Wild Cards 15 - Black Trump

by George R. R. Martin

  "Mark is gone," an unfamiliar voice replied.

  A shining youth stepped into the light, graceful and golden. He was as tall as Mark Meadows, and as blond, but there the resemblance ended. He was young, no more than nineteen, clean shaven and barechested, as slender and smoothly muscular as a Greek statue. Long, straight hair fell down past his shoulders. He wore sandals and faded jeans cut off just below the knee, and around his neck hung a heavy golden peace symbol on a leather thong. Jay had never seen him before. "Are you one of Mark's friends?"

  "The first and the last," the golden youth replied. His smile was brilliant. He had deep blue eyes that had never known defeat or disappointment. Charisma seemed to come off him in waves.

  Ponytail stepped out of the darkness. "The last is right, you hippie freak." He was tall and blond too, but somehow he looked like a bad copy of the other, the golden one. "So who are you, Surfer Jesus?"

  "Last time I made the scene, they called me the Radical."

  "I think I'll call you Pansy Boy," Ponytail said.

  "From a fascist cocksucker like you, that's a compliment."

  Ponytail put his hands on his hips. "So what do you do? Walk through walls? Fly? Shoot fire out your dick?"

  "You sure you want to find out?" Radical asked softly.

  Ponytail vaulted a lab table and landed right in front of him. He raised gloved fists into some kind of kung fu chop-socky ready stance. "Try me, you ace freak."

  "Are you some kind of fucking moron?" Jay inteijected. They both ignored him.

  "You're just a nat," Radical told Ponytail. "What do you think you're going to do to me?"

  "This," Ponytail said. He slammed his right shin against Radical's left thigh in a savage kick. Radical grunted and dropped to one knee. Ponytail spun and kicked him in the chest. Radical went sprawling. Ponytail stood back and laughed. "How do you like me now, baby?"

  Radical sat up, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, but still smiling. "Dead," he said.

  "Ooooh, I'm scared," Ponytail said. He circled around his prey, savoring the moment.

  Jay shaped a shaky hand into a gun. "Enough," he said.

  Radical waved him off. "Let him have his fun."

  "Get up, pussy," Ponytail told him.

  Radical got up.

  Jay had had enough of this bullshit; he was practically suffocating on the testosterone fumes in here. He pointed to pop Ponytail off to Bellevue where he belonged ...

  ... and missed. Ponytail was moving.

  He leaped, spinning, a high kick that would snap Radical's neck like a rotten stick. His foot slammed into the side of the youth's smiling face ... and went right through it. Off balance, Ponytail went down hard hitting the floor with a thud.

  Jay tried to pop him again, but Ponytail rolled. A lab bench behind him vanished instead. Ponytail arched his body backward and popped upright like a jack-in-the-box as Radical charged. Radical's left fist snapped out in a jab that flashed past the kickboxer's guard, hit him in the face with a sickening crunch. Ponytail somersaulted backwards, away from him. Jay moved his hand dropped his thumb, missed again. "Hold still, damn it," he said.

  Ponytail came up behind a lab table with his jaw hanging loose from his face, and blood dripping from his mouth. He didn't look like he was having fun anymore. One hand went behind his back. It came out holding a chunky black machine pistol.

  The peace-sign amulet was in Radical's left hand. He spun it once around his head and released it as Ponytail aimed his piece. The amulet struck the handgun and shattered it.

  Jay had a bead on Ponytail, but suddenly Radical was between them. He flew over the lab table, seized Ponytail by the throat, and lifted him off the ground with one hand. The kickboxer recovered sufficiently to drive a knee into the short ribs on Radical's right side. Radical grunted in pain. "That hurt."

  Ponytail kicked him again. Radical's fingers were still locked around his throat, digging deep into his flesh. The kick was weaker this time. Ponytail's face was darkening.

  "Drop him," Jay shouted at Radical. "Let me pop him off, damn it." No one paid the slightest bit of attention.

  Ponytail clawed at Radical's eyes and kicked him again, feebly.

  "Third strike," Radical said. "I guess you're out."

  His hand burst into flame. Ponytail screamed. The fire streamed up Radical's fingers, and the kickboxer's throat began to blacken and char. An instant later his hair caught fire.

