°I think it¡¯s about time for me to retire for the evening. I¡¯ll see you in the morning.¡± Virgil jumped to his feet and threw what remained of the liquor against the exterior of the camper. The bottle shattered, and dirty brown liquid ran down the huge words painted on the camper¡¯s side in block letters: I S O L V E PROBLEMS Fox froze in place, his back to the old man now. ¡°This is the whole trouble with you!¡± Virgil shouted. ¡°This is why you¡¯ll never even ¡®come a journeyman Fixer, let alone a master! We ain¡¯t diplomats. That¡¯s not this job. Look at you -- cold-blooded as the goddamned lizard.¡± He gestured with borderline derangement at the chrome hexcerasaur -- just a statue now, standing perfectly still -- hitched up at the front of the camping trailer. ¡°You gotta bleed to do this work. You gotta take a stand once in a while. I tell ya that you¡¯ve washed outta my trainin¡¯ and you don¡¯t even have a fuckin¡¯ opinion? Clients don¡¯t want that shit, boy. They gotta know you¡¯re on their side!¡± ¡°Good night, Virgil. I¡¯ll see you in the morning.¡± Fox strode to the back of the camper, opened the door, and stepped up. On the inside it was about 20 feet long and 10 feet wide, with almost no room to navigate. The space was packed with metal cupboards, sinks, drawers, and blinking lights. In the front left corner there was a swiveling chair with an array of screens and cables and switches before it that lit the camper¡¯s interior with a soft glow. Fox¡¯s cot was on the right, tucked beneath an overhanging water tank. He fell onto it and faced the wall, thinking about how one minute everything could be okay, and the next your whole world could end. Yeah, some voice inside him said, because worlds fucking end. Just look around¡­ In the scattershot way of human minds, he then found himself thinking about his favorite book. This old paperback novel he had found once in a ruin that he had read, loved, and carried around for years. It was a relic of the ur-world, a story about some teenagers teaming up to save their planet from a demise only they saw coming. Fox had often wondered if the strange society depicted in its pages had been some fantastical creation of the author, or if it was more or less an accurate depiction of the reality she had lived in. He closed his eyes and listened carefully to the sounds outside the camper. Sometimes Virgil got to talking to himself on these nights, and sometimes you could learn something from his wild mutterings. Most times, though, like now, he got quiet. All Fox could hear through the little window that was almost always left open was the gentle crackle of the fire outside and the whispery, fan-like sound the levitators made as they did their work, floating this ancient piece of molded aluminum off the ground. He reached his arm down beneath his cot to where he kept that old paperback book, and he ran his thumb against the corner, flipping three-hundred pages up and down. Feeling them flutter against his skin. It was strange how your perspective on a book could change over the years. The first time he read it he was several years younger than the tightly-bonded band of teenagers in the story, and the primary attraction for his thirteen year-old brain had been all the drama and excitement of the plot. When he read it now his sense of knowing the characters, really knowing them, was stronger than almost anything else he¡¯d ever felt. He thought of them as his peers and friends. It was as if he was there with them on their adventure, the seventh member of the group, and they loved him as much as they loved each other. It was just that the author had forgotten to mention him. Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there. He also realized now the absolute stupidity of the plot depicted in its pages. You couldn¡¯t save a world. Saving worlds was impossible. The voice came back to say again Just look around¡­ He heard the door creak open. Dark Virgil humped up inside, stomped through the navigable space, found his own bed, and promptly began to snort and snore in a raling rattle that sounded like fucking death. The old man hadn¡¯t remembered to get the hexcerasaur moving again. Fox briefly debated whether or not he wanted to get to Camelot as soon as possible, or later, or never. He quietly arose, went to the swiveling chair that Virgil sometimes called the Fixer¡¯s roost, and sometimes just the cockpit, and put his eye up to a little rubber fitting connected to a larger machine. There was a brief whirring sound, then a click. Then the touch-monitor that controlled the chrome hexcerasaur lit up, its red glow contrasting with the pale blues and greens given off by the other monitors. He entered the commands that set the great metal beast into a canter towards Camelot, and the camper gently accelerated intomotion and glided smoothly into the night. Fox fell asleep knowing now that he had a problem of his own to solve. Because it didn¡¯t matter what the old man had to say about it. He would be a Fixer. There was no other path for him. No matter what he had to do to make it happen. * * * DAZZY FUCKSLEAZE The clouds above her crackled with blue energy, and that freak high-pitched thunder that signified a Glass storm, rather than a regular one, rang through the air and vibrated Dazzy to the bones. A burst of wind pealed through her hair, blowing it across her eyes, and for a moment her flowglider lurched crazily to one side. Her stomach fell upward into her chest. She tugged the hair out of her face and saw the ground tilting toward her. Still far enough away that it wasn¡¯t of any special concern. She used the handbrakes to pull back into a level float. What was of great concern was the increasing wind. She knew storms like this only got worse and worse. She needed to get down as soon as possible. The winds these Glass storms generated reached speeds that could easily tear her glider apart and send her spinning to her death against the red rock cliffs below. Worse than that, when it rained Glass -- that ethereal blue smoke that drifted toward the earth like a fog -- everything living thing it touched went as rigid as steel and flattened into smooth translucent vertices that seemed terrifyingly unnatural. Usually this only happened to birds, bats, and other flying creatures. Things high up. The stuff dissipated as it fell and usually evaporated before touching anything on the ground. But every once in a while it got people. Often people who got caught on a high plateau with nowhere to shelter -- like The Fucksleazes right now. Dazzy tried to crane her head around to see where the rest of her gang were and what they were doing, but the angle was bad. She would have had to turn the flowglider around, and conditions made that pretty much impossible now. She went into another turbulent dip. The harness she was in cinched hard against her legs, and the sound the wind made as it snapped and rippled across the gray sailcloth was fucking upsetting. She moved one hand off a handbrake long enough to bring her radio to her mouth and shout into it, ¡°Uh, can we get me the fuck down now?