by David Wong
The crowd cheered and whistled. So loud, that it drowned out the sudden panicked radio chatter happening in Zoey’s ear. She spun, scanning the crowd for Molech, then the sky. Was he in disguise? Would she even recognize him if she saw him again? She listened for useful instructions, and only heard men shouting questions and commands at each other.
Up on the dais, Will was handed a torch and he touched it to the pyre, which went up with a roar—like it had been soaked in gasoline. From the bandstand came a guitar solo version of “Amazing Grace.”
Zoey caught Will as he was walking away from the inferno that was now raging behind him. “Hey. Something’s happening.”
Will listened, then turned back to the pyre. Armando followed his gaze and drew his gun. The spotters in her ear were yelling for them to get out of the way. Out of the way of what?
Then the crowd was running, and screaming. There was the sound of a massive approaching engine, and then bombastic arena rock filled the world.
Arthur Livingston’s funeral pyre exploded, flaming logs flung in every direction. A monster truck crashed through it, mashing Arthur’s wax body under gigantic tires. The truck was electric but had been rigged with massive speakers to broadcast gasoline engine sounds, and was playing an old heavy metal song in which a raspy singer was offering to rock everyone like a hurricane. Flashing across the grill in yellow letters animated into flames was the word, “MOLECH.”
Will said, “I think that’s him.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The truck skidded to a stop and out from the cab hopped a shirtless Molech, along with Black Scott, the sidekick he introduced in the Arthur Livingston death video. Behind them, four more muscle-bound dudes hopped out of the bed of the truck, not a shirt among them. They all wore suspenders that they left dangling at their hips, and each of the henchmen wore baseball caps with the bills facing in various directions.
Cheers went up from the crowd. Zoey hoped those weren’t all Team Molech, and that most of them were just cheering because the action they’d come to see was finally unfolding before them. Molech, smiling broadly and thoroughly pleased with his entrance, turned and waved to the crowd.
He had stitches. Incisions that ran across his shoulders, and down both arms. She could see them on his sidekick Scott, too. She wondered if all of his men had them, the mark of the Raiden implants. The pair of them then turned and swaggered directly toward Zoey. Armando edged around to get his body between them, gun in hand. The crowd was forming a circle around them, everybody trying to make sure their camera was getting the best view.
Molech and his partner stopped a step short of a confrontation with Armando. Molech looked Zoey up and down, and burst out laughing.
To Scott, Molech said, “Dude, this is her! Like twenty years ago Art knocked up a stripper and his trailer park daughter wound up with all his money. Now Blackwater and all those guys are having to kiss her ass to try to get her to turn over the estate. Look at her! They gave her a makeover.” He shook his head. “Dude, this is priceless.”
Zoey said, “I know you, too. I just watched a video with you in it.”
“Oh, is that right?”
To Armando, Zoey said, “These two are from Sausage Express, that gay porno I was telling you about. Armando, meet Miles O’Smiles and Dick Christmas.”
Molech said, “Oh, look, she’s funny. Hmm, let me do the math—funny girl, absent father—want me to guess which antidepressants you’re on?”
“I’ve actually found a new form of therapy. It’s watching your employees die.”
“Let’s see what else I can guess about you. You’re too fat to be a stripper like your mom. So … waitress? Am I close?”
“Close. I’m a professional hunter. Been doing it since I was six. Got a wild boar on my first day. Not very hard.”
This stopped Molech for a moment. Will watched them, saying nothing. That look on his face again, like he was doing calculations in his head.
If Molech makes a move, just get flat on the ground.
Molech recovered and said, “I got to hand it to whoever picked out that outfit, showing off your tits to draw attention away from your face and jacked-up teeth. How about I bend you over my tailgate, yank up that skirt, and let my boys line up and take turns?”
“Can I bring a magazine? It sounds boring.”
“Come on, baby! If you didn’t want it, you’d have covered up.”
