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Apocalypse by Erin Tyler I'd like to think I did enough research for this story, but I've never been certain that I have. This has been, for the most part, a first- person account of events from my life, but how often are first-person accounts completely reliable? I admit that I've sprinkled in a little drama here and there. It hasn't been much, and the biggest reason I use it is because I can't remember everything with 100% clarity. Maybe The Mistress wasn't always so cold-hearted when it came to Parksiders. Maybe Junior wasn't always such a hardass. What do you expect from me, though? I'm over four-and-a-half centuries old. My memory isn't always so great. Cut me some slack. I've tried to tell the stories of some other folks as well, and that's where I've tried to be especially careful. Grant Carson, Jim Waltrip, Sheila Tucker, Luke Oakes, Reg Maynard -- these are all real people who actually existed, and I've had the chance to speak to others who knew them, but I've never met them myself, nor will I ever get the chance. In my writing, I've tried to give you some picture of who they were, their inner lives, along with the inner lives of others, but my efforts to get a feel for that have only taken me so far. For a less human example, let's take the town of Parkside itself. I've already told you it was built on the ruins of Boston. Did you know it was built specifically on and around the old Boston Common? That's right: the city park was the first and only area in Boston, following the collapse of the United States, to play host to a large-scale resettlement effort. I only found this out recently -- yesterday, in fact. The reason this is so important to me is, back in 2015, the freaking Massachusetts State House was just off the northeast end of the park. That's the home for the legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, sitting larger than life, right there on the site that would later become Parkside. By 2451, it was a row of small townhouses, by which I mean, it's gone. I only realized this yesterday. (I asked an acquaintance where it went. She explained that in the late 21st century, the Massachusetts government saw the seas rising, and saw its cities flooding, and saw its citizens placed in mortal peril. In the face of ongoing catastrophe, the people's elected leaders took the most responsible, sensible action they could think of... ...By moving the state capital to Amherst. So fuck those guys.) I guess what I'm trying to get at here is, I've tried to remain objective and cover every base in my storytelling, but that's impossible. This has been, from the very beginning, a deeply personal story for me. Words can't always convey that, though. I probably won't be able to describe the hell of the last 18 hours before President Bellows completely tore into Parkside and changed everything. I probably won't be able to give you the sense of what I felt as my world came undone. But I can try. As I gradually returned to consciousness, I felt lopsided, like half my face suddenly didn't work. I vaguely remembered being knocked out, and there was a moment of worry when I thought that maybe one of the devices inserted into my cerebellum had been shoved further in. Have you ever stuck a fork in your brain? Would you like to? Me neither. As my face started to work again, I felt like something was pulling me upward, but I wasn't actually moving. My arms were above my head, and my fingertips were brushing against something hard. Suddenly, I heard a grunt-like "yurf," and I felt a hard yank on my ankles, and I didn't sense anything anywhere near my hands anymore. Someone was walking around me. I was spinning in place like a ballerina, although I wasn't doing it on purpose. As the darkness cleared and my vision returned, I could see that I was in a room... a familiar room. Everything looked strange, however: things were gathered around the edge of the ceiling, and light was coming from the floor, and I was in the middle... ...I was upside-down. And suddenly, I had a face-full of Spot. "Yaff!!" he growled. "-Hugh!" I cried as I snapped awake. "Huhhh!!" He swatted my shoulder hard and sent me spinning wildly for a few dozen rotations. "Huh-uh-uh- uh!!" I cried, scared out of my mind, but (only) mildly thankful for my lack of an inner ear and its associate, dizziness. I slowed down... ...And the asshole slapped me again, the other way. "Huuuhhh!!" I cried. I'm a freaking tetherball, I thought. He gave me a couple more slaps in the same direction, increasing my velocity. "Stoooop!!" I shouted. "Stop-stop!!" Spot stood up straight and paced around me as I slowed again. "-Wh- who!! Wha-who are you?!" I warbled, looking up at the knives and grenades that arrayed his arms and waistline. Some of the blades had smears of blood on them, and the boy (/dog) was flecked with dried... well, spots, of the red stuff. I wasn't sure why he had blood on him until I remembered there was someone in the ruins, killing Parkside's scouts. Oh, shit, I thought, it's the guy! "...Y-you're the guy," I uttered. Spot maintained silence as he paced around me, neither confirming nor denying it; the only sounds he made were the rattles and clatters of the equipment he kicked across the floor in quick bursts of aggression. However, I got a glance at his lower back, where someone had tattooed the R.U.S.A. flag, sans color. Assassin with a tramp stamp, I thought, wow that is so not important right now. "What do you want?!" He got in close to my stomach and took two quick whiffs with his nose. "Rrr," he growled in disapproval. I felt sick; the crawling horror of President Bellows wasn't crawling anymore. It had come after me... or The Mistress. I thought, Does it matter to this guy? "...Hhhey, uh..." I started to say, then stopped, because at that moment I realized, for certain, that I was in the stockroom of Mariel's Clothier. And that made me think, Where's Gary?! I looked around in momentary panic for any signs of the eldest Carson child. The door was still on its hinges (which made me think that Gary forgot to lock it... hrm), but much of what little had been left on the floor was kicked and trashed. My clumsy art-robot had been unceremoniously thrown to the hard floor. The walls had been (mostly) left alone. But there was no blood. There was no body. There was no sign that Spot had been greeted by someone defending this temporary home; there was no Gary. And then, for a fleeting moment, there was Gary. I saw his eyes in the piles of stuff gathered around the base of the walls, looking out. For a split-second, I feared Spot had killed him and deposited him among the junk... but then he blinked, and ducked lower. I remembered it was his bed, hidden in there. Gary wasn't the brightest bulb in the place, but he was smart enough to know not to fuck with someone who could kick the door in. ...Or so I thought. Remember: this is Gary I'm talking about. I had no desire to test Gary's mettle; he could stay in hiding and I wouldn't think any less of him. "...Hhhey, uh-uhhhh..." I said slowly, trying to make eye contact with the sub-verbal killer circling me. I succeeded, and gave him the most winning smile I could muster while being tied and hung upside-down from the ceiling. "...Hi! I'm Natsuko!" I kept smiling. God help me, I thought, keep smiling. "What's your name?" His scowl held a viciousness that made Junior look like Fred Rogers. "Rrrrrfff!" he hissed through his teeth. I froze up. "...Okay!" I forced myself to say after a couple seconds of smiling. "...Soooo! I'm! Guessing! You're..." I cleared my throat, which was completely unnecessary but damn it, "new! To the area." He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me up one-handed. My sensors tripped in the brightest, reddest fashion, telling me, Hey he shouldn't