The Prey of Gods

by Nicky Drayden

  “Maybe, but then who would protect you, my darling little terrorist?”

  That’s not going to work. Not anymore. “My friends will protect me,” she says, nodding at Clever4–1. “So I don’t need you!”

  “Protected by a cheap alpha bot?” Sydney clucks her tongue, then shoves Clever4–1, and it goes clink clanking down the stairs. Its lights flicker and its legs go limp as it collides against the floor below. People gasp, but then Sydney yells out, “It’s just a bot!”

  “Not just a bot,” Nomvula screams. Those bees buzz inside her chest. Faster, smaller, hotter, and angrier. She slits her eyes and aims her glowing palm at Sydney. “You hurt my friend!”

  Sydney stops and stares for a long moment, then her lip raises like a wolf’s grin. She grabs Nomvula’s hand and balls it up in her own fist, burning Nomvula’s skin like angry sunshine. She pulls Nomvula into a tight hug, speaks into her ear. “You underestimate me, sister.” The ire is thick on her breath. Fresh. The scent of blood lingers. “It won’t be much longer, now. Imagine how much fear this place can hold. It’ll be brimming to the rafters by the time I’m done. I might even let you live long enough to see their faces as I reveal myself to them, in all my glory, as their god.” Sydney primps her hair with her free hand, then glides it down over the curves of her skin-tight, sparkly dress. Her eyes flicker up at the larger-than-life projection of a woman taking the stage, wearing the exact same outfit as Sydney.

  Nomvula feels the heat bubbling from Sydney’s skin, sees her eyes glow bright yellow like flames. She screeches what could only be an ancient curse in an even more ancient tongue, but it’s lost completely as the woman onstage belts out a note so high, so loud, so surprisingly pure, that Sydney’s grip loosens enough for Nomvula to break free.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” says a man’s voice over the loudspeakers. “Introducing, Felicity Lyons!”

  The crowd stands and applauds, the note still going strong. Nomvula scrambles down the stairs, scoops up Clever4–1, and pushes her way past the man in uniform, disappearing into the swollen mass of people shaking their bodies to the beat.

  Are you all right? Nomvula asks the Clever hugged tightly in her arms. A long crack runs across its dome.

  Three seconds pass, which is an eternity in machine time. Nomvula’s mind wanders all over the place, wondering if its parts had been damaged, or its spark extinguished. She gets frantic, searching for any sign of her friend within all that metal and wire. Finally, Clever4–1’s voice returns, weak, but there.

  Nomvula, it says. I would like to hear the concert now.

  Nomvula smiles, hugs Clever4–1 even tighter, then straightens up its pretty jacket.

  We will, she says. And nobody will stop them.

  Chapter 33

  Muzi

  “Elkin, please,” Muzi says, checking over his shoulder for security guards, or worse, actual SAPS officers. He’s not sure how Elkin talked him into coming up here, in the rafters of the arena, looking for trouble and doing a damn good job of finding it. “Don’t you think you’re taking this too far?”

  “Didn’t you see the way she looked at me? Like I was complete scum. Worse than scum. The stuff that scum shits out after it feeds on week-old Chinese takeout!” Elkin shakes his head and mumbles to himself as his dexterous fingers pull and plug wires in and out of their sockets, swapping them every which way within the stage-lighting access panel.

  “How was she supposed to look? You asked her to sign your filthy bong.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t rinse it out!”

  “They do make autograph books, you know,” Muzi grumbles, checking over his other shoulder. They really shouldn’t be up here. It’s bad enough Elkin nearly got them escorted out of the concert. A little mind munching got them free, but now Muzi has a boss headache from the shrill siren calls of this chick performing the opening act.

  “That’s just what I need, to drop four hundred rand on a stupid concert program and for what? Something a million other people have? No thanks! I wanted something personal. Something I could look at and enjoy every day. Something close to my heart.” Elkin steps back from the panel, unzips his jacket, and pulls out his bright orange bong carefully wrapped in layers of tissue paper. “She doesn’t understand, Penelope,” he coos. “She just doesn’t understand.”

  “Um, we’re kind of under a time crunch here,” Muzi says. He leans over the rail of the scaffolding, looking down at the mass of people, all screaming and yelling and writhing their bodies to whatever constitutes rhythm in their own minds.

