They Tell Me I'm The Bad Guy

by R. D. Harless

  People, trucks and buildings started teleporting at random like a kid swapping around pieces of a puzzle. Body parts were severed from people standing in the wrong place at the wrong time; guys lost limbs in a hiss of air. Cops, Posters, trucks, soldiers, brick, street, dirt and mortar fell out of the sky when they re-appeared. Buildings collapsed when they lost parts of foundation. In the confusion, somebody used their power to take control of the cops' heavy machine-guns and turned them around. While Pyramiden got rearranged, hot gunfire from eight anti-aircraft guns massacred vehicles and went through Kevlar before somebody with the cops disassembled the guns the same way they had the buildings. Half a goddamn helicopter appeared on the ground in the middle of the cluster of vehicles, its blades spinning, and just butchered people.

  I ran for cover in what turned out to be a small grocery store. I needed a second to think and to catch my breath. And staying in one spot seemed like the best way to not wander into one of Tracey's teleport zones. Inside the store, shelves were toppled over, cans and boxes of food were all over the floor. Somebody had looted the place looking for food but it had all gone bad years ago. Then the store got used as a toilet; it smelled like piss and cooked spoons.

  Swear to God, I hadn't even gotten a chance to catch my breath when the floor bucked in a wave that went from one end of the foundation to the other, then back. Shelves jumped up and fell on me, burying me in boxes of old cereal and potato flakes. Rafters snapped above, walls cracked almost to collapse, the whole store just got thoroughly fucked. I had two shelf units on top of me.

  Then came voices and a couple of guys moving through all the fallen crap.

  "The fuck is he?" somebody said.

  Shit, were they talking about me? I couldn't see a damn thing, and I didn't move.

  Cans were kicked out of the way and rolled and crashed into other shit. I hid in my fort of expired, shitty foreign cereal.

  "Silvy, make him squeal," one of them guys said in a gravelly growl.

  Fuck.

  All of a sudden, my mouth shouted "right here" without me telling it to. That fucker Lee hadn't turned my nanites on, and Psycho Silvy had full access to my head.

  The footsteps changed direction and came right at me.

  I ignited a wall of fire a yard thick around me while I tried to push the shelf units off and dig myself out. The floor bucked again and kicked me upward, slamming my head hard into a shelf unit and spilling boxes in a snow of instant powdered potatoes. The flakes briefly caught fire then died as my flames went out. Hitting my head shot my concentration to shit.

  The first thing I saw through the fog of head injury was a shaved gorilla with a goatee. His SCEIA-issue gray jumpsuit was peeled down and tied around his waist with the sleeves. Just like the old guard had told me. Ja-Rilla.

  A fat, Old English W.C.S.C. had been tattooed across his chest. "'Sup, bitch?" he snarled at me down the barrel of an AK-47 in a voice that sounded exactly like what it would sound like if someone had taught a gorilla to speak. "You want some sedatives 'fore I blow your ass away? This is what you get for fuckin' with the--"

  It only took me a second to super-heat his AK, blow the rounds in the clip and melt the skin on his hands to the gun. The round already in the chamber fired and nearly took my head off, and, behind me, a long shelf dislodged from its unit, wound around me tight and took my feet out from under me. I landed hard on the floor. More head injuries. Fantastic.

  Some white kid with a mohawk, a W.C.S.C. on his neck and a Seahawks jersey pointed a handgun at me like an idiot, his finger on the trigger. "Ja-Rilla, you all right?" he shouted at the cursing gorilla.

  "Fuckin' shoot 'im," Rilla roared as he ripped his right hand off the AK metal in a bloody mess.

  Again, stupid-ass kids wasting time with talking and pointing guns at a goddamn pyrokinetic. Seahawks fan lost his hand when I blew the clip in his gun. Did they even fucking teach science in school anymore?

  I set his jersey on fire next, and in my head, a voice like glass on steel screeched, "YoU cAn'T mOvE nOw," and all my muscles stopped working.

  Ja-Rilla got his other hand torn off the AK and came at me, but, fuck him, because I didn't have to move a damn thing to set his face on fire while I hummed 'Ice, Ice, Baby' some more to distract Silvy. The fire slowed Rilla down, but he was cranked on adrenaline and didn't stop. Silvy took the fire away from me, but fuck her too, because I froze Rilla's bare foot to a can of peaches, and that tripped him up enough to put him on the floor, just screaming and still trying to put his face out.

