Talker 25

by McCune, Joshua

  After another talon amputation, Patch injects the Green with a high dosage of Tabun. Velmar dims, the growl becomes a whine.

  “Velmar, where are the Diocletians?”

  “Open yourself to me, human, and I will show you the truth.”

  Not the first time I’ve heard that from him, either. Other Greens have said similar things. Creeps me out. I asked Lorena about it once. She acted like she didn’t know, but I think it had something to do with her father.

  “Do you know what he means?” I ask Patch as he ups the dosage.

  “It’s just trying to scare you. Don’t worry, Twenty-Five, it can’t hurt you.”

  I don’t know if he’s trying to be comforting or ironic. I assume the latter.

  “Team Three, please proceed to Chemics. Team One, stand down and observe. You will remain after hours to account for the backlog.”

  “Dammit, Twenty-Five,” Patch says. “Stop making my life miserable.”

  “Feel free to transfer me at anytime,” I say, knowing very well that he can’t. He can, however, shock me.

  I stifle a groan, which has less to do with the pain from my CENSIR and more to do with Twenty-Six sauntering toward me. At least he’s alone.

  “Hey, weak link,” he says. “Can’t squeeze the juice out of this lime?”

  “I didn’t need any help with Vestia,” I say. “She was beautiful, you know?”

  I hope for a flinch, some sign of the farmboy I once knew, but his coldness remains steadfast. “Vestia was weak, with too much sentiment and not enough sense. Reminds me of a certain underperforming glowheart I know.”

  “Bite me, asshole.”

  “Control your emotions, Twenty-Five. They have a tendency of getting you in trouble.”

  The soldiers laugh.

  With another glare for me, Patch cedes control of the Chemics console to Team Three’s Mengele.

  “Watch and learn, Glowheart.” Twenty-Six turns to the dragon. “Velmar, where are the Diocletians?”

  Velmar’s words play from the console speaker. “Did I scare the girl away?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Too bad. She smelled delicious. You smell delicious, too.”

  “I’m sure I am. But have you ever tasted a human child?” Twenty-Six asks.

  Velmar groans through his bindings. A purr almost. “Often.”

  “Recently?” Twenty-Six asks.

  Velmar doesn’t answer.

  “The smell of their skin, the softness . . .,” Twenty-Six says, as if describing a delicious delicacy.

  “Twenty-Six, what are you—” Patch starts, stops as Velmar brightens.

  “There is nothing so glorious as fresh flesh,” Velmar says.

  Whispered conversations end abruptly. Somebody gasps. Several A-Bs draw knives. A couple pull their sidearms.

  Twenty-Six waves them off. “Surely you took some of these fresh kills back to your lair.”

  “I surely did, but I will not tell you where.”

  “Are you a good little dog, protecting your pack?”

  Twenty-Six says.

  “I am no dog. I have no pack.”

  “Yes, but they know where you live, don’t they? That fresh flesh will be theirs. Your bounty.”

  Velmar pulses. “Mine.”

  “Show me where it is.”

  “Open yourself to me and I will.”

  “It is too late for that. You know how this ends, Velmar. Show me. The invisible monsters will bury your treasure in an avalanche, never to be shared.”

  “You can promise this?”

  “Yes, but you must hurry.”

  An image appears on the console computer screen. Some mountain range. Then another. Inside a cave. I look away too slowly to avoid the corpses. Little corpses.

  “That’s as close as we’re going to get,” Twenty-Six says to his Mengele. “Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to chop this bastard to pieces. I’m tired of looking at him.”

  A soldier hands him a hatchet. The other A-Bs join the impromptu dissection. For once, I don’t mind.

  After another long day in the call center, in which I came in last again and had to spend two extra hours to reach the new minimum daily standard—raised from two to four because of Twenty-Six’s successes—I return to the barracks to find my Kissing Dragons episode playing.