  “Ja, ja . . .” Elkin says, stuffing his bong back into his jacket, then closing the door on the panel. “I’m done here. We’ll see how she likes her new marquee when her royal trampiness graces the stage.”

  “So did you settle on ‘Bitch’?”

  “Naw, too obvious. I came up with something way better.”

  “Did you?”

  “You’ll have to wait and see yourself,” Elkin says, grinning. “It’s going to be hectic!”

  “Seriously?” He can only imagine. “Let’s get back to our seats.”

  “I’m not going back down there. I’m not sitting in seats she gave us.”

  “You want to leave?” Muzi asks, brow arched so high he nearly strains a muscle. Elkin’s been in love with Riya’s music since as long as he can remember, knows all her songs backward and forward, and could tell you exactly what he’d been doing the day he’d first heard each one of them.

  “Hell no, I’m not leaving! Just because she’s a rotten stank-whore bitch doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy her music. It hits right here,” Elkin says, patting his chest. “Right in my soul.” He takes a seat on the scaffolding, lets his legs dangle below, and pulls a vial out of one of his jacket pockets. “Hey, you in, bru?”

  Muzi shakes his head . . . and then takes a seat next to Elkin. “You’re really screwed up, you know that?”

  “And what does that say about you, since you’re my best friend?” Elkin dips a bit of godsend out for the both of them. He grins, then snorts, then lets his eyes roll back in his head. Muzi does the same, and in a matter of moments, his claws are hanging over the lower railing, clacking to the beat of this Felicity Lyons chick’s song. Now that he’s actually listening, she’s not bad. A little over the top for Muzi’s taste, but he’s not all that into Riya, either, and it’s all too easy for his mind to wander.

  Papa Fuzz’s memories press up hard against Muzi’s skull. He wants them gone—the torment on the face of that elephant makes his blood burn like acid through his veins. He remembers the weight of the gun in his hands, so deceptively heavy. He remembers the commanding voice of that man, bidding his grandfather to kill. The man who practically raised him, the man he’d loved with all his heart, the man he wanted more than anything to be proud of him . . .

  That man was nothing more than a cold-blooded poacher.

  So what does that make Muzi? A quarter of a poacher? How many had Papa Fuzz killed before he’d realized he was taking lives, not of animals, but of families? Robbing Africa of one of its greatest assets. Had he even realized, or had he continued until there were none left to kill? No wonder Papa Fuzz had run off to South Africa to escape his demons and rewrite his history. He’d met Mama Belle, the daughter of Irish immigrants, in Johannesburg, and she’d gotten swept up in the fabulous stories about his life, full of colorful characters and a rich heritage. His stories were wonderful, Muzi had to admit. When Muzi was a child, he’d beg Papa Fuzz to tell him of his incredible adventures for his bedtime stories. Incredible. He should have known better.

  The image of the flag painted on the chopper from his vision snaps clear in focus. Muzi turns for his alphie, then remembers he’d checked it at the door. It’s odd not having his alphie underfoot, but who needs Internet access when he’s got a friend with a frickin’ encyclopedia floating around in his head?

  “Hey, Elkin,” Muzi says. “What flag looks like this?” He traces his index finger along the space
in between them. “Green, yellow, red, and black stripes with a chicken-looking thing and a star?”

  “One of Zimbabwe’s old flags,” Elkin says without a second thought, then he turns his attention back to the crowd below. “My cousin Rife must be here.”

  “Yeah?” Muzi says, then looks down also, spotting a few dozen dancing animals in the audience: a couple dolphins, a few crabs like him, and eagles all over. More transform before his eyes, and in the span of ten minutes, there are hundreds, all screaming in euphoria, shedding their clothes, making out with strangers. Muzi smiles.

  Maybe this is what he is. Not Zimbabwean or Irish or Xhosa or South African. He’s just a crab. Muzi the Crab, who happens to be able to control people’s minds.

  After Felicity Lyons’s set ends, the entire arena goes pitch-black. Screams become shrill and Muzi feels the anticipation running through the crowd. Pyrotechnics flare onstage, white, blue, and pink fireworks filling the dome ceiling with smoke. Elkin claps his fins together, opens his snout, and clicks and whistles in excitement.