  "StOp SiNgInG nOw," Silvy ordered right before I couldn't do cold anymore. I had nothing left. Ja-Rilla stopped yelling like a switch had been turned off and stood up calmly, even with his face looking like burnt bacon. Silvy had the guy in her control.

  She shouted in my brain, "BuRn ThE sToRe ArOuNd YoU wHiLe He StRaNgLeS yOu," and I could feel her anger and joy in the whole thing, but then she faded away out of my thoughts. And a shotgun blast dropped Ja-Rilla for good.

  The Rasta set a smoking shotgun on the floor and knelt down next to me. He had his Adidas shorts on with a fluorescent pink tank top with the arms holes cut down to the waist. I couldn't really hear much after he fired that damn shot, but I kind of read his lips. "She gone now. You stay close to me." He tapped the side of his head with a smile. Something, something, "not getting through."

  Thank Jesus for Jamaican car thieves.

  He helped me get out of the shelf boa-constricted around me, and my hearing started to come back. "Mistah Lee says this was the only way, I come find you. Dem three boss bastards watched the computers too much, and he had to tell 'em you came to him last night. They let dese boys have you after that. Was a retribution killin'. I been followin' 'em."

  He pulled the shelf enough that I managed to wriggle out of it. "Was that all of the Crew? Just two guys?"

  "They was the only ones left, yeah." He pointed to the burning Seahawks jersey on the floor. "That boy left his shirt."

  I dusted potato flakes off my clothes. "Good. Fuck 'im. He left some fingers, too. And I'm buying you a round when this is over. Did Lee say if Tracey was still in tent city?"

  "She is. Everybody goin' there. 'Cept Mistah Lee."

  A Hummer drove by, and I ducked. "Why? What's Lee doing?"

  "He got picked up when the raid started after dose three bastards ripped the hardware out of 'im this mornin' and turned 'im out on the street, bleedin'. Like an old dog."

  I could see through a window that more and more buildings were being disassembled on the other side of town, but it didn't look like anybody was coming toward the store yet. I told the Rasta "Stay close to me" and scurried over to dig in Ja-Rilla's pants.

  "You hear what I said?" he asked me.

  "Huh?" I glanced up; he had stayed planted on his spot without following me. I snapped my fingers at him. "Get the fuck over here before Silvy makes me kill you or something, man."

  He just stared at me, dead-eyed. "There was only cops here for Lee to turn 'imself in to by God's grace. He would have died relyin' on you and your fake cop bullshit. You got 'im killed."

  Fuck, my hand grazed right over Ja-Rilla's giant gorilla cock. I didn't have time for an argument. I told the Rasta, "For fuck's sake, you're a car thief. You're gonna preach to me about lying? Now, in the middle of all this?"

  I finally found a little metal cylinder in the waistband of Ja-Rilla's boxers, and it had exactly what I figured he would have stashed on him: psy-blockers. I choked three of them down. That many would give me the runs, but shitting my pants was probably gonna happen before the day was over anyway.

  Right outside the store, grass, dirt and clay rose into two huge mounds that sucked the earth toward them and tilted the foundation. The mounds got larger, and rose up to form into a pair of hands that lashed out and tore a passing armored eighteen wheeler and its Hummer escort in half. Prisoners escaped out of the back of the truck while the hands laid into it. Most of the escapees got about twenty feet away when
their front halves teleported away from their back halves in a bloody hiss. The back halves of the escapees fell forward on the grass and kept twitching.

  That was it; my bullshit limit reached. Fuck. Everybody. I had to find Tracey.

  I threw a box of old cereal at the Rasta and scrambled back to his side. "Did you see that? You really think Lee's not better off in custody? Jesus Christ. You got a car?"

  He crossed himself, still fixated on the half bodies, and pulled a set of keys out of his pocket. They had the Lamborghini logo on them. "One block over. And you fucked Mistah Lee ovah. I want you to admit it."

  I rolled my eyes at him. "Swear to God, I will after this is over, okay? Give me the keys."

  He clutched them tightly. "No. I drive."