  The screen fades to the credits as I go apeshit with the sword on Old Man’s Blue head. Evelyn bounds to her feet. “Let’s put our hands together for Twenty-Five, who has turned the corner and helped make the world a better place. If only we were all lucky enough to be given the chance. How did it feel slaying that demon, Twenty-Five? Was it spectacular?”

  “You want to know how it felt?” I say, closing the distance between us in three quick strides. She senses my fury an instant too late to raise her hands. After the first punch, I expect my CENSIR to shock me silly, but nothing happens. Must be Whiskey Jim running Big Brother patrol tonight.

  I get in a couple more straight punches before Seven and Ten pull me off and shove me away. I glower at Evelyn. “That was spectacular.”

  She wipes blood from her nose. “You’re in trouble.”

  Lorena shakes her head. “Anybody asks, you fell.” She leans in, her voice little more than a whisper. “Otherwise, I’m going to let Allie know who took her Kit Kat the other night.”

  “That wasn’t me,” Evelyn says.

  Lorena glances at Twenty-One, who’s huddled in the corner, grinning at us. “Who you think she’s going to believe?”

  “Thanks,” I say on the way back to our beds.

  “You need to get it together,” Lorena says, taking me by the arm. I cringe. Her fingers probe the bump on my tricep where Trish injected me. “You should see one of the doctors.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “It’s not getting better. What if she poisoned you?”

  I pull free. “Then you won’t have to worry about me anymore, will you?”

  “Sulk on your own time, Twenty-Five.”

  “Fuck you, Two. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ve got to stop being a weak link. They already hate you enough without this.”

  “This?”

  Lorena waves at the screen. “I didn’t tell anybody why you went off base. They thought you were in trouble. That made them happy. But now they see you were hanging with All-Blacks and killing dragons.”

  “You think I enjoyed it?”

  “You don’t get it. You could have gotten us days off, better food, anything. But all you cared about was that stupid baby dragon of yours.”

  “Be careful unless you want to get hurt, too.”

  She steps back, disgusted. “You need to do better.”

  “Or what?”

  “Or I’ll tell Allie who really took her chocolate. She won’t attack you like she would Evelyn, but she’ll hate you forever.”

  Twenty-One had been sleeping in her corner. I didn’t want to steal from her stash, but I’d missed dinner again. “I’m going to replace it.”

  “How you plan on doing that when you’re dragging your feet all the time?” She shakes her head. “You don’t have many friends, Melissa. Don’t throw us away over a boy who’s no longer here.”

  As much as I hate her right now, I know she’s right. Tonight, as with every night since Twenty-Six showed up, I go to bed hoping that when I wake in the morning, James will be left behind in my dreams. I’m not sure he exists anywhere else, and I need to stop looking for him.

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  34

  “Teams, please remain at your current stations. Team Three, please head to Electrics for dragon disposal.”

  Terrific. Team Three is Twenty-Six’s death squad. And I’m at Electrics. “Shouldn’t we head for Station One?” I ask Patch.

  “We’re supposed to wait here until
this lightbulb’s taken care of,” he says as the ER door at the end of the facility retracts.

  I glance at the flickering Red on the slab, praying he glows out before Team One arrives.

  No such luck.

  “We’ve got a live one, boys!” Twenty-Six says. The A-Bs split into two groups, dismemberment and collection, arming themselves with chain saws or large plastic bags. Twenty-Six struts toward the dragon, a hatchet in one hand, an ax in the other.

  He climbs atop the slab, then raises the hatchet. “Should we go with the piranha?” He lifts the ax. “Or the shark?”

  Most everybody shouts for the hatchet.

  “Just kill the damn thing.”

  James sets down the ax, covers his brow with his hand, like I’m not in plain view. “Is that you, Glowheart?” He points the hatchet at me. “You want to come do this? We don’t have a sword, but you seem capable.” He grins. “Or maybe you want to roar at it some more.”

  As several soldiers tease me with howls that are more wolf than dragon, I look toward the slaughter station. Men are unloading crates from a cargo van onto the slab where a dragon normally goes. The disposal trucks are nowhere in sight, which means Twenty-Six can take his time torturing the flickering victim.

