by G T Almasi
I face the edge of the roof and press my hands on the black tar surface. I kick myself into a handstand, and pivot on my palms to face the street. My stupid plaid skirt flips upside down. Thank God Cleo taught me to always wear underwear.
My fingers grasp the lip of the building’s fascia as my body tilts toward the street. I swing down and in through a top-floor window. The glass shatters all over me and I fall into the room in a loose bundle of curtains. My costume’s ridiculous white stockings are cut in a dozen places.
Li’l Bertha jumps into my left palm. Her targeting sensor looks through the drapes and shows me six orange people. Five of them brandish blue guns. Li’l Bertha spins her gyros, pulls my arm from left to right, and blows all five of my startled competitors off their feet.
I pull the perforated curtains from over my head and nearly throw up. The room reeks! It’s like someone is barbecuing a rancid corpse.
My dead and incapacitated gunshot victims form a contorted moat around the one unarmed person in the room. A young woman sits hunched in a steel-tubed folding chair. Her hands and ankles are chained to the chair’s legs. The woman spits on the floor and glares at me.
“Weh, weh,” she croaks. “Th’ cava-ry hash arrived.”
Talon.
32
SAME NIGHT, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 11:51 P.M. CEST
MUNICH, GREATER GERMANY
My competitor is an absolute wreck. I barely recognize her. Half of her face looks like burned leather. One of her eyes is missing. Her hair has been scorched off. The skin on her neck is bright red, like a sunburn from a flamethrower. There’s puke all over her chest and legs. It’s incredible this skank is still breathing.
Talon licks her lips. Her tongue is so black it’s like she’s rotting from the inside out. “S-s-sho—” she slurs. “Falcon foun’ ya.”
I haven’t pegged her as a chatty-chick, so I cautiously reply, “Yeah.”
“Little dink…never shut up about you and your…p-parenzz.”
I say nothing.
“Great shot, that kid,” Talon continues, seemingly to herself. “Was a beast with a rifle.”
“Still is,” I say.
She looks down at her lap. “Think he’d shoot his sister?”
“I would.”
“Did,” she corrects.
“Getting even for what you did to Cyrus.”
“Nuh, Shcarlet.” She swings her face up to glare at me with her one good eye. “You ’n I will never be even.”
Enough of this.
I approach her and demand, “Tell me where Fredericks is.”
“Gone, he’s gone.” She groans. “Again.”
“Where?” I point Li’l Bertha at her head.
Her voice is barely audible, and her words are slurred. “You need to promish me shomethin’.”
“Oh, I can definitely promise you something.” I jab the barrel of my pistol against her forehead.
“G’won—” Her body is convulsed by a huge coughing fit. Fluid spurts from her nose and mouth. She stops coughing and finishes her sentence. “Bidge.”
I back away from her. “Darwin,” I comm. “I’ve found Talon, but something’s really wrong with her.”
T-Bitch hisses. “Forget your commphone, Scarlet. It won’t work in here.”
I lower my weapon. “Talon, what’d the Faction do to you?”
“It was me or Jakob.” Her head droops to her chest. “Fuckin’ Troust kid did me good after I greased his daddy. Last Mod I’ll ever need.”
“Why did they do it?”
“Deliv’ry vector. I walk into a city and flatten it.”
“Which city?”
“These ash sholes couldn’t agree.” She nods her ruined face at the dead people on the floor. “C’n yeh imagine? All this trouble and they—” More coughing. “They hadn’t even figured out what to do wi’ me.”
Doska was right: The Faction leaders weren’t arguing about where to go on vacation. All the same, there is no way these shitheads outfought a monster like Talon. I demand, “Why would you let this happen?”
“To…to save, auchgh—” Bitchface hacks up a wad of red glop. She tries to spit it on the floor but only hits her legs.
“To save Father,” she gasps.
When I catch Fredericks the first thing I’m gonna tell him is how screwed up his girls turned out.