be doing that! My mouth hung open as he held me up and sniffed my neck. It seemed like it should have been longer than it was -- he took a deep whiff in, like he really wanted to smell me -- but he twisted his head away, his face contorting in disgust, before he dropped me. "Grrrrraaaaannnn!!" he snarled, brushing his nose with both hands in an attempt to get the smell off. It wasn't a revelation in the truest sense of the word, but that's when I realized what he was doing: he was trying to suss me out. He kicked my exposed metal arm and gritted his teeth. He didn't know what I was, but he certainly didn't like it. "Yerf," he grumbled, then sneezed. "Ahhh... I'm not... gonna hurt you?" I offered, mentally adding, And I don't want you to hurt me, either. His lip curled, and he wiped the snot off his nose with one hand. And he turned and marched out of the room. Which was nice! For about seven seconds. I heard him rattling around out in the main area of the store. I heard another rattling behind me, and Gary whisper, "Natsuko-" "-No-no!!" I whispered back, jerking myself as best I could toward him. "Keep quiet-!" I heard footsteps behind me and fell silent, and Gary did the same. Spot marched around to my front side and placed a shoebox-sized object directly in front of my face. It was a bomb. I looked at it. It was definitely a bomb -- I could tell immediately from the "C4" stamped on the side in thick, black, block letters. It was awfully polite of the bomb-maker to make it an obvious bomb, rather than try to hide it in something that wasn't bomb-like. A cracked digital clock sat on top of it. "Oh," I said. Spot pushed a couple buttons, and the digital clock flashed. He tapped it a few more times, and the clock displayed "1:00:00". "...Oh!" Spot pushed another button, and the numbers on the far right began flashing wildly. "0:59:(numbernumbernumbernumber)", "0:58:(numbernumbernumbernumber)", "0:57-" "-Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!" I yelled, tensing up. I looked up at Spot, who looked down on me with this... I don't know what it was. Pity? Revulsion? Curiosity? Delight at the thought of blowing me up? I don't know. Without another sound, he quickly stepped across the room and shut the door behind him. "No-no!!" I cried. I heard a squeal and a loud bang, and the door shook in its frame. The pile of stuff to my right erupted, and Gary burst out. "Gary, it's a bomb stop the bomb, Gary!!" He pounced on the thing and pulled on one of the wires. It made a loud, threatening shrieking sound in response as the clock sped up. "Don'tstopthebombGary!!" I shrieked, and he shoved it away. With the seconds ticking away, he leapt to his feet and twirled around, looking for anything that could help. "Get me down!!" He yanked his knife out of his belt and, with one hard swipe, cut the rope that bound my feet. By the time I hit the floor, he was already halfway to the door. He grabbed the handle... ...And it fell off the door in his hands. "I didn't do it!!" he cried. There was no other exit. Spot had broken the door, sealing us inside. With the bomb. (What an asshole.) We were down to 40 seconds. Gary was throwing himself against the door, and it was shaking pretty hard, but the very thing that kept bad guys out now kept us in. Maybe he could have broken it down if he had a couple extra minutes, but he didn't. Thirty-nine seconds, then thirty- eight. I could stuff it in one of the cabinets, I thought, but will that keep the shockwave from killing us?! Thirty-seven. Thirty-six. Oxygen flooded my brain bubble, and my mind was racing. Rip out the wires and pray for a miracle!! Punch through the wall!! Pry open the door!! Bury ourselves in so much crap that- -Wait, actually, that third thing sounds good. But how the hell can Gary and I claw that door open- -Wow, I'm on a roll!! "Where are the Jaws of Life?!" I cried. "What?!" he replied, which I really didn't want to hear. "Aaaagh!! Jaws!! Life!! Theater!! Slavers?!" Short, short pause. "Your sisters!!" I cried despairingly. But it worked: Gary's eyes lit up (not literally, of course). He ran across the room and pried my Jaws of Life from the pile. I felt a moment of even more terrible despair: I didn't know how to use the thing! Before I could voice this, Gary was running to my side of the room, jaws in hand. He wrestled a metal canister of hydraulic fluid out of a corner, and I knew that, blessedly, at least one of us had read the instructions on the side. Twenty-five. Twenty-four. Twenty-three. Gary hooked the jaws up to the canister and switched it on while I held it. I stood in front of the door, facing the jamb. I didn't need to say anything, and he didn't need to be told what to do. He took a step back, and I braced myself. Like his New England Patriot ancestors, he ran forward and rammed himself hard into the jaws, knocking me off my feet, but shoving the apparatus deep into the jamb. As he held onto the back, I reached up and did my small part to keep it steady. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen. The damn thing was excruciatingly slow. Twelve. Eleven. With a creak, the door bent. Ten. Nine. Eight. With a groan, the latch strained. Seven. Six. The jaws pulled the door outward slowly, stretching the simple latch to its limit. Five. ...And it went beyond its limit. Four. With a snap, the latch popped out, and the cracked door shuddered open a foot. Three. Gary threw away the jaws and lifted me by my armpits. Two. Something had been placed something in the doorway, something that blocked our exit, but not completely. One. We made one final push over the obstacle- Did we throw ourselves out, or were we thrown out? Kind of both at once, actually. The blast tore apart the stockroom as we tossed ourselves over a shelf Spot had left in our way. I think we might have taken some of the hit, because the next thing I knew, we were on the floor under the shelf, halfway across the store. Gary was flat on his stomach, and I was doubled over and pinned by the furniture. Rattled but conscious, I quickly checked my systems for any major damage, but found none. "...Gary," I said. He grunted, and his eyes fluttered open. "Ehhhhnn," he breathed, and pulled his hands up toward his shoulders. "...Are we dead?" "No, but... ohboy..." I sank a little, the weight of the shelf pushing me down. Gary arduously pulled his knees up toward his waist and began pushing at the shelf. Slowly-slowly-slowly the shelf tipped up then back and over onto the floor. "Are you okay?!" I gasped. "Uhhhnn... I think..." He rolled himself onto his elbow and pushed himself up into a sitting position, then felt his legs. "...Yeah, I'm okay." He wavered a bit as he looked back through the door we came through. Smoke was pouring out; the fire alarm would have been raising a ruckus if it hadn't been totaled. "Aw, shit, Natsuko, your shop..." "Huuuuurf?!" we heard. What, did you think Spot just got up and left? "Here's a bomb that I'll just assume will kill you, so byyyye!" I can't say the guy was irresponsible. I looked up and there he was, hanging out in Gary's usual... uh, spot, within the display case. He looked like he had been chillin' there a moment ago until we showed up, and we were very unwelcome. Spot gripped a knife he had been twirling around and stood up. You've got to be fucking kidding me, he looked like he was thinking as he took purposeful steps toward us. "Hoohh!!" Gary yelped, then reached into his pants and ripped out his gun. Spot hesitated, then backed up -- he wasn't armed for this kind of fight. Gary didn't care; he immediately began shooting. Spot ducked low and ran for the front door. By the time he reached it, Gary was on his feet and in pursuit. "Gary, no!!" I cried. Gary paused. "Get behind me," he ordered, keeping his gun up and pointed at the door. "Get back, into the