by Andrew Post
Ridiculously outside the realm of possibility, you say? I was currently being hugged by a cartoon character.
Shadows fell at the base of the double doors. Not just the set Thadius had left through, but the ones at the far end as well. Heads appeared, featureless and eyeless, in front of the windows.
They entered at once, as if on cue, and streamed into the room. These were dressed different from the ones at the Siren House. They weren’t clad in the cloaks but in form-fitting armor, all in that same gray color. They looked like mannequins, every part of them so smooth. They held nothing in their hands, their very human-looking hands.
Squishy vibrated against me in terror.
I raised the flamethrower. “Stay away from us.”
They silently declined. They kept on coming, one slow step at a time.
I aimed the flamethrower but knew in my heart I couldn’t do it—they looked too much like people. If they’d just drop the masks and show me they had bug eyes or pincer mouths, I’d let them have it, but as it stood . . . I couldn’t.
“Put it down,” one said. Which one, I couldn’t discern. It was just a voice from that wall of gray. Another—perhaps even the same—said, “Hoarding electricity is forbidden.”
One of the closer ones wasn’t as fixated on me but was looking at Squishy in my arms. “Undocumented animal.”
I could feel it again—that tickling sensation all over me. I wasn’t sure if it was some kind of X-ray vision or what, but I could feel it, like fingertips racing up and down every inch of me simultaneously. The way Squishy cowered, I assumed he could feel it as well.
“An abomination,” the Smock concluded, reaching out for Squishy.
“Stay back.” I pointed the flamethrower up and squeezed the trigger, issuing a warning shot. It made a high-pitched whistling sound, and after a slight delay, a shot of flame coughed out. The fireball dispersed in the air.
The Smocks didn’t seem to notice or care and continued closing in.
“Are you in ownership of a matter reconstructor?” said a female voice to my right.
“Leave us alone!”
“Harboring abominations is one crime,” a male voice to my left said. “Punishable by a meeting with fire that may lead to death. Ownership of a matter reconstructor is another crime, punishable in a similar fashion.” Did he just say that with a smile?
I guessed at which one had just spoken and turned the business end of the flamethrower toward his face. Another, possibly the female one, lunged out for the flamethrower, wrenching it away. The Smock dropped it at its own feet, put a heel atop it, and with a kick backward, sent it skidding out of reach. “Threatening a member of the Regolatore is also against the edict.”
I pulled free one of the crutches crossed on my lap and pushed it against the floor to propel myself backward. One of the Smocks caught the crutch by its end and ripped it, too, from my hand. I tried to get the next, and this is when they moved forward together, took the chair by its arms, and dumped both Squishy and me to the floor. The cement jumped up to meet me, my hands slapping against the floor hard.
They cast the chair aside and crowded around. Again, the feather tickling my brain. I clawed forward, dragging myself as fast as I could—which is to say, not very fast. My fingers could get no traction on the smooth cement floor.
“Earlier today, I saw her,” one said. “I remember her.”
“I see that,” another said.
Could they freaking see each other’s thoughts?
Squishy took me by the arm and pulled without effect.
A Smock moved in and kicked Squishy, who sailed away. When the squidmouse landed, slid, and lay motionless on his side, his back to me, I screamed for him, but he didn’t reply or even so much as twitch.
“You—you assholes. You hurt him. Squishy!”
They crowded in around me.
“Disgusting. She has an attachment to her abomination.”
“No love can come from a machine.”
“Her death will be a cleansing.”
I looked up. The Smocks all pointed their palms at me, oval-shaped holes cut into their gloves. Framed into each hole was what looked like a closed eye. With a soft popping sound, each socket in each palm opened. Inside, no eye . . . just darkness. Pouring from it, a faint mechanical purr and heat. A slow heat, like for baking. The holes in their hands looked like a series of silently screaming mouths, all directed at me.