¡± The thing crackled and beeped, and a gruff male voice said, ¡°You find us anything useful yet?¡± ¡°You feel this wind?¡± Dazzy shouted. ¡°I¡¯m not crazy, right? It¡¯s getting worse and worse? What the fuck Tommy.¡± ¡°You know the deal, bitch,¡± came the cold response. She reached out and pulled the handbrake to keep the flowglider as low as possible. Look at yourself, she thought. You wanted to fly and now you¡¯re up in the air like a mouse strapped to a fucking kite. She couldn¡¯t forget how this hard started, though. It had all been her idea, back during the war with another band of outlaws called The Waterbugs. ¡°Get me up into the air,¡± she had said. ¡°We¡¯ll spot them from miles away -- literally.¡± And Tommy had shrugged, chewing on a toothpick, and said, ¡°What you got in mind, Dazz?¡± Now the Dazzy and the rest of the Fucksleazes were starving and desperate, exiled from Camelot -- the only place around here where a person could reasonably survive -- and scavenging the wastes. Trying to stay out of exozones. Dazzy floated above the jagged red cragscape , tied to a cable 1500 feet long secured to an ancient gray bus. The bus was painted on both sides with the words THE FUCKSLEAZES THE FUCKSLEAZES. The Glass storm above her began to haze into a blue rain. ¡°There¡¯s nothing out there, Tommy!¡± she shouted into the radio. ¡°You can see this is fucking Glass right? Can¡¯t you?¡± There was a pause. Then the radio crackled Tommy¡¯s reply, ¡°There better be something out there, then. For your sake.¡± She let the radio dangle, grabbed the handbrake again, and screamed ¡°FUCK!¡± at the storm. Blue light flashed through the clouds, and the storm thundered back at her. This was fucking it then. She was going to die. Step one: be born. Step two: spend twenty-seven violent years fighting for scraps, the violence always totally disproportionate the starvation-level rewards, twenty-seven years where you could never fight enough or fuck enough or do enough drugs to make you forget for one moment that life is a tornado of shit and all you can do is ride it into the void. When you find the one thing on the planet that makes you feel something? It kills you. Like, step three: get turned into a hunk of yellowy Glass and shatter when you hit the ground. She supposed life was hell for everybody, but that didn¡¯t make her feel any better about it. The drifting-down Glass fog looked closer and closer. Or was it just spreading out? It was impossible to judge the distances of the clouds above her. There was no frame of reference. Just sky. What did people do when they were about to die? Pray? She got back on the radio. ¡°Tommy, you want me fucking die for it?¡± Sending her up and telling her she wasn¡¯t coming back down until she spotted something they could all eat had been the punishment he¡¯d handed down when the others found out she had food she hadn¡¯t shared -- which had been a reedy little stand of edible desert flowers. He didn¡¯t care if it took hours, he said. He didn¡¯t care if it took days. He couldn¡¯t have known then that in short order a Glass storm would be breaking above her head. This couldn¡¯t be what he intended. ¡°This is a fucking death sentence!¡± she shouted. ¡°Don¡¯t give me that shit!¡± he shouted back. ¡°You broke the rules. And shut the fuck up, I don¡¯t want to hear your voice again until you¡¯ve got something real. The fucking end! Fuck off.¡± A particularly vicious swell lifted around her, spinning her so far back it threatened to flip her over backwards. Her legs rose up in front of her like a child on a swing. She managed to straighten out, but barely. ¡°Fuck,¡± she whispered to herself. The fucking end, she thought. The fucking end. It¡¯s the fucking end! She scanned the desert as if something might change. Looking for -- well, anything. There was nothing out there. The only thing that wasn¡¯t rock or dead powder was a single S of vegetation in the distance that gave away the presence of a stream, but the place was deep within the exozone, and if that zone contained Monsters, the stream would likely be where they found their water. Going there would be death. That might not bother her, a slightly-delayed death being better than the imminent one she faced now, but Tommy and the rest of The Fucksleazes would never go for it. The never dared very deeply into a zone. Okay. She was going to be that person. She was going to be a clich¨¦. She was going to be pathetic. She was going to go out begging something -- anything -- for her life. How did this go? Was it like a letter? Dear God, Love Dazzy, P.S.? ¡°Dear God,¡± she whispered. Then -- fuck it. She raised her head upward toward the clouds and screamed it. ¡°Dear God or Godsor Whoever might hear this! This is Dazzy Fucksleaze, and I¡¯m about to die! I never asked you for anything, I don¡¯t even know if you¡¯re real, and I know I fuckin¡¯ never gave you anything either, so never asking you for anything probably doesn¡¯t score me any kinda points, I get that, but whoever you are --¡± She took in a deep breath. ¡°Whoever you are, I just want to live. Okay? If you¡¯re real and you¡¯re a God you can figure out my situation so I don¡¯t need to go into the particulars! But I just want to live! I don¡¯t want to go splat into the hard rock below. I don¡¯t want to get Glassed. I want to live! Can you make that happen? Please make that happen! Love Dazzy!¡± A jet of air came and swept her off to one side, and she straightened the flowglider once more. Her hair blew wildly around her face. Check again. The landscape was desolation and cracked skin. God knew what He had to do. Right? She had prayed, so now it was His job, if He was real, to give her the thing she had prayed for. If that¡¯s not how this worked, why were there religious people? What did they get out of it? Either God was magic, or God was bullshit. As far as Dazzy was concerned, it had to be that simple. Now¡¯s your chance, God or Whoever. Prove all the doubters wrong by saving me, here. Swear if you do, I¡¯ll live a different fucking kind of life. Whatever kind you want. I really will. ¡°P.S.!¡± she shouted with every ounce of herself. ¡°And punish Tommy! Really punish him, okay? He¡¯s proved himself to be an absolute tortoshit of a leader for us Fucksleazes. And also P.S.! Bless us with some kind of good fortune. Okay?