workshop!" "Gary, it's full of smoke!! You'll die in there!!" He let out a short wheeze. "...Okay... ah... eh..." He clicked his teeth. "Will the guards shoot me if I come with you to the tower?!" The Mistress told me she was giving me control of the robots, I thought, so, "No!" I ripped my smart phone from my hip pocket and fiddled with it, trying not to go to the wrong screen in my near panic. She said she was out of contact, I thought. But she also said... "Leviathan!!" I hissed into the phone. "Are you there?! Leviathan!! Tiny!! This is an emergency!! Get downstairs-!!" I should have shared my plan with Gary. Should'a, would'a, could'a... but didn't. "Alright!" he whispered, sounding as apprehensive as any young person about to venture from the frying pan into the fire and back into the frying pan. "Stick behind me!" "Wait, no-!" I whispered, but he was already out the door. "Shit!!" I snatched up a metal pole, once used to hang clothes and now a makeshift weapon, and followed Gary out of Mariel's. I hadn't realized that anyone, or anything, up in Sky Tower had heard my call for help. Leviathan did, however: The Mistress had given me a direct line to him. He was ready, willing, and able to come to my aid at my command. And he was 70 stories above me. And he didn't have an elevator. That was a problem. The word "emergency" triggered his emergency protocol ("help" would have also worked). He rumbled through the shop, around the wall, and up to the top of the staircase. Under normal circumstances, he would have ridden his brother-bot Teeny down to the lobby, but Teeny wasn't there. He could also slowly and carefully roll down the stairs, but it was an emergency, and he wasn't programmed to be slow in this kind of situation. The Mistress told me she would rather lose Tiny and/or Leviathan than me. That's why Leviathan pulled himself in as tight as he could get, tilted forward, and pitched himself down the stairs. Thump-thumpa-thump-bump-WHAM -- he hit the wall on the first landing hard. A gyroscopic motor in his torso spun, and his center of gravity shifted, tilting him backwards and down. THAM-buddabuddabudda-bump-THUD -- he hit the next landing and rolled. Only 69 floors left! The sun had just sunk over the western horizon, and the ruins were as still as a cemetery. I never knew late afternoon could be so quiet; we were not far from Parkside, but we might as well have been walking on the moon. I had made the quick trip across the street between Sky Tower and Mariel's dozens of times before, seemingly more, but at that moment it seemed like it was as far from us as the aforementioned satellite of Earth. Again, Gary and I needed to trade no words to communicate what we were thinking: He's out here somewhere. Gary was doing his best Junior impression in earnest. He looked a little silly spinning around like he did, but I figured I shouldn't knock it if we got to the tower alive. "Back-to-back," he whispered. I pressed my back to his, watching behind us as we watchfully made our way to Sky Tower. Around the middle of the street, I realized a problem with this. "He has grenades," I stated clearly. As if on cue, we heard something smack and bounce against the pavement. An egg-shaped object came into view just feet from us. "Fuck-!" Gary yelled, pushing me further up the street toward Parkside. We both went sprawling to the ground. I thought we had been knocked off our feet; as it turned out, Gary's foot had caught on a break in the pavement, causing him to trip and take me down with him. That close to the grenade, we'd have been dead for sure. But then I realized it hadn't gone off. I looked back and saw the explosive sitting there in the middle of the road. A second went by, then two, then three. Nothing. "...It's a dud," I breathed out in relief, and chuckled. I patted his shoulder. "Gary, it's a dud-" Before I saw Spot, he was on top of us, kicking Gary hard in the side. Gary cried out and rolled over me, clutching his side in pain and dropping his gun. I tried to stand up, but Spot was yanking me up and holding me as he got ready to do something really nasty to me with a knife. I had grabbed a piece of concrete in my panic, however, which I smashed against his temple. Spot dropped me and held his hurting head, and I scrambled around him to Gary, helping my friend up and away, fast away. It wasn't fast enough. Spot seized the collar of my blouse and nearly pulled me off my feet. Gary turned and grappled with Spot's arms, then flung himself right at him. "Gary!!" I cried. Gary tackled Spot to the ground and began punching him in the side. Spot snorted in irritation and stabbed Gary in the lower back. Gary cried out as he sat up, then tried fruitlessly to fish the blade out of his back before punching Spot square in the jaw. "Rawwff!!" Spot snarled, producing another knife and trying to cut Gary somewhere else. Gary grappled with the hand again... ...But Spot... ...Was just... ...A little bit stronger. Bit by bit, the knife inched toward Gary, until it was sinking into his side. Gary cried out... ...Until I leapt to his side and bit Spot's wrist. Thank God I didn't have a sense of taste! "Rrrrrrrrgggg!!" Spot griped, then punched me right in the nose. It didn't hurt, but it was enough to send me tumbling backwards. With me off him, Spot shoved Gary off him and leapt to his feet. Undeterred, Gary reached around for his gun. Spot stomped Gary's wrist against the pavement, fracturing it in three places. Gary screamed and pulled his arm back, probably making the injury worse. Confident that Gary was no longer an immediate risk, Spot turned and stormed toward me, knife at the ready. He put his hand to my neck and was about to do something- -When a rock wanged against the back of his head. "P-put her down, you fucker!" Gary spat, holding his injured appendage under his uninjured appendage, but standing. He was bleeding through his jacket; despite the February chill in the air, he was sweating like a pig in a sauna. He pointed his gun at Spot. "I said... put her down." It wasn't his dominant hand, so he couldn't keep the gun steady. Spot peered over his shoulder at Gary with a considerate look, like he was taking a test and was thinking of the answers. "...Hurrr..." "Last chance." Gary cocked the gun. "...Y-you know what, fuck it, I'm just gonna shoot you-" Spot dropped me, but I saw him draw the knife before he did. "Gary, look out-!" I tried to yell loud enough. But in one fluid motion, Spot spun around and expertly threw the knife at Gary. Before Gary could pull the trigger, the knife sailed through the air and struck Gary directly between two of his knuckles. From a purely objective standpoint, it was an impressive shot: Gary's knuckles were less than an inch apart and several feet away. For Spot to hit such a small space with a throwing knife... well, he looked as surprised as I was. "Yaaaahhh!!" Spot yelled in victory. Gary screamed again and bent over in pain. He tried to remove the knife with the hand that had the shattered wrist, but it was no use controlling either of them. He gripped it in his teeth instead and pulled it out, then spat it to the ground. "I'm gonna beat your fucking head in!!" he screamed. "Run, Gary!!" I cried. "Get help!! Gary-!!" But it was too late: Gary was seeing so much red, he was blind to everything else. He charged straight at Spot without any plan or thought and took wild, lunging swipes at his enemy like an injured circus bear being bated by dogs. Spot dodged them, not only with ease, but also amusement. I got back onto my feet and looked for a way to push Gary away, to get him out of there, but I couldn't get a hold of him. He would have just ended up knocking me back to the ground. Spot removed yet another knife from a sheath on his arm. I saw it. Gary didn't. "Gary!!" I screamed, and jumped between them. Skidded between