I didn’t know what would come next. I just figured this was when they’d summon fire from their hands, and I’d be burned alive. And this is how my story would end. How long ago had Thadius gone off to get the scythe rifle warmed up? It felt like I’d suffered a few lifetimes’ worth of scares between then and now. Somehow I hoped the WTF affected the scythe rifle too, made it warm up in just a few seconds instead of ten damn minutes.
The heat was choking. I was unable to even beg them to stop, the boiling air scouring my lungs. “Thadius . . . hurry.” I couldn’t keep my head up. It was just too much to stand.
Well, here I am. I survived the fucking apocalypse, and now, I’m going to meet my end by being cooked alive in the storeroom of a Mega Deluxo. And on top of that, wouldn’t you know it, I’m going to die a virgin.
Awesome.
Track 11
WHEN DISASTER STRIKES
One of the Smocks stopped, and the shape of his face beneath the mask changed. A shallow appeared in the fabric over the mouth, and a yelping gasp popped free from within. He twisted this way and that, each limb seemed now entirely independent and self-possessed.
The others watched, dismayed, as the one mysteriously tortured Smock’s posture went ramrod straight. A faint crackling sound began, as if someone were wringing bubble wrap—and then I could see the wall behind him. Gone. Another went rigid just like the other, the crackling sound came, and then it were gone as well.
The Smocks understood what was happening before I did. When the next one vanished, I could see who had been directly behind him. Thadius, at the double doors, with the scythe rifle strapped to his body.
“We were bait?” I snapped.
There was a soft purring sound, a double beep, and Thadius pulled the lever on the thing’s side. Another Smock disappeared with, much to my horror, a sizeable piece of the floor and half the office chair I’d been wheeled in on.
The remaining seven Smocks turned and charged, all of them with their hands outstretched. Thadius fumbled backward, waiting for the double beep.
One Smock made a perfectly circular chunk of the wall disappear where Thadius had been standing a second ago. Another did the same, their imbedded harvesters needing no time to recharge.
Thadius left a series of ellipses behind him as he strafed their fire. For a fight to the death, it was so quiet. Normal wall one second, a series of perfectly round holes punched cleanly through the next.
Thadius dodged side to side, ducked a few invisible harvesting shots as they snatched more of the walls around us, got the double beep, and pulled the trigger. Another Smock was harvested.
“One more, one more,” Thadius grunted, moving aside just as another piece of the wall vanished beside him. Half a cardboard box vanished, and its contents spilled onto the floor, a rain of halved Squishy the Squidmouse dolls. Noticing a sliver of his coat sleeve had been taken, Thadius cursed.
The double beep sounded, he fired again. Another Smock, his fourth harvested, crackled and disappeared. This time, though, Thadius’s aim seemed to be off a little bit, and he didn’t take the whole Smock. The top of its head, basically just a swatch of blond scalp, hit the floor with an oval of gray fabric from the mask still clinging to it. Two shoe soles, with toes arranged upon them.
The six remaining Smocks held their palms out but backed away.
Thadius, scythe rifle butt on his hip, scanned it over them left to right, then right to left. “If you’re considerin’ turnin’ tail, now would be the time. I got room in the canister for y’all—might be crowded, but I do.”
The Smocks looked at one another. The dark sockets in their palms all closed, the wrinkles of the lids blending with the creases of their palms. They began anxiously talking to one another in this strange dialect—a lot of throat-clearing hacking sounds and nasal hrrnk grunts.
Decision made, they all aimed at each other with their palms, and again the sockets popped open. They shot one another, harvesting themselves, and soundlessly disappeared like a bad special effect. Camera off, step out of frame, camera back on—blink.
Across the room, tossed over by a pile of collapsed cardboard boxes, Squishy was getting back up. He put a hand against his forehead and shook off the fogginess of a concussion. I was about to ask the little guy if he was okay when Thadius began swearing up a storm.
Both Squishy and I watched as Thadius fought to unbuckle the steaming gun from the harness. Once off, he growled, glaring at all the pink burns dotting his forearms. His hands were even worse. “Didn’t have time to get my long leather gloves,” he said, hissing as he rolled his sleeves back down.