¡± Okay, she told herself. Leave Whoever alone. Now you¡¯ll either die or you won¡¯t. She tried to clear her mind and think of nothing. She felt the cold burn of the wind on her cheeks and the backs of her hands. Then, a minute later, perhaps two, something happened. Changed. In the early dawn light with the energy of the storm whipping around her and the glittering mist of Glass about to be upon her, like, any second now, something gleamed out there. She squinted carefully. There was a flicker to whatever-it-was that shined, and that flicker told her it was moving. This wasn¡¯t merely the morning sun shining through the clouds and hitting some previously-shadowed reflective object. What was that thing? Her heart thumped with momentary excitement before getting stomped by God. This would be the thing that would get her down and then get the Fucksleazes fed. This would be the thing that would change their fortunes for th -- Oh. No it wouldn¡¯t. The thing was an exozone Monster. She had the binoculars crammed up against her skin and she was binoculing that flickering gleam like crazy. It looked like an enormous lizard -- a fucking dinosaur, she thought. It slung itself along the top of a far-away plateau. It was made of metal. Chrome. Glowing with an impossibly clean mirror shine. It was hard to judge its size, but she estimated that maybe it was 12-to-15 feet tall, and 25-to-30 feet long. Its four legs looped forward in perfectly coordinated rotating motions, never breaking rhythm even for a micro-second, movements perfect to the point of being synthesized. Its face resolved into six flat points, and there were segmented joints at the -- Dazzy said ¡°What the fuck?¡± Was this dinosaur wearing some kind of armor? She¡¯d heard stories of the secret things that rampaged the exozones, everyone had. Terrible and bizarre phantasmas of uncreditable description. But this one was wearing armor. How was the fucking thing wearing armor? The next thought was so obvious that she hadn¡¯t previously bothered to turn her attention to it. She did so now. Was it a machine? Tommy¡¯s voice sizzled over the radio. ¡°Okay. God damn it. Okay. You win. We¡¯re bringing you down. Fuck.¡± Oh, God yes. The man had caved. Not a moment too soon. But there was something else -- something following immediately behind the huge burnished reptile. Dazzy felt a tug at her back as the other Fucksleazes started winching the rope back toward the ground. She let the binoculars fall back onto her chest and scrabbled the radio back up to her mouth. ¡°No, wait!¡± she said. ¡°Wait, stop! Give me a second!¡± The downward pull stopped. Tommy shouted into the radio ¡°You got something?¡± The Monster, or machine, or whatever it was, pulled behind it a beatup ur-world trailer. Something painted on the side, words she couldn¡¯t make out. She began to laugh. Consider your heart unstomped, you glorious bitch. ¡°Pull me down,¡± she said. ¡°Get me outta this fucking wind!¡± ¡°You got something?¡± This time there was an edge of desperation in his voice. ¡°Yeah,¡± Dazzy said. ¡°Somebody¡¯s traveling South through the goddamn exozone. Get the bus ready, we can ambush them on the road to Camelot if we hurry.¡± Tommy crackled back: ¡°Halle-fucking-lujah, baby!¡± Dazzy closed her eyes, trying not to imagine what other goodies people who owned a fucking metal dinosaur robot might be carrying. In spite of herself, in her mind she saw carnage, and she began to tingle with anticipation, and she smiled. Chapter 2 FOX He sat cross-legged on his cot, his eyes staring at a book he couldn¡¯t seem to focus on. The words just blurred together. It felt comfortable to be holding one of the books from the small collection he kept beneath his cot. The soft edge of the paper touching the palm of his hand. His fingertips against the smoother surface of the paperback¡¯s cover. He had always been able to read, no matter what else was going on in the world. He could tune out his surroundings any time, even escape his own thoughts and feelings and just get swept up in the story of a book. Virtually any book. Virgil called it Fox¡¯s ¡°magical power.¡± But not this morning. Now there was a dull heaviness in his heart that he couldn¡¯t escape, like his insides had been turned to concrete. He shifted his focus to Virgil sitting in the Fixer¡¯s roost, its screens all aglow with maps and readouts and numbers, like always. Virgil leaned with special interest toward a monitor that depicted in infrared the rumbling stormclouds overhead, scratching his fingers against his white beard and scowling disapprovingly. ¡°How much do remember about last night?¡± Fox heard himself saying. Virgil¡¯s head almost moved in Fox¡¯s direction. Then he wiggled five dismissive fingers vaguely in the air. ¡°I ¡®member everything, you know that.¡± The old man often insisted he had powers of perfect recall, but Fox knew for an absolute fact that he did not. ¡°I thought, perhaps, not this time,¡± Fox said cautiously. ¡°Yeh. Well, this time. Every time. Always. Every word. We better not leave the trailer today. It¡¯s a fuckin¡¯ Glass storm comin¡¯ on.¡± ¡°So.¡± Fox hung his legs off the side of the cot. ¡°In the light of morning, is there anything you¡¯d like to clarify?¡± Virgil sighed heavily, shook his head for a moment, then swiveled toward Fox in his tattered captain¡¯s chair. ¡°There somethin¡¯ you wanna say, boy?¡± Fox closed his book with a gentle fump and placed it delicately onto the cot. ¡°Did you mean what you said last night?¡± The old man squeezed his eyes as though suffering some great pain, and vehemently shook his head no while saying, ¡°I ain¡¯t happy ¡®bout the way it come out, but it had¡¯a come out somehow. Any way it did¡¯d cause ya pain.¡± He mulled something over for a moment, shrugged. ¡°For a regular-blooded person. Not you. Don¡¯t go pretendin¡¯ to be all upset about it. You look like you¡¯re about to bust inta tears. Swear to christ this is the most emotion I¡¯ve ever seen you show. I almost saw your fuckin¡¯ expression change. Too bad it¡¯s fake. And not convincing. Fixers gotta lie better¡¯n that. Demonstratin¡¯ right before your own eyes how you¡¯re not cut out.¡± He built up steam as he went, by the end sounding almost gleeful at the chance to deal out the pain. ¡°It doesn¡¯t sound as though you¡¯re unhappy about the way it came out at all, if you don¡¯t mind the observation,¡± Fox said. ¡°Let¡¯s just get through the next day, day¡¯n a half. Then you¡¯ll be free a¡¯my crude manners¡¯n rough ways, kid, all right? Your sufferin¡¯ at an end.