“And you must want to get shot in the head, or else you would have worn a helmet. There are ten guns pointed at your head right now, by the way.”
That was a conservative estimate. She could see five of the plainclothes security that had edged into position among the encircled crowd, all with guns drawn. And those were just the ones she could see.
She looked Molech over. “So, how much time do you spend flexing in front of a mirror on an average day, trying to convince yourself that people still associate muscles with strength? How many hours you spend in the gym piling on mass to hide the scared little boy under it?”
Molech glanced around at the gunmen and said, “Whoa! Hey, guys, we’re just here to have a conversation! I don’t know what’s happened with the world today when a common man like me can’t come to a public park to discuss business without a small army freaking out and pulling firearms. This is completely ruining the conversational environment. Here, let me take care of that. Todd?”
One of Molech’s shirtless henchmen was carrying what looked to Zoey like a fire hydrant from the year 3000—a flat black, knee-high object with a top that looked like a honeycomb. The guy sat it on the ground and a dozen armed men, including Armando, screamed at the man to step away from it. Zoey assumed it wasn’t a bomb, since Molech and his shirtless band were presumably no more bombproof than she was, but the thing wasn’t going to start oozing homemade ice cream, either.
The henchman smiled and held up his hands in the kind of playful “don’t shoot” gesture you’d give to a toddler with a toy gun. The device had already been activated. It whirred to life and the upper part, the honeycomb section, started spinning, impossibly fast. The device started glowing, the spinning top forming a ring of bluish white light that was too bright to look at. Zoey felt a hand against her back—Armando’s—about to throw her to the ground.
But it was too late. The machine went off, with a shriek that crescendoed into a thrumming WUBWUBWUB sound that shook the earth.
Armando fired his gun.
Zoey flinched at the sound, and went down to one knee.
Wait, no, that wasn’t right—he hadn’t pulled the trigger at all. The gun had spontaneously exploded in Armando’s hand.
Armando cursed and yanked his hand back, flinging flecks of blood from several gashes in his palm. Smoldering shards of metal were lying between his shoes. Then there was a series of pops, like very loud firecrackers—all of the bullets were going off inside the remains of the gun, sending high-speed hunks of metal in every direction. People started running, or diving for the ground.
And then it happened again nearby—this time one of the plainclothes gunmen screamed, clutching a ruined hand. And again, and again, until it was a continuous staccato cacophony, like the finale of a fireworks display. The harsh rattle of dozens of bullets all detonating at once, ruining every firearm in the vicinity.
And then, there were fingers around Zoey’s throat.
She was lifted to her feet. Molech’s face was suddenly three inches from her’s.
Without looking away, Molech said, “Be cool, Ruiz. We’re all good here, just takin’ the guns out of the equation, that’s all. A few of your boys are missing fingers, but they can learn to jerk off with the other hand.”
To Zoey, he said, “That gadget there was a gift from your daddy. It cooks the cordite right inside the cartridge, it uses microwaves, or ultrasound, or somethin’. Kills every firearm within three hundred yards. See, now we can have this conversation like civilized people.”
He squeezed, and waited. Zoey didn’t kno
w what he was waiting for, but of course he was letting the chaos die down, and allowing all of the cameras to focus on him and him alone. He wasn’t going to waste his monologue.
Molech said, “Look around you, piglet. What do you see? Same thing you see in the mirror—fat, weak, lazy slugs. The gene pool so diluted that you can barely recognize these pale blobs as human, all their juice watered down. We did this to ourselves, piglet. Back before you and me were born, all the politicians got scared about all the crime, and all the wars, so they pumped everybody full of antidepressants and soy and estrogen, trying to dull that fire, that natural fire that’s supposed to burn inside all of us. They gave all the men porn and video games, to soak up their conqueror instincts. Worked like a charm—crime went way down, rape went way down, pregnancy went way down. And the only price was they turned all the men into fat little toothless blobs and the girls into arrogant, squealing little piglets, like you. Puttin’ that fire out forever, that natural fire that comes from the balls. The fire that built this world. Well, I’m here to tell you, there are still some men left. So no, there’s not gonna be no negotiation. The lion don’t negotiate with the gazelle.”