  "Fine, then." I heated up the keys and the metallic logo on the fob until he dropped them.

  "Fuck you do that for?" he shouted.

  I cooled the keys off, snatched them up and ran out of the store like a bandit. The psy-blockers would be kicking in any second and keeping Silvy out, and I couldn't have anybody slowing me down or trying to fucking argue with me every step of the way.

  "Go turn yourself in before you get killed," I told the Rasta over my shoulder.

  Then I saw he was running right after me.

  Shit. I pumped my legs faster. "Goddammit, I'm just going to find Tracey. Go find a cop!"

  "You not fuckin' me!"

  Bursts of gunfire echoed off buildings, making it nearly impossible to tell where they came from. I kept ducking and flinching at nothing but sound while I ran. They had made the sun even dimmer and it made it harder for the eyes to focus, which had to be the point. Some lifter spouted another language and jumped clear over me going the opposite direction.

  And behind me, the fucking Rasta was gaining.

  Five blocks down the street, a blur of black body armor darted by, then came back around the corner and headed straight at me.

  The speeder with a thousand zip cuffs hanging off him stumbled over a burning trip-line I threw in the street ahead of him and clipped me hard enough to knock me down flat as he fell really fucking hard on the street. The sound of his body armor cracking when it hit was audible.

  Even the Rasta stopped to watch until the guy skidded to a stop, which took a little while.

  "Hey," I called back to him, huffing to catch my breath. "Is that guy still alive? I don't need another one of those on my--aw, shit." The Rasta broke out into a run after me again. I pounded my feet straight toward the orange Lamborghini parked nearby, hit the unlock on the keys to make sure it was the right one, threw the door open, slammed it shut and locked it just as the Rasta got his fingers on the handle.

  He banged on the window. "You bastard! You leave me here?"

  The orange Lamborghini fired right up with ten cylinders' worth of horsepower.

  I told him through the glass, "Go find a cop and turn yourself in. It's safer. If you see Lee tell him I'm sorry about what happened."

  He banged a fist one last time on the window with a "Fuck you!" as I floored it; the tires spun, and the back end wobbled until I got traction, and I took off and left him behind. I made a right toward the tent city and shifted gears.

  Ahead of me, glowing blue letters spelled out 'STOP - SMYTHE'S LAW' ten-feet high in the road. I drove straight through the blue light warning like it wasn't there. They weren't raiding the tent city yet. I just had to get out of town and find Tracey.

  The long gray shadows stretching across the street started pulsing and rippling, and that shit wasn't a mirage. I had seen it on YouTube; it was one of the Shining Beacon guys, Ibn Meghar's group of Posters that presidents, armies and laws didn't usually allow outside of the Third World. The cops wanted this place shut down badly if they called those fuckers in. They called the shadow guy something that translated to like 'The Man Who Drinks From Three Thousand Shadow Cups in Hell,' which was the most baller-ass nickname I had ever heard. I had to stay away from the shadows or it would be my ass.

  Above me, DeltaBlue put a glowing tag that followed the car and advertised 'STOP VEHICLE' big and bright enough for every damn cop in Pyramiden to see.

  I had to downshift and steer around a shadow that tried to reach out for me, then had to make a u-turn because the road ahead got swapped out with a field of rocks in a teleport. I punched the gas with a "Fuck!" and swerved back around the corner, cutting too close to a shadow that sheared the passenger door clean off.

  "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." I jammed the car back up into the next gear.

  A flier with a badge dove out of the sky to play chicken head-on with me. I didn't move the car an inch, and he veered toward the passenger side. Then he punched his fucking hand through my windshield and ripped a gash the whole length of the car as he flew by. It lurched the car and spun it.

  I lost control, and when I got it to a full stop from the slide, it came to rest right in a big fucking shadow.

  "Aw, fuck me."

  A tentacle of solid shadow lunged at me through the broken windshield, but I hammered the gearshift into reverse and accelerated away. It came after me; I cut the wheel, skidded again, downshifted, nearly lost control of the damn thing, wrenched the wheel back, kicked the accelerator down to the floor and shifted gears again. I left the shadow in my rear view with the rear bumper, windshield and engine bonnet. Two more turns and the street finally gave way to flat desert straightaway with the tent city dead ahead.