While T-Bitch catches her breath, I examine her in more detail. Above the girl’s lap, wrapped around her body, is a thick…jacket, or something. It’s much bulkier than SoftArmor. I holster my pistol and reach toward the thing swaddling Talon’s torso.
“I need yuh…” Talon’s words barely escape her drooling mouth. “To promish…promish me…”
The girl is warm. Hot, actually. I rip open her heavy jacket. Heat rushes out as if I’d opened an oven door.
Talon’s chest is covered by a dense wiring harness surrounding what looks like a supersized soup can. The gleaming cylinder is covered in white stenciled writing. Near the center sits the angular symbol of the Kreigsmarine. The can’s top sprouts a series of cables that worm into the harness. From there the wires savagely penetrate the girl’s flesh in half a dozen places.
Dear God!
I yank the jacket shut and backpedal all the way to the curtains on the floor. I still have no comm-signal, so I lean out the window and unleash my Big Voice Mod.
“Darwi-i-i-n!”
His voice calls from the fire escape around the corner. “What?”
“Get your ass in here!”
“Okay!” A brief pause, then he yells, “Come open the fire door!”
I lurch out of the room and into the hall. Gunfire shouts from below. The air here stinks of smoke, sweat, and terror. No one else is on this floor yet, but the fierce battle downstairs rages closer and closer.
Kill each other dead, suckers.
I find the emergency exit and shove it open. My partner enters. “Jesus,” he says, “you’re white as a ghost!” I quickly bring him to Talon. Her appearance shocks Brando speechless. He opens her jacket and immediately slaps it shut again.
“Holy shit!”
I take his hand in mine. “What’ve they done to her?”
He asks me, “Did you get a good look?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me into your Day Loop. I don’t want to open her shielding again.”
Shielding?
I release control of my Loop to Patrick and watch Talon struggle to remain conscious. I hate this witch, but even so, if this sort of horror show can engulf a badass like Talon, it could happen to any of us.
“Oh my God,” Brando says, interrupting my grim thoughts. “Did you read what that thing says?”
“I saw the navy logo,” I say. “It’s the stolen gizmo from Antwerp, isn’t it?”
“Oh…m-my,” he stammers. A capillary in his temple pulses rapidly. His brow is wet with perspiration, and he breathes in shallow gulps.
I turn toward him. “What is it?”
His eyes have jammed themselves so wide open I worry they’ll pop right out of his head. My normally unflappable partner is having a panic attack.
“What?” I shake his arm. “What is it?”
I tune in to my Day Loop to see what he’s looking at. He’s frozen the playback on the sinister-looking can wired to Talon’s chest. The white stenciled lettering reads:
KERN GERÄT EXPERIMENTELLE.
Nuclear device, experimental.
Patrick finally says, “They modded her with a thermonuclear bomb.”
The room’s lights flicker in time to a series of loud bangs from downstairs. I lean into the suddenly pitching room like a sailor on the deck of a heaving ship.
Run!
“Derw’n?” T-Bitch speaks without raising her head. “Tha’
you?”
Run away!
“Y-yeah, it’s me. It’s Darwin,” my partner says. “Can we get that thing off you?”
“No.” Talon shifts in her seat. “If it’sh tampered with, boom. If I die, boom. Fuckin’ Troust…punk.” She spits on the floor again. “We need to make a deal.”
“What deal?”
“Cut me loose. I’ll kill the Faction fucks.”
“And?”
She coughs wetly, then says, “Geshtapo fucks, too.”
“Talon”—Patrick has to raise his voice to be heard over the furious racket from below—“they’re taking care of each other just fine.”
“I’ll tell you…” She gasps for breath. “…where Jakob went.”
“Okay-y-y. What do you want from us?”
“When you catch Jakob, you leave him alive.”
My partner’s forehead furrows skeptically. “What makes you think we won’t lie to you?”
“Heh.” Her low laugh is wet with phlegm and other gunk. “You never lie.”
“How do you—”
She cuts him off. “Because I read your fuckin’ file, jackash.”
Patrick’s frown deepens, but he keeps his cool. “Done,” he says.
“Berlin,” Talon spits, “with Wolf.”