He worked through the pain to help me back up, retrieving one crutch where it had been thrown and then the other.
Squishy stood staring at the dolls on the floor, leaking their stuffing. He poked a finger to the cottony mass that dribbled from the neck of one—it’s head harvested, gone—and backed away, blinking fast. He moved toward me, looked at me once he’d gotten within a few steps, paused, then turned away. He moved to the far wall, where neither beheaded cotton-stuffed imposters or his creator or her mentor could see his face.
Finding it hard to retain my balance on crutches, I gave in and slumped to the cement floor. I pressed my back against the cold metal face of the industrial-sized trash compactor.
Through the walls, all shot full of holes the diameter of basketballs, I could see trees, overcast sky. It was like being on the rig, where all the windows were round, glassless portholes.
“Why’d they give up? Not that I’m complaining,” I said with a morose chuckle. It kind of came out of nowhere, that weird little laugh. I felt sick from fear, and every part of me continued to shake. I understood pre-A ambulance drivers better, suddenly.
“If they’re losing a fight, they’ll leave. But only when there’s an even number of them. They can’t harvest themselves; they have to do it to each other.”
“They didn’t just kill each other?” I asked, relief evaporating. Here I was hoping it was some kind of Smock hari-kari thing.
“No, they got the good gear. They can harvest each other, and they don’t even need a canister. They just zap, poof, gone—and they’re back at home base. Their harvesters are imbedded, with a direct line back to their HQ right here.” He tapped his heart with a pinked, burned finger.
The gesture was almost like Thadius accidentally pressed the power button on himself. He wavered a little, and quickly lowered himself onto the floor. He accidentally sat in the dip in the cement he’d made when harvesting one of the Smocks, so he scooted to the side to lie flat comfortably.
Sitting where I was, with his feet toward me, all I could see were legs and belly. Up and down with each labored breath. Somewhere on the other side of the hillock of man gut, he was saying, “Good news is they can’t do it backward and just assemble themselves here. Not yet, anyway. I figure with the next WTF they do, they’ll change that.”
I looked at the scythe rifle steaming on the floor, mainly its fixins canister jutting out the bottom. “So they’re in there?”
“Not them themselves but their ingredients. It’s not like they’re inside, all shrunken and floatin’ around or anything. They’re good as dead.” He sat up far enough to say in a faux scholarly tone, “Their mass-based molecules have been transformed into that of nonmass energy.”
I watched him reach over to tap one of the canisters, as if to see if it was cool enough to touch. He unscrewed it from the rifle. Holding it above his head, he glared at it. He turned the canister around. On one side was a small glass panel, the length and width of my finger. Inside, dust. White as chalk. He turned the canister this way and that, showing me how the dust would cling for a moment like flour, then collect to one end in a silent rush.
“They were going to do the same thing to you,” he said, “except put you together back home. Scramble you up until you told them everything.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
Thadius, on the dark side of the belly, said, “It’s all right. We’re all rats once we figure out if we press the green button the zapping stops.” Then, “That made more sense in my head.” He set the canister aside. I couldn’t help but stare at it. Six full-grown people were in there, something the size of a tennis ball tube.
I accidently thought my question aloud: “Can we bring them back?”
The belly bounced a few times, Thadius laughing. “Why would you want to?”
“Make them tell us how to stop them.”
He sat up, groaning, his face red and sweaty. He had to hold his knees to keep from falling back again. He made a raspy sound from deep within his throat and spat. “They can have that,” he said, nodding at the glistening loogie on the floor.
He got up, picked up the discus made from the top of the Smock skull and the ten little pale toes and walked the gruesome collection to the back door. Through one of the new holes in the wall the mass went sailing—pale parts scattering through the air. “Something for the birds.” He wiped his hands on his pants and let the door ease shut.
I stared at him until he met my gaze. “You know why I’m asking that.”