them, more like. Gary dodged around me to get to Spot, and Spot was having too much fun with Gary in that moment to care about me. Gary took a hard swipe at Spot and missed... ...And Spot stepped up right in front of Gary... ...And plunged the knife right into Gary's chest. And then he pulled it out, and stuck it back in. And he... uh, he... pulled it out again... and... stuck it back in. And out. ...A-and in. ... ...I'm afraid I kind of blacked out for a moment there, during the fight. The next thing I remember, I'm standing there looking at them. Spot is standing, looking at Gary. Gary is on the ground... ...A-and, uh... not moving. My voice fails me. There's a pool of blood around him. I want to scream. I try to scream. Nothing. Not a god-damn thing. Blood drips off Spot's knife. He clicks his teeth and turns his head just a few degrees... ...Toward me. Who else? And every little apparatus designed by evolution to cope with danger jostled for my attention at once. I felt a cold sweat, even without sweat glands. My muscles, now only artificial, tensed up. I wanted to save Gary... but who'd save me? There was a tension in Spot as he turned to face me. Play-time was over for him; this next part was business. He slowly lifted the bloody knife to his mouth and held it in his teeth... ...And he said, "Nurf." Like a rabbit at a racetrack, I turned and bolted. I ripped across the asphalt straight for Sky Tower, with the sounds of Spot -- snorting, huffing, coming for me -- right behind me, closing in. At the edge of the plaza, I feinted right, but Spot didn't buy it. He leapt atop a large planter built out of the concrete and loped through the patches of weeds and sick-looking trees as I banked around it. Spot leapt out in front of me... ...Where I met him with another rock. A piece of concrete had crumbled off the corner of the planter into my hand as I banked around it, and I made use of it by pelting Spot with it. It hit him square in the nose, causing him to stumble back and grip his face in pain while making an angry "Rag!" sound. Show me a person who thinks I should have stopped right there to "finish him off" after only denting him, and I'll show you someone who doesn't understand the physical capabilities of a 100-pound woman. I weaved around him before he could grab me and bounded up the stairs two, three, four at a time. The guard-bots were in sight. "Shoot!!" I screamed, and they took notice. "Shoot!! Shoot the bad guy with the guns with your guns shoot shoot shoot!!" Their eyes turned red. I could hear Spot right behind me, charging like an enraged bull. "Please take cover," one of the guard-bots said, lifting a shotgun to eye (/visual sensor) level. He didn't have to tell me twice; I dove to the floor and covered my head with my hands. I heard Spot hover over me for just a split-second, wondering why I chose that... (errrrggg) spot to give up. Then he looked up, gave a little wheeze, and jumped to the side as the bullets started flying. Roger sat up in the chair where he was resting. Actually, he had only been trying to rest, and not doing a very good job of it. He had managed to claim an old recliner in Alan's living room before more people arrived, but he found that it had a loose spring that dug into his back. Also, even though he had an escape plan in place, he wasn't confident of it, and he felt guilty for not taking anyone else but his own family along. "...The fuck is that?" he muttered. Over half of the first floor of Alan's townhouse was packed with frightened, angry citizens who had come to say whatever they were thinking, with even more lined up in a disorganized mob at the front door. Some had plans to deal with the crisis, most of them terrible, and the rest varying degrees of horrible. The ABCs were still quartered upstairs, and Alan had prohibited anyone from setting foot up there. The homeowner himself was lost somewhere in his own kitchen. Nobody was there to start a fight with him (thank goodness), but the room was hot and the atmosphere was thick with stress. "Hey, what the fuck was that?" Roger said louder, but it was no use. The din surrounding him was too great, and he wasn't sure what he had heard anyway. It had sounded like gunshots. But where had it come from? The north? The east? He considered that they already knew President Bellows had men in the ruins around them, and that he had no qualms with wiping out anyone he found in there. It wasn't a stretch to think that it could be a fight between the Secret Service and a few ruin dwellers. But then what? What could Parkside do? Run into the flooded, invaded ruins to rescue people they didn't know from an unknown number of enemies? Roger slouched back into his chair and felt a little sick. When he looked over his shoulder and saw one of Junior's men trying desperately to weave his way through the crowd, though, he knew something nearby was wrong. THWAM. Roll-roll-roll... Bump-WHUMP-budda-bump-bump-skip-WHAM. ...Roll-roll... Thump-bump-BAMBAMBAMBAM-WHAM. ... ...Roll-roll... Everything above me was bullets. As I lied pinned to the marble floor, the guard robots poured hot, flying lead into the air above me in a zero-tolerance, no-bullshit, absolutely-everything-must-die torrent of Sky Tower Security Enforcement. Although he hadn't been brandishing any of his own firearms outside, I wasn't sure whether Spot had a gun or not; it wasn't like I had taken a full inventory of his arsenal while I was swinging upside-down. Regardless, he must have been having fun, because in between shots, I could hear hoarse laughter coming from behind me. Leave it to a sub-verbal nutjob to enter a gunfight with a knife and have a great time. Oh, you think the fight was over? Let me finish my story. The shots from the desk got slower, and I cautiously reached out to try to pull myself across the floor toward it. Something grabbed my hand and pulled, startling me. When I looked up, I saw it was one of the guard-bots, firing in Spot's direction while dragging me across the floor with one hand. I wanted to kiss that cold-hearted, no-hearted bastard. Sure, he was just following his programming, and he had pointed his gun at me before, and he had never acknowledged me except to point his gun at me... ...You know what? He's still a bastard. I clambered behind the desk just as my rescuer's compatriot undid a pair of latches on a wooden box below the desk and produced a freaking missile launcher from within. "Holy shit!!" I cried. "Please stand clear," the guard-bot with the missile launcher said, pointing it in Spot's direction. "No don't stand clear stand right there!!" I yelled into the lobby behind me. With a hiss and a burst of smoke, a missile came whooshing out of the launcher and cut through the air toward the rear entrance. I turned off my audio sensors. Roger saw the flash and froze up. The noise in the room died down a little. "What was that?" someone asked. Roger's face jerked. He said nothing for a moment, then turned and said, "Ah-" "-Blow up all the houses on the west side!" someone (presumably) near Alan said, because he was met with a rumbling "No" from nearby. "It'll boost the wall-!" "No, no, no!! We give him-!!" "-He won't listen!!" "He wants everything!!" "We give him-!!" The floor erupted into a din of voices once again, and the noises from the east were quickly forgotten. Even Junior's man outside, who had not been able to get by the crowd at the door, was overwhelmed to the point where he turned and left. But Roger didn't forget. Even with my audio and visual sensors turned off and my back to a reinforced barrier, I sat curled up in a protective little fetal position. Soon after the missile went off, I turned my visual sensors back on. The lobby was thick with smoke and dust. The guard-bots stood tall and resolute, like they were pretty damn confident that the threat