¡± Fox picked up his book, opened it, set it back down again. ¡°You¡¯re wrong, Virgil. You¡¯re wrong to fuck me over this way, you¡¯re wrong in your assessment of me, you¡¯re wrong in just about every way it¡¯s possible to be wrong. I was born to be a Fixer. I just didn¡¯t know it until I met one.¡± ¡°Heard this tale.¡± Perhaps the most frustrating thing about this entire affair was its puzzling out-of-nowhere-ness. Had he done or said something recently to cause the old man some personal offense? Virgil had never acted this way toward him before. One day he¡¯d been on the path to his dream, the next, this shit. If he could see what it was that his master was so upset about, he might have known how to fix it. ¡°That¡¯s an expression I do recognize.¡± Virgil¡¯s hand went to the hip where he kept his well-oiled, well-shined revolver. ¡°You¡¯re startin¡¯ to look fuckin¡¯ murderous.¡± ¡°Am I?¡± Murder was part of a Fixer¡¯s work. You didn¡¯t want to do it, but sometimes a situation demanded it. Sometimes you had to kill a person to solve a particular problem in exactly the way it had to be solved. You did it dispassionately, without malice but also without guilt -- and only if you had to. Fox was merely an apprentice, and had never had to. Now, though, the old man was making himself into a problem that needed to be solved. Could he do it, Fox wondered? Could he murder Virgil if that¡¯s what it took to make him a Fixer? And how would that work? Could he work a way to force Virgil to accredit him first? Maybe if he could do that part, then the murder wouldn¡¯t have to happen. Virgil rose to a half stand, unfastening his holster with his thumb. ¡°Easy,¡± he said with some alarm, his hand on the grip of his pistol. Fox looked down at himself. He looked at his legs, turned his hands over and looked at his hands, his wrists. What was it about his sitting still that caused the old man such alarm? Had he been thinking about murder before the old man reacted this way, or had his reaction caused him to begin to think about it? It felt to Fox like the latter, but it might have been the former. Virgil had always seemed to possess an unnatural capacity for sensing what a person was about to do. It was what made him such a good Fixer. It was what let him stay one step ahead of everyone else. Fox didn¡¯t have that in him, that nearly psychic sense of other people. It didn¡¯t mean he would be a shitty Fixer; it just meant he would have to rely on the talents and qualities he did possess. What would he do with Virgil¡¯s body? Leave it in the desert. How would he gain command of the money, weaponry, and chrome hexcerasaur? He had limited access to all of these things now, but if the old man were gone, he would need access to all of these things on an administrative level. The eye scanner that unlocked the terminal access in the cockpit didn¡¯t just scan your retina, there was also a small light test of your pupillary reflex that could determine that you were A) alive, and B) not under the influence of suggestion chems. Virgil snapped his hand up and leveled his revolver at Fox. It flashes silver in the sunlight that fell through the window. ¡°A¡¯right now, that¡¯s enough,¡± Virgil snapped. ¡°You ingrate peckerhead, I ought ta throw you out the back of this trailer and be done.¡± Fox raised his eyes from the pistol to Virgil¡¯s face. ¡°You won¡¯t, though.¡± ¡°No I prob¡¯ly won¡¯t you sonofabitch but I fuckin¡¯ well should. Stand up. Nice¡¯n easy now, kid. Don¡¯t make me put a hole in ya. Ain¡¯t got no desire to see you dead, ¡®spite¡¯a what you must think of me now.¡± Fox rose steadily to his feet. ¡°Why are you doing this?¡± ¡°You know well. Turn around and gimme them skinny wrists.¡± Fox did what he said. Corpses didn¡¯t make good Fixers. And he figured he wanted to be dead even less than Virgil wanted to kill him. There was nothing else to do. Behind him, a drawer opened. There came the sound of slinking metal and a smell that made him think of old nails and grease. With his hands behind his back, his master¡¯s handcuffs clanked around his wrists, ratcheted tight and hard, pinching the skin. Fox let out a little grunt of pain and surprise in spite of himself. ¡°Rough shit,¡± Virgil said, spinning Fox around to face him again. The old man¡¯s eyes were close. He jammed a barrel of cold steel underneath Fox¡¯s chin. ¡°Some goodbyes go better¡¯n others.¡± Fox swallowed. ¡°This one isn¡¯t going very well.¡± ¡°No kidding.¡± This would have been the perfect moment for his brains to explode all over the camper. The drama of that would have felt right, and the old man had always liked a good moment of drama. Virgil gave him a rough shove, and he stumbled back against the door with a thin aluminum clatter. The old man shook his head. ¡°You really want ta put me under? My own fuckin¡¯ apprentice.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t want to hurt anybody, I just want to be a Fixer.¡± Virgil¡¯s voice got low. ¡°Fixers gotta hurt people.¡± ¡°Yes, but they don¡¯t have to want to,¡± Fox shot back. ¡°Specifically I mean I don¡¯t want to hurt you. I have no idea what changed between two days ago and now, but we¡¯ve got to work past it.¡± * * * DAZZY On the road, the robot dinosaur and the trailer it pulled marched steadily toward the ambush spot. Moving about 20 miles per hour, Dazzy figured. Tommy held a massive beam-weapon with two hands, its butt resting heavily against the joint of his hip. ¡°Kubby,¡± he said, ¡°put that fucking radio up near my face and hold the button down.¡± Dazzy had to admit the man looked awesome in his tight jeans and black leather vest, both faded with a patina of sand. She liked his tanned, muscular arms, veins popping out of his forearms and branching down to the backs of his hands. She liked his long black hair that somehow always looked smooth and clean. Kubby wasn¡¯t quite as impressive. He¡¯d been Fucksleaze muscle, once. A 350-pound bruiser. This year he¡¯d gone to skin and bones like the rest of them. Except Kubby had these wobbles of loose skin hanging off him now in odd-looking places; his upper arms, his neck. Often there was a flat apron of pink skin just falling down over the top of his pants. Back when he¡¯d been himself -- a guy as solid as a tree trunk -- she¡¯d never noticed his weak chin, or the unevenness of his eyes, or the waddling way his feet pointed away from each other when he walked. Like now, as he walked up to Tommy holding out one of the radios. Tommy leaned into it. ¡°We in position?