  "Mark, no," Jay screamed. "Let him go!"

  "I'm not Mark," the Radical replied, but he did let him go. The kickboxer's whole head was wreathed in flame as Radical flung him away, contemptuously. Ponytail flew across the lab and struck the wall with a sound like a cement truck hitting a German shepherd. For a moment he hung there, crucified sans nails, staring at Radical until his eyes melted and ran down his cheeks. The laboratory was bright as day, its shadows lit with the light of the burning man. The sprinklers came on suddenly.

  "Jesus Christ," Jay said softly. His mouth tasted of blood. Water ran down his face like a cold rain, stinging his eyes.

  For a moment Radical just stood and breathed. When the body peeled off the wall and fell heavily to the tiled floor, he turned to Jay. "What time is it?" he asked softly.

  "7:34," came the answer, crisp and certain. J. Bob Belew stood in the door, outlined against the light from the corridor. "So Mark really was the Radical," he said, bemused.

  The Radical made a V shape with his fingers. "Peace, man," he said. The water from the sprinklers plastered his long hair to his face, but his eyes were as hot and blue as the Summer of Love.

  "Right, you're a regular fucking Gandhi," Jay snapped.

  The Radical gave a shrug. "He was a genocidal fascist," he said as Arnold Schwarzenegger entered the lab, supporting a battered, bloody Sascha Starfin.

  "Jerry!" Jay moved to his junior partner, dizzy from pain. "You're alive." He blinked. "What kind of asshole stunt did you think you were trying to pull? You're fired, both of you."

  "You can't fire me, I'm your partner," Arnold rumbled in a bad Austrian accent. "Besides, we're all going to die. Casaday is on his way to the airport with enough Black Trump to kill every wild card in Hong Kong."

  Jay groaned. He felt like lying down someplace for a long time, but forever was a shade too long. "I can't believe we went through all this shit just to lose!"

  The Radical was smiling. "Keep the faith, Jay. We shall overcome, man. Sascha knows."

  The telepath raised his eyeless face. "Meadows came up with a cure for the Black Trump. He thinks of it as the Overtrump."

  "Straight dope," agreed the Radical. "Only one problem. Casaday took that too."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Ray jerked and pulled against the chains, but they wouldn't give. He had to do something, he couldn't just lie there and die. The revelation of Harvest's real nature and feelings gnawed at him more deeply than the knowledge that he'd taken a dose of the Black Trump right in the face. But Ray responded to her betrayal like he did to all the great fears and disappointments in his life. He got angry, then he got angrier. He pulled against his chains until he was soaked with sweat, but they didn't break.

  He was held fast. He was going to die on the floor of this fucking tent, murdered by the woman he loved.

  Rudo suddenly straightened up at his desk. "Does it feel a little warm in here?" he asked. Ray looked at him and stopped struggling. He laughed aloud. "What's so funny?" Rudo asked.

  "I may be going to die," Ray said, "but you won't live to see it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You're sweating, doc. You're sweating blood."

  Rudo put a hand to his forehead, then looked at his palm. "Oh my God," he said in a small, quiet voice. "Oh my God."

  Ray laughed again. He pulled at his chains like a mad dog and a searing pain ran through his right arm as he felt bones snap. He yanked at the chains, catching his breath as his broken arm twisted, creating enough slack so that he was able to pull his arms free. />
  The broken arm dangled limply. Pain danced through it like fire, but he ignored it. He could use his good arm, now, to help supply leverage, and there was nothing, nothing by God, that could tie him down. His body bent like a bow, the chains the bowstring he pulled taut, and something was going to snap, either his spine or the chains. It proved to be the chains, though when Ray heard the crack he wasn't sure. He lay panting on the floor and realized that the longer he stayed there the more likely he was to die.

  He opened his eyes. Rudo was sitting at his desk with a stricken expression, but he held a gun pointed right at Ray.

  "You'll stay right there, Mr. Ray, and we'll die together. Or move, and you'll die first."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Camel Croyd wheeled on his eight legs and took off into the sandstorm at a rate of speed that was unreal. Rudo should have been in the infirmary tent. He wasn't there, and it looked like Croyd would check every tent in the camp.

