Chapter 23

Sasha.

Rolling Fuck trundled forward, crunching its way over the Texas plains and leaving a carpet of flattened grass and broken trees in its wake. And Sasha Marion, situated in a little purple building atop one of the city’s tallest spires, couldn’t quite believe her eyes. In spite of its many wheels the city didn’t look like the kind of thing that should be able to move. It was as if the Empire State Building had taken up jogging.

Sasha had only really talked to Donald Farris and Manny since the war council had concluded. She’d wanted to go up to the bar with Manny and Roland, since they were the only people here she even sort of knew. But their conversation had seemed a private sort of thing. At first she’d thought that her hosts had made an oversight in leaving her unwatched. Surely they wouldn’t let someone who’d been their enemy just a few days ago wander freely through their home? But as the hours went by it became clear that’s exactly what they’d done.

So Sasha explored. It had been exhilarating, actually. Every inch of the city was different and strange and new to her. Across the gantries there were numerous market stalls with fresh meat and produce. At first she recognized all the foods. But the higher and further she went, the stranger everything seemed. The meat went from beef and chicken to alligator and zebra and mammoth and, eventually, something Sasha thought might be from an actual dinosaur. She was sure it was all lab grown. And the produce was certainly gene-modified. At one point she came across a kiosk filled with fruit that had been tweaked to take the shape of gigantic, erect penises. There were penis watermelons, penis oranges, penis apples, and even bags of tiny penis-shaped grapes.

She knew she should have felt disgusted. Two weeks ago, Sasha would have been horrified. But somehow she just…wasn’t. She felt a vague sense of unease, awkwardness at the sight of so many genitals. But after all she’d seen in the Heavenly Kingdom, it didn’t exactly horrify her either. How could it?

The Fondleboats were another matter. The sight and the strange musky sweet smell that wafted out the grinding, groping crowd inside it made her queasy. This is exactly as depraved as Pastor Mike said it would be, she thought. But she also thought, is this really worse than all that violence and death? Who are they hurting?

The Lord, said a shrill, small voice in the back of her mind.

Why would God hate this, and not the hanging of good people? Sasha wondered. Why would this make Him angry but not the butchery inside that factory?

You know what the Bible says, Sasha. There was no getting around that. The scriptures were clear.

Well, maybe they’re wrong then. Maybe they’ve always been wrong. Or maybe I read them wrong. Maybe they didn’t say what I thought they said.

It was odd how freeing that thought was.

She made her way past a Fondleboat and, for no reason beyond curiosity and the desire to stretch her muscles, Sasha started to climb upwards. The gantrys that made up the bulk of Rolling Fuck’s walking space were fairly easy for a human to traverse. They had high walls, so even the very drunk were unlikely to fall, and in spite of the city’s clutter and bustle, its designers had done a good job of making two clear lanes for foot traffic. But the gantrys only gave Sasha access to a handful of the strange, glittering buildings that dotted the city’s rolling superstructure.

So she left them, and she climbed up.

It was not an easy climb. Here and there she found small sections of ladder or knotted rope to ease her passage. For the most part, though, she climbed hand over hand up the criss-crossed metal girders. She passed several buildings filled with people, drinking and partying. Sasha didn’t stop to talk. The climb was hard but at least it allowed her to avoid awkward conversation with whatever manner of creatures lived in this place.

By the time she reached the top of the spindle, Sasha’s body was drenched in sweat and her arms were too sore to pull her up one more foot. She was grateful to whoever had decided to cap this spindle with a tiny purple shack, and she was even more grateful that the shack appeared unoccupied. Sasha pulled herself inside and collapsed on the floor. For a while, it was all she could do to regain her breath.

She wondered, in a vague sort of way, if she’d just broken into someone’s home. Nobody had warned her that there would be certain places she couldn’t travel here. But no one had told her much of anything at all after she’d arrived. Sasha took stock of her surroundings. The interior of the room was plush. The walls were carpeted in thick, cushiony velvet. The floor below her seemed to be some sort of black shag. There was a framed picture on one wall. Sasha didn’t recognize the artist, but it looked like a cross-section drawing of a handgun with fetuses as the bullets. The sight of it made her feel a bit sick, but there was also something about the art that drew her eyes.