“When?” I ask.
She peers up at me between locks of her black hair. “About five seconds before you rode in through the window. Geshtapo grabbed ’im outta the cellar. One of th’ muzzerfugs in here had just come up to tell their bosses.”
Shit! That wasn’t a wounded Gestapo man, it was Fredericks!
Brando indicates my next move with a nod toward the wilted figure in the chair. I walk around behind T-Bitch and unhook the chains. She slumps to the floor on her knees, grimacing in pain.
She slowly stands up. “Go,” she rasps. “Find Jakob.”
Patrick hesitates. “Talon, you sure you can do this?”
“Yeah, I’m fushin’ sure!” Tears stream down her burned cheeks as she crouches over a dead Faction member to take his submachine gun. I recognize him as Horst Mahler. Next to him, dead, is the woman in the blue scarf, Ulrike Meinhof.
“Go! Find Jakob!” Talon shouts. “Before I change m’mind and take you ashholes wimme.” She waves the machine pistol at us. “Go!”
We go, all right. Quicker’n shit through a goose, we go. The hallway, exit door, and fire escape blur together under our flashing feet. We tear ass onto the sidewalk out front and zing right past the Gestapo cars parked in the street.
My comm-signal returns. “Krys, Dos, back to the car! Hurry!”
Doska senses my urgency and quickly comms, “Be right there, Scarlet.”
Patrick and I charge onto Marienstrasse and sprint toward the Meat Locker. Krysta drops to the ground from above the clothing store, tumbles once, then runs at and leaps over the hood of our Mercedes. He yanks the driver’s-side door open. Doska bursts into view from the store’s entrance. Brando and I arrive at the Meat Locker’s back doors. Krysta has already rolled all the windows down. Doska, Patrick, and I shove our upper bodies inside the car.
“Drive!” I order.
Krysta pulls away from the curb. My stockinged legs and chunky shoes thunk against the windowsill as I wriggle the rest of me into my seat.
Krysta or Doska comms, “What about—”
I grab the front headrests and pull myself forward so I can bark directly into Krysta’s ear.
“Krys get us the fuck outta here or we’re all dead!”
Krysta stomps the gas. The car’s big motor snorts like a bull. Brando and I fall against the backseats. The stores of Marienstrasse sail past our windows. We screech around the first turn and accelerate away from the center of town. Our express route takes us past the Faction hideout. Behind the windows, the rooms flicker like strobe lights and the neighborhood echoes with continuous gunfire. Wounded Gestapo agents stumble through the front door while dead Faction members cascade from the smashed windows.
Those assholes really had no idea what they were getting themselves into.
Krys careens out of the city’s center. Crowds of people run across the street. Some carry assault rifles and wear Wehrmacht uniforms.
“What the fuck is the German Army doing here?”
Bright-orange light flashes from the alleys to our left, followed by a rumbling explosion. I look in time to see a flight of Luftwaffe fighter-bombers streak past overhead.
Doska comms, “It’s the Loyalists!”
The city’s anti-aircraft batteries open fire. Their hail of rockets, bullets, and artillery shells throttle the atmosphere like an all-mallet band pounding an anvil. My view is limited by buildings on either side, but the cacophony is dreadful.
Krysta turns the Mercedes and power-drifts all the way around an autobahn entrance ramp. We soar out of town on a broad four-lane highway.
K-man keeps the pedal down: 140 kph, 160, 180, 200, 210.
Patrick and I look out the rear window in a grim vigil for Munich’s last moments.
We pass into a suburb. Apartment buildings give way to single-family houses. Instead of designer boutiques on the corners, we see small grocery stores. The open space of a sprawling railroad yard yawns on our right.
“This is far enough,” Brando calls. “There!” He points at a long, sturdy concrete utility shed on the near side of the train tracks. Krysta punches the Meat Locker through a chain-link fence and then skids to a stop next to the shed.
We bail out and run to the stocky structure’s front side. I’m about to kick the door in when my partner shouts, “Wait!”