¡± Dazzy couldn¡¯t figure how Tommy remained this glorious physical specimen while the rest of them withered month by month into, like, leathery skeletons. It just felt, she didn¡¯t know, fucking unfair. ¡°Ready,¡± she affirmed. ¡°Ready boss,¡± Kubby said. The other 17 people up on the ridge with them were all within earshot, and they all generally agreed that yes, hell yes, they were ready, they were so fucking ready, let¡¯s get this done. Below them was the road. Hard-packed dirt interspersed here and there with flat shapes of broken asphalt. Off to one side of it stood a small ruin of roofless ur-world houses. These were non-structures of fallen walls, weeds growing through ancient brick piles, and wooden beams that had turned gray and fibrous in however-many decades of sun. There were only six of them -- unless that concrete plat with nothing on it had also been a house once. But six was plenty, since the gang only had three cycle raiders these days. She lifted her binoculars and spotted Sykky down there, hidden on his solarcycle amid the ruins, his machine gun slung around his back. He looked up to the ridge-top and raised one arm. She gave him a little wave. They¡¯d had their problems, but lately Dazzy and Sykky were getting along. He really was, it turned out, a genuinely sweet person. He waved back and lifted his radio to his mouth. She heard the response through Tommy¡¯s radio. ¡°We¡¯re all good down here.¡± ¡°Kubby,¡± Tommy said. ¡°Get ready to start the clock.¡± One of Tommy¡¯s little rituals. He liked to time how long it took the gang to win a battle. So far the record was 23 seconds. Kubby¡¯s thumb hovered over the GO-button on a handheld stopwatch with a cracked screen. Tommy hoisted the beam-weapon and stepped toward the edge of the ridge. * * * FOX Virgil shook his head sourly. ¡°Work past it, he says. You wanna know what¡¯s changed? I finally got up the guts to break Fox Cadena¡¯s pumpin¡¯ little heart, that¡¯s what. Skeleton heart. Heart made¡¯a bone. Ta tell ya what I¡¯ve known for a long time. And there ain¡¯t no gettin¡¯ past it. Now I¡¯m gonna give you a choice, ¡®n you decide which way it¡¯s ta fuckin¡¯ be. You want to go on ta Camelot and get yer mother¡¯s money in your hand and we part ways amicable? Or you wanna keep plottin¡¯a murder my ass and get thrown out the back¡¯a this here sand sloop? Nothin¡¯ to your name. Glass storm cookin¡¯ might actually reach the ground? Cuffed-up round your back so you can¡¯t even take out yer dick to take a piss. It¡¯ll be one or the other and you tell me. Which one, kid? Which one?¡± Fox opened his mouth to speak, but before he could make a sound, a blazing red beam of heat pierced through the wall and sliced upward in a wild scooping motion, shearing off the top-left corner of the trailer and exposing the navy-gray sky. The corner lifted away, toppled over backward, and landed on the desert floor behind them with a thump that it felt very strange to hear so clearly; the protective layer that separated the interior of the trailer from the more dangerous world outside had just been removed. Sparking electrical wires that had just been cut swung down toward Fox¡¯s face. ¡°Shit.¡± He ducked beneath them. ¡°The hell¡¯s got a striper out here!¡± Virgil threw his body into the captain¡¯s chair, jammed his pistol back into its holster, and tapped furiously at keys and buttons while a red scroll of code appeared on the hexcerasaur¡¯s control screen. Fox slumped to the ground with his back against the door, burying his face against his knees, waiting for the next beam to hit. A breeze from outsize blew in and moved his hair. * * * DAZZY The robot dinosaur came to a sudden stop. A decent-sized chunk of the trailer had been cut loose by Tommy¡¯s heat beam and lay on the desert floor, its edges glowing red. ¡°Nailed the fuckers.¡± Tommy laughed. ¡°Let¡¯s go!¡± Dazzy held the flare gun high and pulled the trigger. The gun coughed a stream of orange smoke into the air. The signal was up. Gunfire chattered all around her as the Fucksleazes opened fire on the trailer below. On her left, the twelve year-old Pinny -- newest of the Fucksleazes -- fell back instead of joining the attack with the others. She covered her tear-streaked face with her hands and tripped over her own feet, falling flat onto her back and dropping her pistol onto the ground. The raiders in the ruined houses gunned their cycles to life and rolled into view. Pinny was saying, ¡°I can¡¯t ¡­ I can¡¯t ...¡± Which, given the circumstances, was maybe understandable. She¡¯d be punished harshly for her cowardice but, like, that wasn¡¯t Dazzy¡¯s fucking problem. Or maybe, she thought, she could actually use it. The gang was stressed. The mood had been simmering for weeks. Longer. Primed to pop. If Tommy took his punishment of the girl too far, it could make the group turn on him at last. Half of them already spent their evenings murmuring about how the vivisection of Pinny¡¯s parents had been one step too far, and asking each other if he was beginning to lose his grip. Dazzy raised her bolt-action sniper and scoped the scene. The huge reptilian machine was so beautiful and clean it was hard to believe it existed at all. It was even larger than she had originally estimated. What a fortune that thing must be worth. Not that she would sell it, once Tommy was gone and the Fucksleazes were hers. Not that she would dream of it. When she looked at that glorious metal dinosaur she had this sense of destiny burning inside her like, hey, the machine was hers. Meant for her. It was logic like the logic in a dream -- an instantaneous understanding that sprang from no specific thought process or idea. Just a knowing. She had prayed, and God had answered that prayer by putting the robot dinosaur in her path so she could have it. She knew that these people, whoever they were, had not built the robot. Anyone who could create such a wonder would not be using it to pull a rickety old trailer around the wastes. No, this was found tech. It -- The fuck? Every cell of her body sunk into, like, another fucking dimension. She felt sick in her very guts. The bullets weren¡¯t hitting the camper. Instead, the robot ejected some kind of pulsing wave that shimmered and distorted the air directly in front of it. And the bullets were being caught in the field, little suspended black dots. Useless. Harmless. ¡°Holy FUCK. OFF.¡± Tommy screeched. He looked at the scene and just stood there for a helpless moment. Then he re-hoisted the striper onto his hip and fired the heat beam again. A red line came instantly into existence. There was no sense of an acceleration from one point to another. Tommy pulled the trigger and the beam was simply there, stretching from the end of the weapon into infinity. He swooped it toward the trailer again, shouting ¡°Motherfuckers get striped!