He squeezed, and lifted, and Zoey was now standing on her toes.
“I said we were going to talk like civilized people, and this, here, is how civilization works. The goods go to the strong, and the weak starve, so that the species can get stronger. When the weak hold the goods, the strong are obligated to take them, to propagate strength, and eliminate weakness.”
From behind them, Will said, “Zoey doesn’t have what you want, but I do. Will you allow me to explain, or do you want to keep choking the barista?”
“Dude, I know who you are and what you’re all about. You think you can string together enough fancy words to get me to sell you my own mother. We’re done talking. You hand me the gold or you shut your squeal hole.”
Will said, “The gold—you’re referring to the software that runs Raiden, correct? The hardware works. The software that manages it doesn’t.”
Molech smiled. “See? Look at all the trouble we had to go through just to arrive at this point.”
Will said, “In programmer slang the rough code is the beta and the final working copy is the gold, right? So stop me if I’m wrong, but I’m thinking the gear you got from Singh had the beta code. That’s why your minions keep going up like roman candles when they try to use it. Without the gold code, all of this gear is useless to you. Right?”
“So here’s the part where you tell me you’ve got the gold in your pocket, before I pinch little Zoey’s melon off and punt it like a football.”
“I’m not sure you want to do that. This defect, it’s common to every device, including the augmentations in your arms. You didn’t know that when you got the implants, did you? How many times have you used them? Because the next time you activate those motors, the whole thing could blow, just like your friend at the train station, and who knows how many hobos you’ve used as test cases. So now you’ve got your supervillain powers all rigged up but you’re playing a game of Russian roulette every time you try to use them. And that’s driving you crazy, because you want to play with your toys. Don’t you?”
“You don’t think I’m capable of ripping her windpipe out without the aid of Singh’s gadget? Watch me.”
“No need, you’re going to get everything you want. The gold, unfortunately, appears to have gone up with the warehouse. The warehouse you blew up. You did blow it up, correct?”
“I don’t know what caused that, but it was also awesome as hell. I regret nothing.”
“Anyway, we have a computer genius on our staff named Echo Ling, she built and managed all of Arthur’s software. She has been analyzing Singh’s schematics and code. Says she’ll have your stability issues corrected within one week. You’ll get your gold.”
Molech barked a laugh.
“You think I’m the dumbest asshole in the world, Blackwater. I walk away and you promise to give me what I want in a week, in the meantime you spend the whole week, what, scheming to take me out? Taking all of Livingston’s cash out of the bank and running to South America?”
“Well of course you’ll leave here with collateral. I’m going to suggest you take me. As your hostage.”
Zoey was utterly unable to read Will, and had no idea if this was a genuine offer or a con. But Molech made no show of letting go of her.
Will continued, “I’m open to other offers. Andre would be more fun, but also more expensive to feed. Otherwise, you lock me up and if the team fails to deliver the fix, you can crush my skull and do all of this again.”
Molech studied Will’s face, weighing his options. Finally he took his hand off of Zoey’s throat, but latched it around her right wrist instead. He put his other hand on her elbow, so that he was holding her arm like the handlebars on a bicycle.
“All right. I’m a reasonable man, like I said. But there’s one last thing that needs done to make it even. See, your girl here insulted me, right to my face. On top of killing two of my men. But it’s really the insult that I can’t abide. So as a reminder to her, I’m gonna break her arm off at the elbow. Both bones in her forearm will snap, and I’ll just twist them like celery. I’ll keep the rest of her arm, as a memento, in a big jar on my mantel. Meanwhile, she’ll have a nice long trip to the hospital, what with traffic shut down all the way to midtown, screaming with her arm a ragged stump. And she’ll have that memory to remind her that the days when weakness can insult strength are over. Everybody get your cameras in on this, and give me silence. I want you to hear it when the bones snap.”