  I step forward. “Yeah, I’ll do it.”

  “Keep one hand on her CENSIR,” an A-B says.

  “Can you wear that outfit of yours?” another one calls.

  “I bet she can’t even lift the shark.”

  “Sounds like a wager to me,” Twenty-Six says. “What will it be?” He feigns deep thought, then raises his finger. “I’ve got it. If she can get through the lightbulb here in ten strikes”—he pats the dragon on the head with the butt of the hatchet—“she gets a reward.”

  “What sort of reward?” someone asks.

  “Does it matter?” another soldier says. “There’s no way she’s getting through that neck in twenty strikes, much less ten.”

  “A day off for the barracks,” I say, glaring at Twenty-Six.

  He nods to Lester. “What do you say, Sarge?”

  Lester taps a message into his tablet. “I believe Major Alderson will find that acceptable.”

  “Outstanding,” Twenty-Six says. “Now for the good part. What should her penalty be if she fails? Standard punishment would be the easy choice, but poor Twenty-Five’s been failing a lot recently, and that would be like adding a grain of sand to a mountain.”

  The crowd laughs.

  “No, we need a special prize,” Twenty-Six says with a smirk. He listens to several suggestions ranging from me wearing a necklace of dragon talons to doing something called a polar run. “Those would be outstanding, but how about something beneficial to us all?”

  He waits for everybody to quiet. “If Twenty-Five is unsuccessful, she must become the official ER slayer.”

  The crowd approves with rowdy enthusiasm.

  Patch does not. “That will interfere with her examination duties.”

  Twenty-Six snorts. “So what? The only monsters who ever talk to her with any consistency are the decrepit, and they’re information wastelands. She’ll be doing something useful for once, giving the rest of us more time to do the real work around here.”

  He’s so damn sure I’ll lose. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  “Surprise, surprise. Are—”

  “I want a week off for the girls’ barracks when I win.”

  Lester taps at his tablet, gets a notification a few seconds later. “The major will allow you five days, but no more than two in a row. If you fail to sever the head in ten strikes, you will become the headsman of the ER until the slaughter slab area is made available again. Are we in agreement, Twenty-Five?”

  I nod, then climb onto the slab and pick up the ax to whistles and catcalls. It’s heavier than I expected, but once I get it propped on my shoulder, I find my balance and shamble to Twenty-Six’s side.

  Twenty-Six grins at me. “You probably think you’re helping this monster by doing this. An ax ain’t a sword. You know how many blows it will take someone of your stature to hit something vital?”

  The words hurt, not so much because they might be true, but for the delighted malice with which he delivers them.

  “You’re the monster,” I whisper as I raise the ax. I push away my sorrow, gather my rage at Twenty-Six and the jeering soldiers, and throw it all into the swing.

  The blade clanks off the dragon’s scales; shock waves reverberate up my arms and laughter plays loud in my head.

  “She may have scratched it,” Twenty-Six says. “Perhaps we should have made the bet for a hundred. Come on, Glowheart, you can do better. Pretend it’s my neck on the block.”

  I do. Every time. On the fifth blow, I break through the scales. On the eighth, the dragon stops glowing. On the tenth, I’m halfway through. My hands ache with the promise of future blisters, my arms burn, my scrubs are soaked through with sweat. Dragon gore covers my ankle-length coat from hem to neck.

  “What are you waiting for, Glowheart? Back to work,” Twenty-six says.

  I drop the ax. “Give me a chain saw.”

  Lester shakes his head. “Actions have consequences, Twenty-Five.”

  Twenty-Six hands me the ax. “Chop chop, Glowheart.”

  Over the next ten attempts, the soldiers go from heckling me to encouraging me to offering help.

  Twenty-Six puts a hand on my shoulder. I flinch. “What do you say, Twenty-Five? Do you need someone to finish this monster for you?”