was neutralized, although they weren't about to simply call it a day and stand down. I turned my audio sensors back on, and was greeted with a loud crash of metal and glass. I poked my head around the edge of the desk. The rear entrance was completely totaled; where there had once been the rear facade of a proud office building on the edge of a concrete plaza, there was now a jagged, cavernous hole that heaved smoke and dripped glass shards. I was momentarily frozen in shock. If we weren't abandoning this place, I thought, this would piss The Mistress off so much! I slowly and shakily got to my feet. The guard-bots stood stark still as we three assessed the damage. After a few moments, I absently mentioned to my companions, "Oh, man... nothing could have survived that..." And, like, one second later, I heard it hit: a loud "clang" noise, and a distressed, rolling "twwwiiiiirrrrrrrp" from one of the guard-bots. The lights on its head flashed and it staggered forward. I looked at its head and saw a grenade, coated in duct tape, stuck to the back. Pin out, of course. The other guard-bot kind of twisted on its hips. Before I could turn fully, before I could get away, it shoved me hard out of the guard desk. The first guard-bot was letting out shrill beeping noises and struggling to twist its arms back to pull the grenade off. The second guard-bot reached to pull it off himself. I was on my back, then on my knees, then scrambling... I was running to safety instead of protecting my sensors. The guard desk behind me blew wide open, and my audio sensors let out a high- pitched squeal as they were assaulted by more noise than they were designed to handle. I was thrown forward by the shock wave, fully aware, through the stairwell door and against the staircase. Once I had my bearings (i.e., once I was sure I wasn't broken and/or on fire), I flipped myself over. The desk was a crater. Charred pieces of one guard-bot were everywhere, and the other was nowhere to be seen. ... ...I didn't like those guys, and I know they didn't have an opinion of me, or any opinion of anything anywhere... but at that moment, I wanted to scream. But I didn't, because through the haze of smoke and dust came a figure from the shadows of the front of Sky Tower. Before he got close, before he saw me, I shoved off the staircase, threw the door closed, and dropped the newly-installed cross bar across it. Within seconds, something slammed against the other side, again and again, in a furious attempt to get in. ...I have a strip of aluminum protecting me, I thought, reeling backwards. He has grenades. I started running. BAMWHAMBAMBADDABADDA- (-bend-snap! Tink-tink-tink-) WHAM-THUD-BOOM-BOOMBOOM-THUNKA-WHAM-BOOM-BOOM- -Tilt- -BAM-BABAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM- The stairs were shaking, but I didn't notice, because I was shaking. When I heard the door blast open three stories below me, I didn't stop or glance back. I didn't go any faster, either, because I was already running at top speed. My run became a mad scramble as I pulled myself up along the wall and the railing and the stairs themselves, nearly tripping over myself to get that little extra speed. I heard the sounds of footfalls and yapping below me as Spot closed in. He was the hound. I was the fox. I don't know what I was thinking, probably because I wasn't thinking. It was surging adrenaline, boosted by a little extra oxygen, mixed into pure fear. I did remember Gary, poor Gary. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I discovered I was screaming. I was on the eighth floor, and Spot was almost to the sixth. He was catching up. I remembered the locked door on the 10th floor. I had the keycard. Spot still had grenades. I got to it, and he was nearly on the ninth. It would've taken too long to open the door. He would get through the door, and I would have been trapped, throwing motionless robots at him, buying seconds until he got to me. It was my only plan, but it was a bad plan, and I passed the 10th floor before I could realize it was my only plan. I made it to the 12 floor when he came within view. Spot was one flight below me. He ran and weaved like a wolf pursuing a deer. He was so fast, it was like his feet didn't even need to touch the stairs to climb them. Then, as impossible as it sounds, he was ahead of me. With a quick series of leaps, he skipped up the railing and touched down on the landing ahead of me. He snatched the knife he had gripped between his teeth, and his tongue lolled with the glee of pursuit. I was frozen. I couldn't go up. I couldn't go down. I was about to die between the 12th and 13th floors. He grabbed me by the collar before I could get away, yanked me in close, and held the knife over his head- -WHAM!! With a sudden crash, Leviathan hit the landing of the 13th floor, just feet behind Spot. The assassin spun around and looked up at the large, dented robot that was planted head-down against the concrete landing. "Hurg?!" he cried. Leviathan's red eye turned to us. "Error detected," he stated, upside down. And when he brought out the miniguns, I felt only a moment of brief elation... ...Because then I realized they were pointed at me, too. "Leviath-" They started to spin up before I could even complete my thought. It was all Spot needed; he dropped me and shoved off the stairs on a mad dash back down. I flipped over and pulled myself forward just as they started to go off. ...And then everything just... ... The ability to hurl himself down the stairs in a pinch? That's a feature. The fearsome, blazing miniguns? That's a feature. The two features being used simultaneously? Bug! Big, ugly, buggy bug! The wall ahead of me turned into a dust storm as a barrage of bullets, streaking just inches above my head, hit it. I shrieked and scurried forward, falling onto the next landing down as Leviathan tilted back and continued his long tumble downward. Only this time, he was doing it with bullets! As I regained my footing and ran down, the stairwell became a chaotic rainstorm of flying leaden death. The best way to describe it is to say, imagine if Indiana Jones was being chased by the boulder while it was shooting at him, because two tons of hurtling rock isn't deadly enough on its own. Spot was well ahead of me (not that I was looking out for his safety). Three stories down, he snatched a grenade off his arm and pitched it over his shoulder. I skipped around it, nearly tripping down the stairs in the process, and leapt off the next step to the landing below as the grenade went off. As you can probably guess by now, it didn't do too much damage to Leviathan. Instead, it caused him to temporarily turn from a hurtling ball of bullet death into a flying, hurtling ball of bullet death. With a mighty lift-off, he was blasted into the air, where he ricocheted off the staircase above. I flung myself off the landing just before he came crashing down onto it like a rogue wrecking ball loosed from the cable that normally held it aloft. I ran faster. I don't know how, I just did. I didn't stop on the 10th floor, or the 9th floor, or the 8th floor. I didn't have time. I kept running. Endless rivers of bullets poured into the air behind me, above me, below me, nearly through me on more occasions than I want to count. A wave of bullets struck the wall ahead of me, and I ducked as it passed over me like water from a fire hose. I was running and running. I saw Spot duck out of the door into the lobby, and Leviathan was tumbling down just feet behind me. I banked the second landing from the bottom, leapt and landed on my feet, then jumped out of the door into the lobby just as the death-dealing robot hit the bottom behind me... ...And got wedged into the doorframe, rendering him, and his guns, useless. On the plus side, I found the un-destroyed guard-bot by the door, sparking but