  “Epic, I tell you,” he says.

  The dark figures of backup dancers cross the stage, lights flash on, dazing Muzi with their sudden and blinding brightness. The beat drops, and Riya Natrajan struts down a spiral staircase, a full-blown peacock, the most beautiful Muzi’s ever seen.

  “You know what that means, right?” Elkin says with a snarl. “She’s using, too, and has the audacity to look down at me! She so deserves what she’s getting tonight.”

  The smoke parts and the lights of the marquee slowly become legible. The audience starts laughing, causing Riya Natrajan to miss a step, but she keeps singing, oblivious to the message behind her.

  Diarrhea! The sign boasts in a thousand brilliant white bulbs. The crowd is a riot of laughter now.

  “Get it? Diar-riya! She’s got the squirts.” Elkin nudges Muzi’s carapace.

  “You have superhuman intellect, and this is what you do with it? Bad poop jokes?”

  “Fully, bru! Tell me it didn’t make you laugh. Just a little?”

  “Very little. Maybe a chuckle. What’s less than a chuckle?”

  “A chortle, then a guffaw.”

  “A guffaw, then,” Muzi says, admitting only to himself that this whole situation is bordering on ridiculously silly, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “Are you kidding me?” Elkin slaps Muzi on the shoulder with his flipper. “It deserves at least a chortle and a half.” His attention snaps like a dry twig as the guitar solo climaxes and Riya takes center stage for the chorus. Elkin shouts the words—he may hate her guts right now, but he still clearly loves the music—pumping his flipper in the air to the beat.

  Goodnight, seersucker!

  It’s midnight, guess I’ll see ya sucker.

  Could’ve made your move a thousand times,

  but you’d rather be alone,

  and I . . .

  Can’t wait ’til the morning after,

  ’cause it’s too late for your chitter-chatter.

  I’ll be wrapped up in his arms!

  Far away from here!

  You had your chance for this romance,

  now I’m outta here . . .

  Muzi clears his throat as the stage lights go to black. He clicks his claws absentmindedly to the sound of fading drums, lyrics that normally go in one ear and out the other settling right smack-dab in his chest. This is stupid. He should say something, something he won’t erase from Elkin’s mind as soon as he gets a little freaked out. To hell with the consequences, right?

  “Um, Elkin?” Muzi mutters. A lone snare drum silences the audience in anticipation of the next song, and Muzi bites his lip. “There’s something I need to tell you. Again.”

  Elkin shakes his head. “This is ‘Shockwave.’ There’s no talking during ‘Shockwave.’”

  “But it’s sort of important.”

  “Then spit it out, already. You don’t need to tell me that you’re going to tell me something. Just tell me.”

  The bass guitarist joins the drummer, notes resonating in the pit of Muzi’s stomach. “I’m sorry, it’s just that . . .” His eyes flick up, meet Elkin’s, then settle right over his shoulder at the pair of uniformed men with badges marching toward them. Cops. Real cops. “Run!” Muzi says, jumping to his feet.

  Elkin’s head whips around, looking behind him. “Shit!”

  Real cops mean real guns. Elkin takes the lead and they dash away along the scaffolding, causing it to sway beneath their feet.

  “Stop, you two!” one of the SAPS officers yells from behind. “Don’t make me—”

  And then Riya’s voice cuts in, a reverberating note gaining momentum faster than a snowball in an avalanche, sharper than a samurai sword, potent enough to disintegrate eardrums.

  The bulbs of the now reprogrammed Diarrhea! marquee crack, just a couple at first, then the rest burst in unison, raining glass down onto the stage. There’s screaming, lots of screaming, but Muzi’s running too fast to see if people are hurt or just scared. Everyone’s nerves are on edge since the terrorist attack, especially in crowded places like this.

  Elkin comes to a quick halt, and Muzi nearly rear-ends him.

  “What?” Muzi gasps for breath.

  Elkin points ahead. The scaffolding dead-ends, another set starting a level lower.

  “It’s not far. We can make it,” Elkin says.

  “No bladdy way. Let me mind munch them.” Muzi turns to the oncoming cops, their hands firmly on their gun holsters.

  “I don’t know, Muzi. You didn’t look so hot last time. I thought you were going to pass out.”