¡± almost in a hysteria. It was kind of pathetic, but Dazzy understood it. They were all on the edge of a collective panic all the time now. They needed this to go their way. The jokes around the fires at night (¡°Lizard on a stick?¡± ¡°Don¡¯t mind if I do.¡± ¡°Cactus jelly?¡± ¡°I thought you¡¯d never ask.¡±) had gotten old. Through her sniper scope she watched the solarcycle raiders descend toward the robot and the damaged trailer, kicking up massive plumes of dust. They wielded their machine guns in the crooks of their arms like modern-day knights with their lances. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Tommy¡¯s red beam drew a shiny silvery line across the ground, melting sand into silica, then sliced again into the camper. It burned straight across the side and almost reached the giant words painted across the side of the thing -- words that Dazzy now could make out as I S O L V E PROBLEMS Dazzy¡¯s mouth pulled into a tight, dry line. That sounded familiar. There was something about that phrase. She¡¯d heard it before. Something. Something wrong. It was like a warning she¡¯d received a long time ago and couldn¡¯t now remember. And remember, Danielle, lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub. Lub-dub lub-dub lub-dub. The cow jumped over the -- What the fuck was it again? Come on, bitch. Remember. * * * FOX Fox¡¯s body jerked in startlement as the beam buzzed into the trailer just a foot or so above his head. It was one thing to know something bad was about to happen, but it was something else to prevent yourself from reacting to it. In fact the anticipation probably made the startle response worse. It only took a second for Fox to find himself, suck in a breath, and shout ¡°Striper! Defensive measures!¡± He rattled the handcuffs against the door as loudly as he could. ¡°Throw me the goddamn keys.¡± The beam was moving slowly from the rear of the camper to the front, but for now it was still right above him. Virgil twisted his head around. ¡°I bet you¡¯d like that, wouldn¡¯tcha. Hell no, kid.¡± He nodded at the beam burning across the interior of the camper as if just acknowledging its existence. Then swiveled back to the monitors. ¡°These bushwhackers gonna be sorry as hell they tried this shit on me,¡± he muttered. His hands moved across the console. ¡°You can¡¯t leave me defenseless, here.¡± ¡°Ain¡¯t defenseless. I¡¯m defendin¡¯ ya.¡± ¡°Let me help you, Virgil. For God¡¯s sake let me get my --¡± The beam reached -- gun. the tank positioned above Fox¡¯s cot, slashed through it, superheating the water inside. Steam and boiling H20 sprayed across the trailer, sizzled against the metal cabinets, hit the floor and sloshed down the aisle where Fox sat against the door. He kept his head low as he pushed himself to his feet to avoid it, but the water bubbled around the leather of his boots. The heat seared across his feet. Water splashed up onto his leg, easily penetrating his pants and sticking the denim to his skin.¡¯ Those wires still sparked above his head. ¡°Virgil!¡± He shouted it like a child crying out for his daddy, and felt nauseated even as the word burst out of his mouth. There was no one in the world who loved him. It was an awful thing to finally realize in that moment, but there it was. Even the one person he thought he could count on -- Drunk Virgil not withstanding -- had turned out not to give a shit. It was a childish feeling, one he felt embarrassed by, but in that passing nanosecond, with the possibility of his death now seeming very real to him, all he wanted was to curl up in his mother¡¯s arms and feel her warmth pressing all around him. Wanted to be safe and loved. Stupid. Like a little fucking kid. He threw himself low beneath the spray of boiling water, landing with a little bounce on his cot, face down, his arms twisted behind him. The air in the camper was hot and wet now. His next breath felt thick in his throat. The old man didn¡¯t even glance back. He just kept typing. And that was the right thing, Fox knew. It would have been ridiculous if the old man stopped commanding the chrome hexcerasaur to turn around in the middle of an ambush when Fox was actually fine. But still. It hurt. Didn¡¯t even look. Fox pressed himself against the wall of the camper to get as far away as he could from the boiling waterfall that fell from the tank. The water supply was directly above his cot, and the ribbon of clear liquid splashed just beyond its outer edge, sealing him in place. From here he could have stuck his arm straight into the flowing water. Or a shoulder, since his arms were cuffed behind his back. The red beam was shooting into the camper right above his head, still slowly moving forward. He buried his face as deeply into the blanket as he could. He closed his eyes. If that beam changed direction even a little, it could easily cut his head right in half. He exhaled and felt the heat of his breath spread against the blanket and float into his face. This had been a reflexive move, jumping onto the cot. To avoid the pain of the heat on his feet he¡¯d put himself a lot closer to the shit that was a lot more likely to actually kill him. He began to think about scooting back off the cot, crouching in the water and just suffering the pain at his feet. He began to think about the fact that this water going everywhere had gone beneath his cot and most likely damaged his books pretty badly. He wondered if he could somehow hook his books, maybe with his feet, and slide them into a position where he could stand on them so he could both keep his feet out of the boiling water as well as get himself off this cot. No, what he had to do, he realized, was get the fuck out of the camper and run. He heard a sound that was like a creak and a snap combined into one short burst, and the bottom half of the water tank came fully unseparated from the top -- the part that was actually secured to the camper -- and the tank flipped downward and spilled 20 gallons of boiling water directly onto Fox¡¯s back. There was a moment when he felt its wet weight smashing him downward, but he didn¡¯t feel the heat, nor the pain. And in that brief passing instant he felt relieved. His mind processed that this terrible thing had happened -- the water tank spilling its contents onto him. But there was no pain. He thought the heat beam must not have boiled all the water inside the tank. It must have only been heating the water it came directly into contact with. The rest, the bulk at the bottom of the tank, must have kept its original lukewarm temperature. But that was wrong. And when that impossibly short moment passed and his pain receptors caught up to the signals his nerves were sending them, he realized that the