His eyes are glued to the array of stickers on the door. Each sticker has a flat illustration on it: skull and crossbones, hands being cut in half by acid, and little generic stickmen suffocating to death.
“Dang,” I say, lowering my foot. “What the hell is in there?”
“Whatever it is”—Patrick swivels his head around, looking for somewhere else to hide—“we don’t want to be in it when the nuke goes off.”
“Nuke?” Doska and Krysta exclaim in unison. “What nuke?”
“Everybody, shut off your Mods! We—”
And it happens.
33
Our Father, who art in Heaven,
Thy sacred will be done.
Allow our asses not to be,
Blown to Kingdom Come.
TEN MILLISECONDS LATER, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, MIDNIGHT, CEST
MUNICH, GREATER GERMANY
The pure-white pulse wipes the stars away like snowflakes off a windshield. We dive at our knife-sharp shadows and cover our eyes.
One Mississippi.
The shock wave hits so hard it knocks the wind out of me. We commando-scramble behind the leeward side of the heavy, low shed. I press my face to the dark ground and strain to breathe as the Orchestra of the Apocalypse strikes the thunderous first notes of the Atomic Overture.
Two Mississippi, three Mississippi.
The sky’s glare abates and the bomb’s blast of hot air hurtles past. I peek from behind my fingers. A swarm of debris jets over our position. Newspaper machines, window shutters, street signs, billboards, an entire movie house marquee, and a thousand other things flying so fast I can’t tell what they are. From the churning mass sails a particularly large, flat object. It’s a football-field-sized hunk of pavement. The slab of roadway misses us, but when it slams down we’re showered with rocks and black dust.
Four, five.
The Orchestra spits out a series of earsplitting cracks. The dirt I’m lying on shakes like a wet dog. Between my body bouncing around and the flying fragments, I lose track of how many times I hit something or something hits me.
Six, seven.
Pieces of shattered Munich continue falling to earth like an a
rtillery barrage. The dense, heavy wreckage hits first; crushed cars, twisted steel beams, and a crashing rain of broken bricks and stonework. Next comes the smashed-up furniture, followed by clouds of shattered glass and half-melted streetlights.
Eight, nine.
The last sizable things to fall from the copper-tinged sky are the broiled bodies. Some are intact, but most are limbless torsos and severed heads the color of charcoal. The feet bounce like tennis balls.
Ten Mississippi.
The rain of death slows to a drizzle. I reboot my Mods and stand up.
Infinity.
From here it appears that everything within a mile of ground zero has been mashed flat, smothered in baked gravel, and drenched with mutilated human remains. The shouting air shivers my eardrums.
Patrick sees me cover my ears. “It’s the mountains.”
“What?” I yell over the reverberating noise.
“The Alps.” Brando steps to the Meat Locker and opens the trunk. He reaches into his duffel bag and rummages around, looking for something. “The mountains are reflecting the explosion. The echoes are out of phase because each peak is a different distance from the city.” My partner draws a T-shirt from his bag. He ties the shirt around his face like a Mexican bandit.
Or like an intelligent person caught in fallout zone.
Doska, Krysta, and I quickly join Patrick at the car to search our luggage for pieces of cloth to use as breathing masks. Naturally a real gas mask and one of those head-to-toe coveralls would be optimal, but exposure to radiation is so rare ExOps decided it’s not worth dispatching their agents with full Haz-Mat kits.
Basic radiation survival was, however, included in our training. There are three main directives. The first is to prevent any irradiated material—liquids, solids, dust in the air—from entering your body. If you can’t do this, the rest of the training is useless because you’re as good as dead anyway. Number two is to keep the dust off your skin. This makes decontamination much easier later. Directive three is to minimize the need for the first two directives by running like hell.
I pull out a T-shirt and cinch it around the lower half of my head, just like Brando. I consider what to do about my hair, but decide Helen’s knit cap is good enough. Dos tosses a small towel to his partner, and keeps one for himself. They wrap the towels around their faces and necks. Then Dos produces two pairs of thin leather gloves, which he and Krysta put on.