still semi-functional. He couldn't pick up a gun, or fight or anything- (-Wait, how is that the plus side?) ... ...Sorry, I got distracted there for a second. Spot was around the corner from the elevators, wheezing but undamaged. He tilted his head around, got a shocked look at the seemingly indestructible Leviathan, and cautiously came out from behind cover. My artificial muscles had been put through the wringer; I could barely stand up, much less walk. There was a gun 20 feet from me, but I'd like to reiterate the "barely walk" thing (along with the fact that, as a 100-pound woman, I'd probably just shatter my wrists with it). The guard desk, and the cover it offered, was gone. I looked at Leviathan. He twisted his wheeled legs uselessly. I looked at Spot. He looked at me. "...So, that... happened," I said. He ground his teeth, gripped his knife, and walked toward me. And a gunshot rang out. A bullet clipped Spot in the shoulder. He looked at the blood, shocked, and turned to his newest attacker. Thank the Lord, it was Gary! Propped against the gaping maw of the rear entrance and barely standing up himself, Gary managed to get a new clip into the magazine of his gun. "Die, you-" Gary coughed up a great gob of blood before he could complete his thought, so he settled on firing at Spot instead. The assassin growled in frustration, sheathed his knife, and weaved his way out of the lobby as Gary let loose with his own small barrage of bullets. And just like that, Spot was gone. But that's not where this scene ends, true believer. Oh, no. Gary groaned and sank to the ground, and I found the energy to walk again. "Gary!! Oh, no!!" I ran to his side and gripped him. He cried out in pain, and I let go. "Oh, God!! Oh, God!!" Blood was dribbling out of his mouth and chest. A thick trail of the stuff led back to the road where he had been stabbed. "Ugh I don' feel good...," he muttered, cotton-mouthed, without enough energy to enunciate. "Oh God, Gary!! I'm going to get help!!" Like hell I'm going to get help, I thought. He'll be dead by the time I get back here! "Oh God, Gary, I gotta-!! No, but-!!" He was drifting off; I was losing him. "Uhhhhhh..." I remembered the smart phone. I also remembered there was no more 9-1-1 after dialing the first 1. The Mistress was out of range. There was nobody. Nobody can help, I thought. I can't even get to The Mistress' emergency medical kits up on the 70th floor. And I got the horrible feeling that I was going to watch this kid die, right there. It hadn't struck me the first time I saw it happen. Now, without the immediate threat of my own death, it hit me hard. I was going to watch Alan's son die. I couldn't go anywhere or call anybody- -Really, I was on a roll. Well, not really. I was on something similar to a roll, though. A half-roll? Fear makes for a great motivator. I activated the radio scanner app on my smart phone. Once it found the right frequency, I pushed the call button. A minute later and across town, Roger was perched in a strange place: between an inexplicable feeling of unease and a perfectly explicable feeling of falling asleep. Maybe his growing desire to shut his eyes and keep them that way wasn't that explicable: the atmosphere in Alan's house had only calmed a little, for just a minute or two, before something caused the fear in the room to surge again. Emotions were high, but that was nothing too new. Every body was moving, every voice was loud. In that environment, the very idea of sleep was itself a dream. Regardless, Roger's eyes grew heavy a few times. However, he always snapped awake. Something felt wrong. Something was off. He uncrossed his legs, then re-crossed them the opposite way. He thought that maybe he needed a blanket. There were enough warm bodies in the room to reproduce the heat of a large fire, though, so that wasn't it. He felt uneasy. Several times, he craned his neck toward the window and looked outside. The crowd was still there. Junior and most of his men were there, too. Some of his men weren't, though. Roger wondered where they were. He recognized Nancy before he could see her face. He could recognize that stiff walk, too: something was wrong. She was outside, behind the crowd, and walking toward Alan's house swiftly. Her eyes were wide, and his lips thin and drawn-out. She carried something in her both hands, wrapped in a dark blue dish towel. She stopped at the edge of the crowd and stood on her tip-toes, looking for a way through, but she could not find one. "Fuck it," Roger grunted, then stood up. "Move, god-dammit!!" he barked at the nearest person to him, shoving the taller man aside without any politeness. Many people cried out in protest as he pushed, elbowed, and shoved his way through the crowd in the opposite direction it was flowing (toward Alan in his kitchen, I presume) and out the front door. "Move!! Fuck you, move!! No, fuck you!! Fuck you!!" He pushed away someone's face. "Move!! Move it, move!!" Roger grunted and wrestled and almost came to blows once or twice, but managed to get out of the house and down to the street, where the crowd was thinner. He squeezed between two of his neighbors and touched his wife's shoulder. "Baby, what's wrong?" he said. "...I didn't know what to do," Nancy replied. She looked down at the towel in her hands, and Roger saw that it was actually two towels. Underneath them, he caught a glimpse of his black plastic walkie-talkie. "She called-" Roger nodded, then put his hand to her back and gently guided her away from the crowd. "-Okay, just walk," he muttered, his head low. "Don't worry, don't make a scene. Just walk away." "But-" Roger shook his head. "-Don't say anything. We're just walking. We're just goin' home, is all." He saw one of Junior's men give him a funny look. He returned the look with a half-grin and a curt nod, and he continued to walk. "Roger-" "Don't stop here." Nancy didn't stop. Once they were out of range of earshot of anyone in the crowd, however, she did. Roger shuddered to a stop. "Eh! Nancy..." He paused and rubbed his mouth. "Baby, I know you don't want to go, but-" "-No! Roger! She said something!" "She-" "The... girl!" Nancy looked flustered. "The... strange girl!" "I swear, baby, she's harmless-" "-She said it was Alan's son!" Roger froze. "Wh-" Nancy huffed, then shoved the wrapped walkie-talkie into Roger's hands. He looked at her, puzzled, then switched it on. "Roger!! Roger, come in!!" I cried into my smart phone. The woman who had answered his walkie-talkie with one-word replies had left me high and dry. "Roger!!" Gary's breathing was ragged. I had tried to close the wounds with his own jacket, but there were too many of them, and his clothes were already soaked through with blood, with ever more coming out. My skinny jeans made a piss-poor bandage, and I was ready to rip off my own blouse and wrap it around his chest, even though it couldn't do much more than the tee. "For Christ's sake, somebody answer already!!" "Natsuko!" Roger replied. "Roger!! Gary's been stabbed!!" I blurted before he could ask. "What?!" "Gary's been stabbed!! He's bleeding out!!" "Wait... hold on, tell m-" "-I can't wait!! Gary's bleeding out on the floor of the lobby of Sky Tower!! You have to get out here and get him to a doctor, now!!" There was a moment of silence. "I thought-" "-Damn it, Roger, get out here!!" Roger continued: "I thought you were calling to tell me the plan was ready." "It's not!! Get out here!!" Another moment of silence. Terrible silence. "Roger!!" "...I can't... I mean, I can't just... go... there-" "Get out here now, Roger!!" Pause. "Roger!!" I shrieked. "...They'll ask how I knew." "This is Alan's son!! Alan's son!! He's going to die!!" Pause. Such a terrible pause. I was covered in blood. I was about to collapse. Everything. Just... everything. "...Roger!" I begged. ... ... ... ...The