Incredibly, everyone in the crowd did go quiet. Zoey tried to pull away, so she could go flat and hope that somebody, somewhere, still had a working gun. There was no give in Molech’s grip whatsoever, it was like her arm was caught in an industrial machine. The two hands clamped down on Zoey’s wrist and elbow and pain jolted down the bone. She squeezed her eyes shut.
And then there was a terrible, meaty sound, and then there was blood.
TWENTY-NINE
Zoey stumbled back. Everyone was screaming.
She was surprised to find that her arm was still attached to her body. And in fact, Molech’s two hands were still clasped to it. But Molech was not attached to his hands.
He was standing ten feet away, staring at the neat, bloody stumps where his hands used to be. Standing in between Molech and Zoey was Armando, holding a bloody, smoking katana and looking as startled as anyone. Zoey frantically pried the two disembodied hands off her arm and flung them to the ground, like they were a couple of huge, disgusting insects that had landed on her.
Molech continued staring at the two spots in his universe that for his entire life up to now had always been occupied by hands. He did not scream, or panic, or cry. He bared his teeth and furrowed his brow, then slowly closed his eyes. Frustration, like he had just busted out in a game of poker and was already trying to think of ways to get his money back.
His henchmen, on the other hand, were staring wide-eyed, like their whole world had come undone, as if they’d just seen the sky open up and a huge God poop fall out. One of them bent over and started retching.
Molech turned and stumbled toward his truck, barking at his men for help.
Zoey grabbed Armando’s sleeve and said, “Finish him.”
But Armando was staring at the smoldering katana, which had two ragged, charred notches in the blade, like a demon had been gnawing on it.
Zoey shook him.
“Hey! He’s getting way!”
Armando snapped out of it. He moved toward Molech, but now Molech’s henchmen had closed ranks, forming a bare-chested wall around their boss. Black Scott was dragging Molech into the bed of the monster truck, and the rest of the dudes piled in. The crowd parted as the massive truck rumbled away, its fake engine sounds droning into the distance.
There was stunned silence in the crowd. After all this buildup, the whole thing had played out in less t
han five minutes.
Armando put a finger in his ear and said, “Jeff? You there? We need to make sure that truck never gets where it’s going. Especially if it’s going to a hospital.”
Armando watched the truck round a corner. He looked down at the katana again, then walked over and handed it back to Wu, who was standing in awe.
Armando said, “This is a genuine katana. I owe you an apology. And I will replace it, I think I ruined the—”
He was cut off by a hug from Zoey. “Holy crap! Suddenly I get why you charge three hundred an hour.”
“And to think that I took this job without finding out how truly crazy you are. You got right in his face.”
Andre had made his way to the scattered, flaming ruins of the pyre and found where the microphone had been tossed aside.
He picked it up, turned to the stunned crowd and said, “Uh, thanks for watching, everybody. That was of course a scripted event that, oddly enough, was laid out in Arthur’s strangely specific will. Those were all actors, everything is fine. Drop party starts in thirty minutes!”
The crowd cheered. The band started playing again. Zoey found Will, who was looking down at the two severed hands at his feet, their fingers still twitching in the dirt. She couldn’t tell whether he was happy or unhappy with this result. Echo appeared, and placed the two severed hands in a cooler she had stolen from somebody. They were getting quite a collection of hands.
Zoey said, “He’ll bleed out, right? You can’t just … lose two limbs like that.”
After a long pause, Will said, “Probably.”
“Was that a real offer you made him? Were you really going to go along as his hostage?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s done. It’s fine.”
He turned to walk away.
Zoey said, “Hey! We won, right?”
“Sure. Go get something to eat, you did good. Go enjoy the rest of the party.”
Zoey watched him walk away.
“Hey! You still need to show me how to do the coin trick!”