The center of the room was a low, flat table that appeared to be made entirely out of mirrored glass. There was a pile of white powder on the center of the table along with a strange rectangular piece of green paper. Sasha picked up the paper and stared at it. It took her a moment to realize what it was.

“Money,” said a voice from behind her. “Or, it used to be. Once upon a time.”

Sasha froze. Stiffened. She turned around, not sure what to expect but with an apology already spilling out of her mouth.

“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t–”

Something in the man’s smile, and the relaxed slump of his shoulders made her stop talking. He stood in the doorway of the little building, just a few feet in front of her. She had no idea how he could have climbed up and in there without her hearing him. She didn’t remember the man’s name, but she recognized him from the war council. Those writhing snake tattoos identified him as clearly as a nametag.

“I’m…” she trailed off. He smiled at her. There was something about his eyes that seemed off, wrong. She couldn’t place it. His pupils were somehow different than they should have been. When he spoke, though, his voice was warm and friendly.

“You are Sasha Marion. The girl who was brave enough to flee her home and family for the Heavenly Kingdom, and then brave enough to leave it when she realized what it truly was.” His head dipped down into a slight bow. “I’m Jim Shannon. It’s an honor to meet you, Miss Marion.”

Jim squatted down on his haunches and dropped his arms in between his legs. It was a casual motion, but he executed it with almost mechanical precision. There was something to his movements that spoke of terrible potential energy, kinetic force just waiting to be unleashed. Sasha found that almost as unsettling as the sight of his bare penis.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, because what else could she say?

Jim’s smile didn’t change, but his eyes did. His pupils contracted and then changed shape, from a circle to a spiraling rounded star.

“No, it’s not,” he said. “Let’s not lie to each other, eh Sasha? I’m weird. I move wrong. My eyes,” as he spoke his star-pupils started to spin in a hypnotic spiral, “are wrong. They don’t look human. I can hear your heart-beat elevate as we speak. I can smell cortisol in your brain and elevated levels of blood glucose. I can see in your eyes that me saying this has made you even more nervous.”

“Yes,” she admitted, “yes, you’re right. You scare me.”

“That’s perfectly normal, Miss Marion. It is not an act of weakness to admit fear. Quite the opposite. You feel better now, don’t you?”

She actually did. There was a queer sort of relief in admitting her fear and discomfort in this man-thing’s presence.

“I do feel better,” she said. “Why is that?”

“Admitting fear is the first step to conquering it. You don’t strike me as someone who wants to live in fear, Miss Marion. You do strike me as someone who seeks control. Strength. Power over your own life.”

“I…” she sputtered, “I don’t know. A week ago I’d have told you God was in control of my life.” Sasha looked down at her lap, suddenly embarrassed. “It wasn’t very long ago but it feels like a lifetime. It was so peaceful, just handing over control.”

Jim nodded and leaned his head forward a few inches.

“That didn’t end well though, did it?”

Sasha shook her head.

“You traveled to the Heavenly Kingdom with a certain set of beliefs about the universe. Those beliefs met reality. Reality broke them into little pieces. There’s no shame in that. It happens to all of us. Now you’re a bit older and a few bits wiser.”

She looked up at him. His smile seemed somehow softer now. She felt like opening up, confiding in this stranger. Sasha wondered if that was another aspect of his modifications, some alteration of his body chemistry and physical appearance that allowed him to seem more familiar and trustworthy to her. She opened up anyway.

“I just don’t know what to do now. I guess I could go home but I don’t think I was wrong in leaving home. I don’t want a life in the American Federation. I know that. I just…”

“You don’t know what’s right,” Jim finished, in a voice that was gentler than she would of guessed he was capable of sounding.

She nodded as she struggled for her next words.