silence... ...I don't even know how to describe it. It was... ineffable. That's the only word I can think of: a word for something that's beyond words. The way I understand it, though, it's supposed to be something good: God; Love; Infinity. ...This was... ... ...Actually, now that I think about it, there is a perfectly good word for it. Oblivion. Nothing. A nothing; a thing that is not a thing. Something forgotten, and the memory of it being forgotten being forgotten. Complete annihilation. Extinction. Death beyond death. A void. Emptiness. I could feel it all around me, encroaching like a collapsing lung. It had swallowed the world, and it was ready to take me and Gary. All that we had was that little smart phone. That was it, and a person on the other end who I wasn't even sure was there anymore. The time was endless. Seconds might as well have been centuries. I've felt centuries. This felt the same. Unending oblivion. Or... just oblivion. It doesn't need to be unending; that would be redundant. Nothing. "Go," Nancy said. The woman's an angel. "...What?" Roger replied. "Go," she said. An honest-to-goodness angel. Someone's finger was on the button of the walkie-talkie. I heard it. "Help them." "Nancy-" "-Go!" Pause. "...Hold on," Roger said into his device. Within a couple minutes, a figure came jogging into the lobby from the darkness, with the disconsolately low and few tiki torches of Parkside to his back. I was momentarily tense, half-expecting it to be Spot, back to finish the job. When he got close enough, however, I could see it was Roger. He paused just inside the front door of the lobby, looked around, then approached at a faster pace. "...Jesus," he breathed, taking in the destruction. "I can't get him to wake up!!" I cried, cradling the boy. Roger looked down at Gary. His breath caught in his throat. "He's not moving!!" I shook Gary, but he didn't resist me or complain. There was no sign of life, aside from very, very shallow breathing. "...Oh, shit. Okay. Get off him-" Roger ducked down, pulled Gary away from me, then lifted him in his arms. "Should we be moving him?!" I warbled. "No time!!" Gary was just a little too big to be carried, and Roger was obviously struggling, but he didn't complain. "C'mon!!" he grunted. I obediently followed without thinking, and I trailed behind him through the dark. We didn't talk. We just moved. When we were nearly there, I whispered, "Give me your gun!!" "Whah?!" he panted. "He's still out here!!" "Whuh-he's- ?!" "The guy who did this!! The guy!!" "Uhhh!!" In our rush, he hadn't thought to ask what happened, and I hadn't thought to tell him. "...I thought I heard shooting?" he uttered, struggling to hold the unconscious, blood-soaked Gary. "...The hell?" I heard in the near distance, then running. Within seconds, a man with an assault rifle ran up to us. With one hand, he slung the rifle over his shoulder, and with the other, supported Gary's head. "Get him to town," he ordered, then turned and shouted, "Wayne!! Get the doc!! Hurry!!" A shadowed figure in the further distance ran off, and two shadowed figures ran toward us, then three more, then several more. By the time we reached the first tiki torch, Roger, Gary and I were surrounded by a small mob of concerned Parkside citizens and gawkers. The small mob got bigger, and it quickly became an impediment and a distraction. In a moment when I wasn't looking, when I wasn't paying attention to him, Roger slipped away from me. I got a glimpse of him through the still-growing crowd -- he was clearly trying to distance himself from me. I couldn't be angry at him, though. He was looking for someone to treat the boy before his life leaked out of him, and that was the whole reason I asked him to help me in the first place. By the time I realized I was all alone, however, and I didn't have the protection of a sniper, it was already too late. The mob had only gotten larger and had begun to transform. More than half of them were surrounding Roger and staring at Gary, and their mood was marked by concern and shock. The other, smaller group... they were all about me. "What the fuck're you doing here, demon-whore?!" someone snarled into my face, pushing me back hard with the palm of his hand. I recognized him as the man who had harassed me the day before, when I tried to return the ABCs to Alan -- Mortimer, I think. That's what Junior had called him. Even with Roger out of sight, I looked in his direction for help. He was gone, though, and I was surrounded by townspeople who were becoming increasingly hostile. "Stupid bitch!" "Get the fuck out of here!" "Fucking demon whore!!" I was shoved forwards into the arms of Mortimer, who shoved me back again even harder than before. For a split-second through the crowd, I could see Roger, and he could see me. With his arms full of Gary, he couldn't do anything, regardless of his willingness. ...And I think that's when someone punched me in the face. I don't know what direction it came from or who did it, but I felt a heavy pressure against my cheek, and a red light flashed in my optical sensors to indicate that Something Bad Happened. I hit the ground hard, my ass and hips clattering against the broken pavement. The mob around me jeered and snarled and spat and threatened me and closed in. I was trapped. "-W-wait," I sputtered, holding up one hand, "I-" My wig was ripped off the back of my head, then tossed away with a disgusted gag. "Shit!! Bitch's bald!!" I tried to use their momentary surprise to crawl away, but it was no use -- someone grabbed my collar and yanked me onto my back. "Where you goin', you ugly-" Someone kicked me in the side. There was shouting. "Stop!!" I cried, but it was lost in a sea of profanity and spittle. Another kick, then another. They were jostling each other, kicking me in the side, stomping me. I held up my arms and rolled on the ground to try to avoid them, but there were too many of them. Lights were going off in my optical sensors, warning me of damage everywhere. The "rib cage" surrounding my power supply, my back, my shoulders, my arms, my head. I was screaming, screaming, screaming for them to stop, but my screams were drowned out by theirs. The kicks and stomps got faster, harder. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't defend myself. Mortimer was standing over me, and I looked up at the underside of his thick boot, and it was right over my head, and- -A pair of legs, and a snarl. I saw a blur, and Mortimer wasn't there anymore. Junior was. Surprised? I sure as hell was. It was the second time, sure, but... still. Junior, of all people. He spun and delivered a punch into the face of a random person in the mob. The rest of them, the cowards they were (you heard me; you don't need to be a tough guy to pick on an unarmed 100-pound girl), quickly backed off. Junior spun back and leapt on top of Mortimer, twisting his arm. "You stupid mother-fucker!!" Junior snarled, foaming at the corners of his mouth. "Aaaaahhh!!" Mortimer screamed. "Get off me!! Get the fuck-!!" "Alan will kill you for this, you stupid piece of shit!!" "Wha-?!" Junior twisted Mortimer's arm further, near the point of breaking. Mortimer screamed. Junior jabbed a finger backwards, toward me. "She brings Gary back to Parkside, you give her shit, Gary steps in, and you stab him in the chest?!" He shoved Mortimer's head against the ground. "You are dead!! You are fucking dead!!" I hear shouting. Everything is shouting. The crowd around Gary and Roger is watching Junior and Mortimer and shouting. More people are coming and shouting. People are running. Junior's guys are there and they're running and shouting. A man in a white coat speckled with blood -- the town doctor -- is pushing his way through the crowd, and he's shouting at his two nurses behind him, and they're shouting, and someone runs