  She trotted off in the direction she thought he'd taken, grateful for the mask she wore. It kept some of the dust out of her lungs, but her eyes watered like crazy. She couldn't wipe the tears away; her gloves might have picked up some of the virus.

  Rudo's voice stopped her cold at the entrance to the Nur's tent.

  "... or move and you'll die first," Rudo said. His quiet tones sent chills down her spine.

  Zoe ripped aside the curtains.

  Rudo, pale, sweaty, and terribly ill, lay slumped against a pile of cushions, facing Zoe. He held a gun aimed at the man who lay on the floor in front of him, a muscular joker with fused fingers, a horrid face, and something very wrong in the way one of his fists fitted on his arm.

  His arm was broken. The joker lay in a loose tangle of chains.

  A camel appeared beside her, a camel wearing a surgical mask. Croyd stopped short at the sight of Rudos gun.

  Rudo smiled through blood-stained teeth. "One should see angels when one is dying, not camels. Always, the clerics lie.

  "I'm Croyd. Remember me?"

  Rudo's smile faded. He seemed to find some reserves of strength, enough to lift his gun in both hands and aim it at Croyd's head.

  Zoe saw only the gun, the possibilities of it. Get the gun. Kill the gun. This is no time to die. Kill the gun, how? There were two aluminum bars inside the flannel of her splint - Yes! She kept her eyes on the gun and raised her arms slowly, hoping Rudo would think she was making a gesture of surrender. She breathed on the splint as she raised her arm, reworking the blunt metal into sharp points and instructing them with a hunger for arterial blood.

  They ripped free of the flannel and buried themselves in the pumping arteries of Pan Rudo's right wrist.

  The gun flew into the air and the joker twisted onto his back and caught the gun in his fused mitten of a hand. Croyd shoved his way past Zoe and leaned his long neck down, his muzzle within an inch of Rudo's throat.

  "Don't touch him!" Zoe shouted. What had Croyd planned to do? Bite out Rudo's throat? Struggling in her sterile gown, never meant to fit over a heavy robe, she moved closer to the heap of dissolving flesh that had been Pan Rudo.

  Rudo's eyes were vacant, distant. He smiled up at Croyd's mask.

  "Where's the rest of the Trump?" Zoe yelled. "Where is it?"

  He looked up at her masked face, through it, beyond it. "There's plenty. I lied to you, telling you there was only the pittance in the inhalers. The Black Trump is in the water truck. Enough to fill it."

  He took in a shuddering breath and then his face went slack, his eyes staring, motionless, at some hell Zoe hoped she would never see.

  "Bang," Croyd whispered "You're dead."

  The wind shrieked and the walls of the tent billowed. Above it, the ugly joker's breath sounded labored, as if he wasn't getting enough air.

  Croyd shook his long neck, and he made a frustrated whuffing sound.

  The joker got to his feet. "Now that we've had our moment of silence," the joker said, "let's get our butts in gear. That bitch Harvest is probably halfway to Jerusalem by now." He tried to make a fist with his broken arm, and his twisted face distorted even more. He lowered the arm back down to his side, carefully. "Give us a ride, Croyd; we're outta here."

  Croyd was already at the doorway, a pair of his legs drumming impatiently against the sand.

  "The hell we are!" Zoe yelled. "You're both covered with virus, idiots! Nobody's going anywhere until you're scrubbed down, and I'm not even sure ..." The joker named Billy Ray was probably dead already. His voice sounded muffled, as if he had the beginnings of a cold.

  "Yeah. Okay. We'll wash up first," Billy Ray said.

  "There's some stuff in the lab tent," Zoe said. A shower head for chemical accidents, and chlorine bleach in quantity. She hoped there was a water reserve connected to the shower, that it wasn't just for show. "Follow me."

  She ran out into the hell of blowing sand, Croyd and Billy Ray behind her. A guard loomed up in front of her, his rifle aimed at her belly, a startling apparition in the swirls of yellow dust. She threw herself flat on the sand. A muffled crack sounded behind her. The guard fell. Zoe scrambled to her feet. Billy Ray trotted past her and scooped up the guard's rifle. Zoe followed him, thinking, we'll have to wash the stock on the damned thing.

  She opened the airlock. Croyd squeezed through it. She shooed him toward the shower head.