“I know I can’t go back. I don’t know where to go next. I don’t have any money, or really any useful skills, so I can’t go to California or Cascadia. I doubt this place will take me,” she gestured down at the rolling city below them, “and even if they would, I don’t really feel comfortable here either.”

“Mmmh,” Jim nodded, and leaned back. “Perhaps,” he said, “you should worry less about where you want to end up and more about what you want to end up doing.”

“I don’t have any options,” Sasha said, fighting down a rising panic that tickled the back of her throat. “I didn’t even finish high school. I’ve spent the last two years preparing to join the Kingdom. I don’t know how to do anything useful.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jim said in a firm voice. “You lied well enough to hide your intention from your parents and AmFed law enforcement. You did that for years.”

Sasha wanted to argue that she hadn’t lied, not according to Pastor Mike’s definition of the word. But she stayed silent while he spoke.

“You escaped from one of the most fortified borders in the world,” Jim continued, “and you did useful work in a medical facility. Then you helped facilitate the escape of several prisoners from a Kingdom jail. You functioned effectively in a firefight and killed a trained soldier in hand-to-hand combat. Then you killed another man and stole a vehicle to aid your comrades in an escape. Am I missing anything?”

Sasha looked down again. She didn’t speak. She felt bad about taking praise for murder, especially for Darryl’s murder. She did, however, feel a tiny swell of pride at Jim’s words. It was immediately accompanied by a flood of guilt.

“Killing is not something to be proud of,” she said.

“Oh, I disagree,” Jim chuckled. “Killing is a highly technical skill. And you’ve proven yourself a talented amateur. With some training, and a spot of chrome, you could really be something…” He trailed off. Sasha was quiet for a moment. She looked into Jim’s eyes and tried to read something in them. That proved a fool’s errand. There was nothing in those orbs but cool confidence, and even that might be false. What did any gesture or look mean from a man who could control every aspect of his body, right down to his pupils?

“I don’t want to get better at killing,” she told him. “I don’t want to fill my body with unnatural…things. Just thinking about it makes me feel ill.”

“And yet,” Jim said.

“What do you mean, ‘And yet’?” she asked.

”And yet, that thought intrigues you too. It’s no use hiding it. I can taste deceit.”

Sasha shuddered a little at that. But she couldn’t deny that he was right. As much as the idea repulsed her, she’d spent too much time powerless to not crave power.

“I’m not looking to push you into anything, Sasha. But I would like to provide you with a unique opportunity.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He smiled, plopped down on his butt and swung his legs in to sit cross-legged on the shag carpet. He draped one elbow over his thigh, a casual motion that also served to let him cover his groin from view without making a big deal about it. Sasha appreciated that.

Jim stuck a finger into the thick black fibers of the carpet and started tugging at them. It was an idle, nervous gesture, and Sasha found it oddly endearing. Part of her suspected that had been his goal.

“I mean that I would be willing to take you on as a project.”

“A ‘project’?”

He nodded. “My organization has access to skilled surgeons, ­military-grade augmetics, and vat-grown organs. I’ll front the bill. And I’ll train you. And in return, you’ll work for me.”

“Forever?” she asked. Jim laughed. She felt a little annoyed by that, and it must have shown on her face because he stopped.

“Sorry,” he said. “It’s just, that’d be debt-slavery. You must not know this, but I helped kill the last country that lived on this land to end that sort of thing.”

“So how much time would I owe you?” Sasha asked.

“Five years,” he said.

Sasha’s heart trembled with excitement at the offer. When she thought about the way the adrenaline had coursed through her during the fight in the clinic, she wanted to say yes. But when she thought about Darryl bleeding out next to his car, the shame inside her overwhelmed everything else. Sasha knew she couldn’t handle more weights like that on her conscience.

“I don’t want to kill people,” she said in a tiny voice. Shame dripped from every syllable.

“That’s fine,” Jim said, his grin widening. “We always need medics, you’ve shown an aptitude for that already. I have a feeling you’ll take well to combat engineering. There’s plenty for you to do without pulling a trigger.”

“If I work for you,” Sasha said, “I have a feeling I won’t be able to avoid pulling triggers.”