  “Back off.” I squirm free of his touch and drag up the ax.

  Six cuts later, my hands and shoulders aflame, my rage exhausted, I break through the other side. After an A-B uses a hoist to remove the head from the slab, the dismemberment crew swarms the carcass. As I totter from the carnage, Twenty-Six strides toward the wall of chain saws, eager to join in. A man in a hooded fur coat—not military issue—approaches him and strikes up a conversation.

  Lester withdraws his pistol and hurries toward them. “Who gave you permission to be here?”

  Twenty-Six and the stranger turn, enough for me to make out a middle-aged man with near-wrinkleless features.

  Hector.

  He speaks briefly with Lester, then waves me over, a curious smirk on his face. “Saw you working up there with that ax. Interesting technique, but I’d stick to the sword if—”

  “Why are you here?”

  “The colonel didn’t want you off base again.” Hector gestures at the crates on the slaughter slab. “We brought the mountain to you.”

  I look at my bloodstained jacket and croak out a sardonic laugh. Thanks to my efforts to protect Baby, the cameras and lights have come to Georgetown. And because I lost Twenty-Six’s bet, I’ll not only have to execute dragons for TV, but also for the daily amusement of my captors.

  “You don’t have to look so happy about it,” Hector says. He glances at his watch. “Sergeant, could you get Melissa a clean coat and meet us at the colonel’s office?”

  “Us” turns out to include Twenty-Six.

  I chew at my lip. “Why’s he coming?”

  “The producers have wanted to reach out to the female demographic since season two. James here is pure double-X heroin, and because the audience is already familiar with him, he’s gonna be easy to inject.” Hector grins. “Plus, you’re cheap labor.”

  “And what exactly is my role?” Twenty-Six asks before I can.

  “You’re Melissa’s love interest.” Hector looks from Twenty-Six to me, his smile fading. “You guys still like each other, right?”

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  35

  As Hector and Colonel Hanks discuss the logistics of our participation, I stare at the painting of Saint George on the wall behind them. The dragon slayer appears happy in his shiny armor and flowing cape, but maybe that’s Painting George and not Real George. Ma
ybe the artist told Real George to suck it up and smile, otherwise Real George’s baby dragon friend would be next in line for the spear.

  It’s all stupid ridiculous, but nobody cares what I think. Read my lines. Follow Hector’s direction. Execute dragons. Pretend to like Twenty-Six. A lot.

  I peek over at him. He’s examining the script binder on his lap. Why does he have to look so much like James? He catches me watching, grins.

  It’s a half hour later according to the clock on the wall, though it feels much longer, when the meeting ends. On our way out of the building, I squint against the brightness of the sun and scan the sky for the slightest hint of red or green glow.

  Empty. The armies gather. We will come. Nothing but imaginary words by an imaginary dragon. Anyway, this is the frozen suck, far off any dragon map. I’m not sure even imaginary dragons could find—

  “Waiting for a miracle, Glowheart?” Twenty-Six says.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “In nae,” he says. I glance back. He’s got that evil smile on his face. “Any chance you could hurry it up, Glowheart? I’m getting cold.”

  “You’re far past cold,” I mutter.

  We head to the rec center for wardrobe and makeup. The clanging of weights and pounding of basketballs fade to near silence when we enter. Soldiers in drab workout clothes track us as we make our way to the parlor on the far side of the gym, which has been transformed into a temporary salon.

  At the first station, a thick-necked barber sets up shop in front of a mirror and a faceless dummy mounted with a blond wig.

  “Run out of hair dye?” I ask with a smile that comes out more a grimace.

  Hector follows my gaze to the wig, explains that the writers decided James and I should lose our dragon crowns. Because I’m not a good little slave (my term, not his) like my better half (his term, not mine), I must still wear my crown. Just out of sight.

  While Twenty-Six changes in the locker room, the barber goes to town on my head. I ignore the hum of clippers and the falling clumps of hair the best I can. He spins me around to face the mirror.