  Then two Apache helicopters came out of fucking nowhere and flanked me.

  Their rotary cannons spun, ready to open fire, but they had to get a bead on me first, and even in a broke-ass Lambo I covered the half-mile to the tents in well under half a minute, too fast for them to keep me in their sights, especially with me popping fireballs in the pilots' faces as best I could.

  The Posters had thrown an earthworks barricade together around the tents; I hit the brakes as soon as the car made it past and dove out before it finished rolling to a stop, something I didn't realize I was way too fucking hurt to do until after I did it. Apache gunfire ripped into the sports car's thin skin like paper as I rolled and clawed away from it. Most of the Posters scattered, but some bald guy in the crowd wearing an 'Enormous Johnson' t-shirt took off like a bullet and plowed his whole body through both helicopters. They crashed to the desert in flames.

  I lied on the red dirt, my chest heaving while people snapped cell phone pictures of the destroyed car, the helicopters, and me.

  I checked my pocket.

  Somewhere along the way, I had lost my fucking cigarettes.

  And there had to be at least a fifty-fifty chance I had shit my pants.

  Chapter 22

  Getting In and Getting Out

  I was ready for the fight of my fucking life to work my way into the building at the heart of the tent city, but it took almost no effort to get in. At all. I just scouted the only door that wasn't welded shut for a little while to make sure nobody went in or out, fried two security cameras and cut the door in half up and down with heat so I could squeeze through without setting off the alarm on the knob. That was it. Literally, nobody hassled me about it. They were all too busy getting stoned, fucking each other or fighting each other for no goddamn reason, just waiting for the cops to storm the place. Fucking Will could have broken in with no problem, that was how easy it was. It actually pissed me off.

  In the metal siding beneath the door lock, someone had scratched: 'Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us' - Bodhidharma. That sounded fucking dark, but whatever, I didn't plan on staying long.

  Passing through the door put me in a short wood-paneled hallway circa 1974. Looked like a hunting lodge. There were five doors leading off the hall; two on each side and one at the end that would open out to the rest of the building and a huge, empty work floor. It was covered in hazmat and high voltage warning signs and a 'Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again' one to go along with it. The sound of several generators running came from behin
d it. I avoided it like herpes and checked the offices for Tracey since I hadn't found her in any of the tents I checked outside. The three assholes had to be keeping her close to them the way they were using her in town.

  I put my ear to the first door on my left, but I couldn't hear anything over the noise of the generators. I tried the knob. Unlocked. Of course it was. I thought fire, hot, hot, white hot fire, ready to burn any motherfucking thing that came at me, and pushed it open.

  The smell was a disgusting thing that attacked me in the fucking face. There was nobody in the room, probably only because a human being couldn't survive in it. I threw a couple of candle light-sized flames around to light up what looked like a hobo's ER. Food wrappers and trash covered the floor, just everywhere, shin-deep. Heart monitors and hospital equipment were jammed up in one corner, baled together with wire. Another corner had four black garbage bags covered in flies. And in the center of the room was a steel table with what looked like a clear brain on it. A real. See-through. Human. Brain. Next to a set of surgical tools in that blue shit they put combs in the barber shop and red gas can labeled 'Reagent Bath.'

  I killed my lights, got the fuck out and closed the door.

  Jesus, man. Just, Jesus.

  I took a couple of breaths, put that shit aside, and put my hand on the knob of door number two across the hall. I thought fire and eased the door open. A bank of four televisions, two of them showing surveillance outside the metal building and two showing 'No Signal,' were on a desk against one wall. Catty-corner to it was another desk with three flat screen computer monitors linked together. Nothing moved in the room, but somebody was slumped in front of the computers.

  "Hey, guy," I said, ready to burn some ass.

  The slumped figure didn't move.

  "Shit." I took another breath. I knew what was coming. I lit up candle lights in the office.

  The walls were papered with pages from porn magazines from all over the world. Really sick shit, like the kind they found on governors' and senators' computers right before they had to resign. The pages had blood on them, which led back to the slumped guy slumped. He had one arm on the desk and the other on the floor; on the floor and completely detached from the rest of his body. Somebody had ripped the fucking thing off. Not only that, but his skull had been caved in, and the rest of him looked beat to shit.