  She handed Billy Ray a mask.

  He took it with his good arm and put it on. "We're gonna wash him down?" he asked.

  "Yeah. Him first, then you, then me." The idiot was holding the rifle with his broken arm. "Sheesh!" Zoe said "Don't you have any pain receptors at all?"

  "I heal fast."

  Zoe grabbed a gallon of chlorine bleach and a mop and handed them to the ugly joker. "For the camel. Start at his head and work back."

  Bleach reacted with camel smell and released a truly remarkable stench, even filtered through Zoe's mask.

  "That stings!" Croyd protested.

  Zoe scrubbed at the inside of one of his eight legs. "Sorry," she said. "lift your foot. Not that one!"

  "I've never smelled anything this bad in my life," Billy Ray said.

  "Just a little harder, right there behind my fifth knee," Croyd said. "Ahhhh." He arched his hump like a satisfied cat.

  "Shut up, camel." Billy Ray scrubbed harder.

  "We've got to hurry," Zoe said. "Somebody's going to find that guard."

  "How many guns in camp, Zoe?" Billy Ray asked.

  "I don't know. I've never seen more than half a dozen guards at the perimeter. Sayyid would have kept close track on the guns, I guess."

  "I'm going outside. If I see any guards, I'll take 'em out." Billy Ray picked up his newly washed rifle and left.

  Zoe swabbed Croyd's short tail. "Can he do it?" she asked.

  "He's good," Croyd said. He snaked his neck around and looked at her, "Can you wash this stuff off yet?"

  "The shower is designed to clean up chemical spills," Zoe said. "If I pull the cnain, it's on until the tank is empty. We'll have to wait for this guy to get back."

  "He's fast," Croyd said. He peered up at the shower head with longing.

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Ray went outside the tent.

  The wind howled, the sand blew like a scouring pad. Ray tore his clothes off and let the wind blow up him for half a minute until he felt clean. He knew that he wasn't, but at lease he felt clean.

  He huddled down, turning his face away from the wind. This was the tricky part. His hands were clumsy. The one attached to his broken arm was entirely useless. He had to be careful now, damn careful.

  The Black Trump was the only thing in his life that had ever scared Ray shitless, and he'd decided that if he was going to face it again he'd have some kind of protection. He'd mashed his nose flat, all the better to hide and hold nasal filters. He'd closed off most of his mouth for the same reason.

  He'd known earlier that night he'd have to face the Trump again, so he'd put the biological filters in his nost
rils and stuffed another in the corner of his mouth. He was so surprised and angered by Harvest's betrayal that he'd almost forgotten to use it, but instinct had taken over at the last second and his tongue had slipped it into place.

  He extracted the filters and dropped them on the sand. He stood for a moment, naked in the clean desert wind. He needed clothes, a splint for his arm, and a way back to Jerusalem. First, though, he had to get sterile, if there was any bleach left over from washing the camel.

  He went back into the tent and grinned at Zoe Harris. She was pretty good looking. "I'll wash your back," he said, "if you wash mine."

  ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠

  Camel Croyd, dripping with bleach, backed away from Billy Ray.

  Billy Ray wasn't masked -

  "Don't breathe!" Zoe yelled. Billy Ray nodded, reached up for the stack of masks by the door and put one one.

  "What's next?" he asked.

  "Shower," Zoe said. The Joker's broken arm hung limp by his side. "Wait! Let me splint that arm first!"

  Billy Ray put the rifle on a lab counter and held out his wrist.

  "Oh, damn," Zoe said. "My splint's ruined." Its metal braces were buried in Rudo's arm. She tore the velcro straps away from the soft splint, held it in front of her mask, breathed, and wrapped the splint on Billy's wrist.

  "What good's that going to - uurgh!" Billy Ray said, as the splint went rigid on his arm. He grabbed the edge of the lab counter with both hands and looked a little pale.

  "Thanks, lady," Billy Ray said. "Don't slow us down, Zoe. Where's the bleach?"

  It was a pity his face was so ugly. The rest of him wasn't, Zoe observed, as she stripped out of her surgical gown, her gloves, and her sweaty cotton robes. Billy Racy swabbed bleach over her back. She returned the favor.