somewhere, and other people are running, and someone tries to pull Junior off Mortimer, but now Junior has a handgun, and where did he get the handgun, I have no idea where he got it from but he has it, and he's shouting at them, and they shout back that Mortimer didn't do anything, and now Junior has the handgun pointed at Mortimer's head and he's saying he's dead, he's dead, he killed Gary Carson and he's dead- -And there's a whistle, louder than a steam locomotive, that pierces the chaos. Even my audio sensors ring and tell me I shouldn't be listening to it. I was still on the ground. Maybe I was damaged. Probably because it was safe (sort of). When I looked up, there was Alan. His face was white. For a second, he looked like he had forgotten his fingers were in his mouth. Total shock, a slight wavering tremor in his posture, then- "-Ohgod-," he gagged, then ran over to Roger, plowing through the crowd like they weren't there. He let out this choked noise that... ... ...Uh, I-I don't want to describe it. Alan was standing over there, his shoulders hunched. He was shaking. "He's breathing," the doctor whispers. Alan looks at him. I can't see Alan's face. "We need to take him-" "-Yeh!" Alan said automatically. He helped Roger hand Gary off to two burly guys, who quickly carried the boy to wherever the doctor was taking him. In the process of handing Gary over, Roger's jacket was jostled. He noticed things were shifting around within, but before he could do anything about it, something fell out of one of his pockets and landed on the hard ground. His walkie-talkie. "Ub!!" Roger sputtered, and he made a move to grab it, but it was too late. With one fluid motion, Alan plucked it off the ground and looked at it. And he looked at Roger. And he looked at me. To his credit, he didn't look mad. Just confused. Very, very confused. Maybe it was because all other emotions had been overwhelmed by the powerhouse triad of fatigue, horror, and despair. Maybe because he knew he didn't know what was going on, and he was withholding judgment because two of his friends were involved. Maybe both. Maybe neither. "...What...," he wheezed, his breath coming out in labored gasps. "What's..." The crowd was rumbling. This place is a powder keg, I thought. I got to my feet as quickly as I could and tried to get as close to Alan as I could. "Natsuko, please!" Alan breathed out, louder that time. There were too many people there, and I couldn't quite reach him. I was worried about setting something off, but... "It was Bellows," I said. There were gasps and cries around me. "He sent an assassin after me. Gary tried to..." I trailed off. "Oh, bull!" I clearly heard behind me from someone who refused to identify himself. Everyone else stood with bated breath or a nervous chatter. Alan struggled with words. I guessed he was trying to ask something that started with the letters W-H. Who? Where? Where. "It was in and around Mariel's, and Sky Tower. Gary chased him off." This didn't make Alan feel any better, and why would it? "I-I-... I don't know. God, Alan, I don't know. I'm sorry. Awww shit, I'm sorry!!" Alan was reeling. He looked at the ground, then something in the distance, or maybe nothing at all, then up at someone, Junior, who got off Mortimer's back, then at me... ...Then at the walkie-talkie in his hand, which he had forgotten was there. He looked to me for explanation, and I couldn't think of a damn thing to say. Rule 47: The witches are required to lend assistance to immediate family members of other witches, or to immediate family members of those who work for the witches, if said family members are in imminent danger, and if said assistance does not place the family members in further danger. Right then and there, my Said Assistance couldn't do jack shit. Maybe Alan read my mind. Maybe he simply remembered. He turned and looked at Roger. "Ahhh...," Roger gaped. "Roger, what... what is this," Alan said in almost a whisper. Roger looked sickly. His mouth hanging open, he rubbed his hands together slowly. He could barely lift his head high enough to look at the device. "...Ahhh. That. Would be. A..." He chewed his lips a little. His chin fell. "A walkie-talkie." "...Wh?" Alan breathed. "A... walkie-talkie. It. Lets people. Talk. To each other." Roger was scratching the back of his hand hard. "Over long distances." Alan looked at me. I said nothing. Roger looked up and saw Alan looking at me, and a wave of guilt passed over him. "She didn't know. She only found out last night." Alan turned back to Roger, lost in a haze of confusion. He probably felt betrayed, even if he didn't know exactly how he had been betrayed. "What?!" Roger closed his eyes and spoke slowly. "...Back... when I was 17, I... applied..." He opened his eyes and looked Alan directly in the face. "To the Whitecoats. They work... for the Order of the Sisters of Galileo." Alan's jaw softly fell open. "They didn't take me. Too dumb." He gave a thin, brief little self-deprecating grin which faded as fast as it appeared, then looked back down. The crowd was dead silent. I didn't think they knew about the Sisters of Galileo. They didn't have to -- the walkie-talkie was damning enough on its own. Alan, reeling from worry and shock, looked like he couldn't think of what to say as he stared at the hand-held machine. Again, however, he didn't look mad. "Roger, I don't..." He paused. "I don't know what, what does this, I mean..." "I'm leaving," Roger said flatly. Alan said nothing. "I can't stay." Pause. "No, that's not right... it's Nancy and the kids. They can't stay here. I have a way out." He raised a hand and pointed at me. "I'm taking it." Alan looked at me wide-eyed, then spun back to Roger. "You can't be serious!" he said in total disbelief. "You didn't think she was gonna stay, did you?" "No, I mean... the Metal Mistress?! Her?!" Roger paused, then nodded. "Roger!" Alan blurted. "I can make her. She has to save us." Alan's shoulders fell, and the walkie-talkie nearly dropped from his hands. Roger grimaced. "Jesus, Alan! If I could force her to take the whole town, I would! It's just..." Roger sputtered. "...I-I've got connections. To the order, I mean. They've got this rule. It says they gotta save me. But I can help! I got this-this-this drug-uh, stuff, up in my room, it stops infe-" And that's when Mortimer broke his jaw. I hadn't noticed him moving around the crowd, and I suspect few others had, either. In a flash, he popped out from between two people and threw a punch that landed directly in Roger's face. I heard the crack, and I saw the sickening way Roger's jaw contorted. His blood sprinkled the ground before he hit it. ...I froze up. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I did. Where was the boldness I used to confront the K-H-E creeps? (...Oh, yeah, Gary forced me to play my hand in that. Never mind... but still.) Nancy screamed and ran to her husband while Alan held Mortimer back. Within seconds, Junior was at his side, throwing Mortimer off him. "I am fucking serious, Mortimer!! I will fuck you up!!" "Is this what you're doing now, Carson?!" Mortimer shouted, pointing at Roger, who was just then recovering consciousness. "You're taking their side?!" "There are no sides here, Mortimer!!" "There's her!!" Mortimer pointed at me. "And the witch bitch!!" He pointed at Sky Tower. "And them," he pointed at the Timses, "and now you!! All you shitheads are what's wrong with this town!!" "Oh you can't be serious!!" Alan roared. "You, too?!" Junior grated his teeth and pointed down at Roger behind him. "You play poker with him every Wednesday night, you stupid fucker!!" "And now you," Mortimer said, turning to Junior. "The father worked hard to save you, Junior. He's barely in the ground, and you're already stabbing him in the back." Junior was livid. "I would never-!!" "-Save it, fucker!!