“Asking what?” Thadius replied, then gave me a withering glare and a roll of his eyes. He broke it off before stepping over to me and offering his hand to help me up. “You got the best gear around outside of theirs, kiddo. If that series six of yours couldn’t bring somebody back, nobody’s can.”
I didn’t take his hand. “Will you let me try? We could question them. Make them tell us how to stop them, what their weak points are, where they—”
“No,” he said. He waved his open hand in front of my face. “I ain’t holdin’ this thing here for you to give it a look-see, you know.”
Again, I refused to reach out and take it. “I thought I was officially part of the fight now. Do my opinions not count?” I asked, sounding more haughtily than I’d wanted.
“Fine, stay on the floor.” He walked away.
“Why can’t I try?” I rolled onto my stomach to throw a hand out across the floor to snag my crutch. I dragged it over, got up onto it, hobbled toward the other. “Have you tried it before? What if we reassembled them, got one of them to tell us everything they knew, and—”
Thadius showed me his hand, the one with the missing thumb. “See this? This is what happens when a scratcher gets too big for his britches. This is what happens when he rebuilds a Smock—a Smock being someone who has their harvesters build inside of them—which means even if you rebuild them buck naked, they’re still armed the minute they come to.” He lowered his hand, gifted me with another second or two of scowling, and turned to leave.
Before he was gone, I blurted, “So you have done it.”
“Yeah, okay. I have. I have.”
“But you said you hadn’t. The way you reacted when you saw Squishy for the first time,” I sputtered. “I don’t know what to believe, honestly. If we’re to work together, I think it might be good if this place was a bullshit-free environ—”
“Listen,” he said, “you and I aren’t on the same level. I know you got good intentions and all, girlie, but some things have to remain secret. I can’t tell you everything, and I don’t want you tellin’ me every damn thing neither. I know you say you won’t roll on me and Mosaic Face if you get nabbed, but we all like to think that highly about ourselves. Just, for my sake, please . . .” He pressed his hands toward the floor. “Cool it, okay?”
“I want to help.”
“I know you do, but trust me when I tell ya it isn’t a good idea. Jazzing is one
thing, but that—what you’re suggestin’—is something else altogether.” He added, “From what you said, I figgered you’d know that better than anybody.”
That stung. Even if it wasn’t meant to.
With nothing more to say, I nodded.
Thadius used his thumbless hand to slap aside the door as he left the room.
I remained where I was, counted to ten, thought outside of my own shoes, and determined he had a point. We were a resistance with only three members, and I was still the newbie. Best listen to my superiors. I pushed the shrieking product of my imagination aside, as much as it begged. I refused. I just hoped Thadius and Mosaic Face had a better plan; I wouldn’t be able to keep that idea quiet forever.
I gave Thadius a few minutes before I returned to the front corner of the store.
Thadius walked over to where Squishy was still standing staring at the wall and picked him up and set him on his shoulder. Squishy’s face remained blank. He didn’t fight being picked up and once placed on Thadius’s shoulder, sat there, blinking slow, faraway.
I followed Thadius out of the storage room. “Won’t they know where this place is now?”
“Funny thing about that,” Thadius said, all sign of anger gone. “That’s the other reason they use harvestin’ each other as a last resort: when they get put back together at home base, it’s like the day they were born. They don’t remember anything except they were somewhere doing somethin’ before arriving back.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Thadius said. “It is. But I’m sure they’ll find a way to fix that too before long. And that brings us to the last detail. How they got here.” Thadius indicated the open doors on the other side of the collapsed pile of shopping carts. Beyond, in the sparse parking lot, was exactly that: how the Smocks had gotten here. Their vehicle.
Stepping around shopping carts and the cast-aside roll of razor wire, we went out. The auto was just like the one I’d seen in town, angular and set astride three wheels with two in the front and a larger one in the back. Getting a better chance to really look at it now, I noticed it was remarkably narrow, probably half the width of a standard car. Thadius wasn’t a stranger to these, it became apparent, when he laid a palm on its side and, with one simple push, made the entire side of the vehicle slide open.