water that covered his back, his legs, that trickled around his stomach, slid along the side of his neck -- it was cooking the goddamn flesh right off his body. The pain was a deep white shrieking that exploded every other sensation and thought out of him. There was no escape from it. It was merciless. It was towering. It was the only thing that existed. He couldn¡¯t even scream. It was no comfort to him that the beam was deflected away from the camper immediately by Virgil at the controls and the hexcerasaur outside. In his current state, that wasn¡¯t something he could even comprehend. * * * DAZZY The dinosaur robot threw itself in front of the beam. The red line of heat reflected off its mirror-like surface and careened away wildly, causing one of the ruined structures nearby to burst into flames. The bullets suspended in the shimmering fell unceremoniously onto the ground. Dazzy realized that the gunfire had basically stopped. She lifted her rifle and fired a bullet at the side of the trailer. ¡°Keep firing!¡± she commanded. The rest raised their weapons, and the sound of gunfire surrounded her once more. But again the bullets got suspended in the pulsing field the robot emitted. Tommy, still firing the beam, screamed in wordless frustration. For a second he caught her eye, and the expression on his face was like, This is your fault, Dazz! She didn¡¯t know how that tracked, but whatever. (This was your plan, he would say. This went bust because your recon is for shit.) Only it hadn¡¯t gone bust yet. There was still a way to do this, there had to be. Because fuck these people. Dazzy felt angry that this incredible piece of technology had fallen into the hands of people so stupid as to be using it to pull them through exozones where they should, by rights, have been killed a thousand times over. Lucky, she thought. Lucky stupid assholes, whoever they were. They didn¡¯t deserve to keep the robot. And they wouldn¡¯t. And they didn¡¯t deserve to keep their lives. And they wouldn¡¯t keep those either. And fuck Tommy for still being so physically perfect. What the hell was he eating? If he made it through this she was going to blow off his head when everybody got busy picking through the booty. Wouldn¡¯t even be a sneak about it. The others wouldn¡¯t like it. They would what-the-fuck-are-you--? They would oh-holy-shit-Dazz-are-you-out-of-your--? Some of them might even cry. But they would fall in line. It was time. Everybody knew it. Tommy probably knew it. On her right, Kubby was holding his gun out but wasn¡¯t actually shooting it. Instead he was just staring at the stopwatch. Dazzy wondered how much time had passed. 40 seconds? The raiders on their solarcycles unleashed hell on the trailer, rushing it from three different directions. These bullets hit the fucking mark, punching into it, spraying bullet-holes across its walls. A cheer went up, and on the ridge they fired with renewed enthusiasm. Uselessly, but with admirable fervor. ¡°Shoot at the robot?¡± Tommy proposed. Then, ¡°SHOOT AT THE ROBOT.¡± The Fucksleazes did. Sykky down there on his solarcycle sped past the robot, raising his machine gun into the air in a victory gesture. A rush of fear hit her. Sykky was about to put himself between the lizard and their bullets. No, she told herself. He¡¯s okay. He¡¯s okay. But the trajectory didn¡¯t work. He was going to cross the line of fire. A friendly-fire accident could be about to take away one of the best people they had. Not only that, he was -- hell, he was Sykky. The guy who turned bad moods into funny, silly ones; who was always ready with a joke and an easy smile; who wasn¡¯t so bad after all. Unsurprisingly, the bullets had no effect on the lizard. Just like the heat beam, they bounced off, pinged into the dirt. They didn¡¯t even leave a blemish on its gleaming surface. Then something else hit her. If Sykky died here, rationality would fucking disappear when it came to assigning blame for this. A botched ambush was one thing, but if they actually lost people, and then Tommy pointed the finger at Dazzy? She could forget about taking control. She might have the chance to get rid of Tommy but after that they¡¯d just kill her, too. Goodbye dreams of owning a metal dinosaur. She still had her voice. ¡°Cease fire! Hold fire! Stop fucking shooting! For just a few seconds the gunfire stopped. Sykky ripped through the space that had just been filled with bullets, still holding his machine gun over his head. Safe. Sweet God, safe! Probably having no idea the danger he¡¯d just been in. He began to swoop into a turn around the opposite side of the trailer. His head jerked to one side. Chips of his helmet sprayed into the air. His limp body fell to one side, and his solarcycle flailed skidding across the ground. ¡°No!¡± Dazzy said. It took a split second for her brain to process what she had just seen. He¡¯d been shot by someone inside the camper. ¡°Fuck,¡± she whispered to herself. Heart-stomped by God. Fuckfuckfuck. She felt sick. Something else was happening now. The robot with a slight movement began to twist its body toward the ridge, reflecting the heat beam Tommy was still firing back up toward Tommy. The reflected red line sizzled up the side of the cliff in a creepily-smooth swing, somehow adjusting for the human imperfections of Tommy¡¯s warbling aim. She glanced quickly over at Tommy, who saw what was happening -- saw that glowing beam coming right back toward him -- but couldn¡¯t seem to react. There was a stricken, nightmare expression on his face, his eyes bulging, his face slack. And Dazzy thought for fuck¡¯s sake just take your finger off the trigger. She wondered if her face looked much like his did in this moment. She thought it probably did. ¡°Tommy!¡± she yelled an instant before realizing she shouldn¡¯t have said anything at all. She wanted him gone, and it was about to happen without Dazzy having to do it herself and without having to endure getting blamed for Sykky. If the robot took out Tommy now, her succession would happen naturally. The resentments that would come if she took him out personally wouldn¡¯t even be a thing. Come on, Dazzy. Tommy looked sideways at her, his mouth open helplessly. She looked back at him. Said nothing else. She made her face firm. Betray nothing, bitch. Something hit him from behind, rammed hard into the backs of his knees. It was Pinny. The twelve year-old collapsed face-first at the edge of the ridge after the impact, her tears turning the dirt that puffed into her face to mud. The beam blinked out, vanished from reality like it had never existed. Tommy fell forward off the ridge and bounced savagely down the jagged rock formations of the cliff, his body cracking and flopping until he ended up motionless on the hard-packed road below. The striper he¡¯d been firing humped into the dirt at the rim, slid a few slow feet downward, then stopped, still within arm¡¯s reach of the top. Pinny pushed herself up onto her knees. ¡°Did you mean for that to happen?