  “I can handle it.” Muzi extends his arm toward the cops. They draw, but he’s faster. “You don’t want to shoot us!” he blurts out. Simultaneously, the cops’ arms raise up into the air, but not before one of them gets a shot off. The bullet whizzes past Muzi’s ear and clinks against something behind him.

  “Holy hell!” Elkin checks himself over for holes, then Muzi.

  “I’m fine,” Muzi says. “Come on, let’s go!”

  They run past the cops, but the sound of plinking slows Muzi in his tracks. He looks over his shoulder and sees the long wire cord holding the edge of the scaffolding unravel like a frayed rope. Muzi and Elkin exchange panicked glances.

  “The statistical probability that the bullet could have hit that wire is practically nil,” Elkin says calmly, as if reality would somehow agree with his logic and change its mind.

  “That’s great. And what’s the probability of us surviving a twenty-meter fall?”

  “Surprisingly, it’s twelve and a half percent. For one of us anyway. The odds that both of us would survive would be—”

  Muzi grabs Elkin’s coat sleeve and tugs him along. “Snap out of it, and let’s go!”

  Too late. The scaffolding sways and pitches. Elkin scrambles and gets a tight hold of the railing, and Muzi gets a good grip on Elkin’s thigh, but the cops, they’ve still got their hands thrown up into the air, and they go sliding toward the platform’s edge.

  “Jump!” Muzi commands them at the last possible second, and they both spring forward, sailing over the abyss and landing with a clunk on the opposite side of the scaffolding. Safe.

  Muzi sighs with relief.

  “Hey, hero,” Elkin says with a quavering voice. “Maybe now you can start scheming over how you’re going to save our asses?”

  Yep. They’re both dangling, twenty meters from the end of their lives.

  “Can you pull yourself back up?” Muzi asks.

  “Not with you hanging on me. We’re screwed, unless you’ve got wings you never told me about.”

  “Who needs wings when you can munch minds?” Muzi asks, feeling warmth grow in his chest. He’s getting better at it. Better at controlling, better at handling the aftermath of emotions. He can do this. He concentrates hard, latching on to the minds of more than he’s ever controlled before. From the panicked masses below comes calm, then precision moveme
nts as they march to form a circular base to what Muzi hopes will be the highest human pyramid ever built, a pyramid that should find its apex right beneath them, and hopefully break their fall. A mountain rises up a level at a time, constructed of mindless concertgoers with the constitution of stacked cinder blocks. They interlock arms and stand on the shoulders of those beneath them, not nervous, not swaying, just being.

  They’ve built five tiers, concentric circles growing smaller and smaller, when Elkin announces, “I don’t think I can hold on much longer.”

  “There’s still a big drop,” Muzi says to Elkin.

  “Just ten meters, now. Plus we’ve got cushioning.” Elkin does his best to sound optimistic. “But just in case”—Elkin fumbles as his grip slips, his mitt of a hand frantically reaching for another firm hold—“just in case we don’t make it . . . ”

  “Elkin!”

  “Shut your hole for a second, Muzi. Just in case, I want you to know, I remember Saturday, that Saturday you made me forget. It’s foggy as hell, slippery as a dream right after you wake, but I’ve been holding on, trying real hard not to forget.”

  Then, right as Muzi opens his mouth, they’re falling, on target to hit the top tier of their human pyramid like kamikaze wedding toppers onto a ten-meter-high layer cake. They hit, and the layer implodes around them, and they keep falling, a slow-motion fall that’s more like drowning now that Muzi thinks about it, suffocated by people, all arms and elbows and knees and butts. But there’s no way to kick toward the surface. There’s only down. And hope.

  Things settle, and nothing’s broken, but then Muzi braces himself for what’s to come . . . eight hundred and eighty-four awful memories. They crash through his brain like a tidal wave, with intentions of washing his own memories to the side. Muzi stands firm against them, letting them slip past as he holds on to happy thoughts. Particularly one happy thought: Elkin remembers, and Muzi will be damned if his own memory is about to be replaced. It seems like he’s well on his way to eternity when the visions stop. Muzi opens his eyes, hundreds of people moan, sore and confused but fine. He props himself up, sees Elkin slumped forward, unmoving. Muzi scrambles over human detritus beneath him, then lays his hand on Elkin’s shoulder.