¡± Dazzy lifted her rifle in Tommy¡¯s direction. Pinny began to sob loudly as she crawled precariously forward to see over the edge. ¡°Oh, fuck ¡­¡± she whimpered. Below, a pool of blood was forming under Tommy¡¯s head. One of the raiders rode up and put the bike between Tommy and the robot to provide some cover. ¡°Dazz!¡± somebody else shouted. ¡°What do we do?¡± Bail. Run. Pile into the bus and let¡¯s go. She didn¡¯t say that. She thought about how long it had been since they¡¯d eaten something real, and about how much she wanted that robot, and about how long it had been since she¡¯d just gotten to fucking kill somebody, and she said ¡°Save your bullets. Wait for an opening.¡± She glanced down at Sykky¡¯s body. Look, what the hell was God trying to accomplish, here? Was this some kind of ¡°Monkey¡¯s Paw¡± situation? You¡¯d get what you wanted from God, but He¡¯d make you pay a price you didn¡¯t know about, didn¡¯t agree to, and didn¡¯t like? This wasn¡¯t her fault, she reminded herself. But fuckin¡¯ Sykky. Aw, christ man, did that ever hurt. The third solarcycle raider had circled around for a second pass and now approached the camper from the rear, firing her machine gun and howling like an animal. Something mechanical clicked, and the hitch that attached the robot to the trailer unhooked itself with a little pop. It was all she could do to stop herself from moaning aloud. What new horror was the robot about to unleash that it needed to be loose? The uneasy possibility occurred to her that perhaps she¡¯d been wrong up in the flowglider. Maybe there really was no God. Maybe she¡¯d imagined meaning where none existed. Maybe she was losing her fucking mind. She stepped over to Kubby and took the radio from him. ¡°Raiders hang back. Hang back. We need to rethink what we¡¯re fuckin¡¯ doing here.¡± The great metal lizard flashed forward with startling speed, came around and met the third raider as she steered around the opposite end of the camper. All Dazzy could do was helplessly watch as another Fucksleaze got erased. This one rammed by the robot, who butted the flat of its spline-spiked head into the side of the solarcycle. The cycle skidded off to the side of the road, but its rider didn¡¯t go with it. She¡¯d been cut in half by the dinosaur¡¯s spikes. With a little toss of its head it threw the upper part of her body soaring thirty feet into the air, a pinwheel of blood and entrails flipping end over end until the force of the throw began to visibly pull out her organs. Her helmet fell off, revealing the contorted expression of surprise on her dead face. Down below, Tommy moved. He raised himself onto his knees, and Kappy, the last surviving raider, knelt down and tried to help him up. Dazzy could see that they were talking to each other. It looked like Tommy tried to gesture up to the top of the ridge, but suddenly twisted in pain. Broken arm? Broken ribs? And Kappy was moving his hands like, Tommy? Get onto the back of this fucking solarcycle right fucking now. Neither of them seemed to notice the robot walking slowly toward their position. The raider held his hands against Tommy¡¯s head. Trying to stop the flow of blood, Dazzy figured. Dazzy raised her fist to get everyone¡¯s attention. ¡°Ready,¡± she whisper-shouted. She had the feeling that if she had really shouted it, the robot would have heard her somehow. And would have moved itself back into a proper defensive position. It seemed like the angle was important for the robot¡¯s shimmering suspension field to work. It couldn¡¯t exist everywhere at once. When it was blocking the attack from the ridge-top a few moments earlier, the raiders coming from different directions got past the defenses and riddled the camper with bullets. If she was right, now that the robot had left its previous position to take out Helly on her cycle, and then started moving toward Tommy and Kappy, the trailer should be vulnerable again. ¡°Fire!¡± Dazzy hissed. She directed her aim on the front right corner of the trailer. On the spot where the bullet had come from that had taken Sykky down. Had to be that spot. That had been the bullet¡¯s trajectory. No way to tell if somebody was still in that spot, but somebody had been about 20 seconds earlier. So it was a good place to start. She fired. The other Fucksleazes followed. This time their bullets peppered and rocked the trailer violently back and forth. God. Finally. Raining hell on those lucky assholes with full-scale bullet-storm felt so incredibly satisfying. She imagined bodies inside. Let¡¯s say four. Let¡¯s say a mom and dad and a little miss and a little junior. Let¡¯s say eight years old. Twins, why not? She imagined those bodies being shredded to pieces by little pieces of metal moving at 2500 feet per second. That made her smile. She bolted another shot into that corner. Then another. She began to laugh. When they were gone, the robot would stop. Somebody was controlling it. It¡¯s not like it was alive. It wasn¡¯t even automated, its behavior was too sophisticated for that. This was no automaton performing simple tasks. And when everybody in that trailer was dead she¡¯d enter that piece of shit box of metal and start figuring out how to control that spectacular piece of supermachinery for herself. The robot suddenly changed direction. Leaped against the rocks, came up the side of the cliff with absurd speed. ¡°Fuck! Off!¡± Dazzy shouted in surprise, mimicking Tommy¡¯s outburst from earlier. How fast was this thing moving? 60 miles an hour? 70? Up the side of the fucking rock cliff! Then it was among them. It curled over the top of the ridge like some kind of maniac animal God. Sunlight reflected off its burnished chrome surface and flared into her eyes, leaving her momentarily blinded. Some of the other Fucksleazes were screaming. Some ran. At 15 feet tall it towered over them. It had Pinny Fucksleaze trapped beneath one claw. She kicked her legs and squirmed her back against the dirt, trying to squeeze free. Then it began to speak. There was no mouth on its pointed, featureless face, but a great rumble issued from it anyway, sounding simultaneously baritone-deep and hideously screeching, like two huge slabs of steel being scraped against each other with incredible force. The words boomed into her. ¡°Y¡¯all bushwhackin¡¯ fuckdummies really loused this venture, didn¡¯tcha?¡±