“Not entirely,” Jim shrugged, “but any shooting you’d do would be in immediate self-defense. And you’d have the right to refuse any missions that violate your moral code. I know that’s important to you.”

The way he said that last bit set the hackles on her neck arise.

“Is it not important to you?” she asked. “Morality, I mean.”

He swung his hands out to the side, palms up, in a vaguely ­Buddha-like pose.

“When I was a young man, not much older than y’self, I knew a lot of gallant men who claimed to live by codes of honor. Such things were fashionable in the warrior culture of a dying empire. None of those codes stopped the men I knew from serving that great beast we called a state. When you see enough good, moral men enable war crimes, you stop seeing value in the term ‘morality.’”

“So what matters to you?” Sasha asked. “What do you believe in?”

“Change, Miss Marion.” He smiled, revealing rows of pearly white teeth. The snake tattoos on his chest and shoulders writhed in excitement. “I believe in change. I grew up in a time when the climate changed, and my home became a deadly broiler. Politics changed, and democracy became a dictatorship of capital. For a time, I believed in the promises of change handed out by progressive politicians and centerfold revolutionaries. But every one of them was either co-opted by the system, or killed by it.”

He shrugged, and cast his eyes down to the carpet. For a moment, just a moment, his mask slipped. Sasha saw a deep yawning pit of despair in the tight lines at the edge of his lips and the subtle twitch of muscles below his left eye. It passed, and a black velvet smile took its place.

“Then I met a man who showed me the way. Nothing new could grow on this continent until the weeds of the old were pulled out by the root and tossed into the compost pile of history. So, he said, forget the old debates about what system should replace capitalism. Kill the state, and the seeds of a thousand new worlds will sprout on its corpse. You’ve seen two of those sprouts already.”

Sasha shook her head, “If you’re referring to the Heavenly Kingdom…it’s a nightmare. The old U.S. can’t have been worse than that.”

Jim shrugged. “Depends on your perspective, I suppose. Tell me, Sasha, you left the AmFed, the old U.S.A.’s most direct successor state. Why was that?”

“Because it’s a soulless pit,” she said, the words almost leaping from her throat. Jim smiled at that.

“This isn’t though, is it?” he gestured out at the City of Wheels below them.

“No…” Sasha said. Whatever else it was, Rolling Fuck was not soulless.

“Neither is the Navajo Nation,” Jim said. “Or Cascadia. The Blackstone Nation. Even the Mormons are up to some interesting things these days. One faction, at least.”

“So which do you believe in? Who do you fight for?”

He grinned again. “None of them, child. As I told you… I fight for change, to cast down the ossified bones of the old world and make space for the new. I owe allegiance to no nation or god, save, perhaps, Lady Eris.”

“Who?”

He smiled. A bit of smugness leached into the expression; she could see it clear as day right around his eyes. It should have repelled her more than it did.

“Eris was the Greek goddess of discord, back when people cared what the Greeks believed. She set the spark that lit the Trojan War. I know it’s a bit silly, reaching back to that old mythology. But I can’t help myself. There’s something about those old gods that calls to me. I can identify with them.”

He leaned in. There was an eagerness to his posture, his tone, his eyes. The snakes jerked and spun on his muscled chest and arms.

“I’m offering you a chance to join us on Olympus, dear Sasha. You’ve spent your time in worship. It’s time to embrace your own Godhead. Leave your antique books behind and rewrite the world with your own will.”

“I don’t know if that’s what I want,” Sasha said in a still, small voice. She tried to ignore how much part of her ached for what he promised. The thought of killing again nauseated her as much as it excited her. But the thought of having power, the kind of power she’d seen Roland exercise…that was intoxicating. She hated how badly she’d started to want it.

“Well you don’t have to decide now,” Jim shrugged his shoulders and gave an amiable smile. The floor rumbled underneath them, and there was a loud, clattering whine as the whole structure of Rolling Fuck came to a slow stop. Jim waited for the scrunching noise to cease and said, “Come and watch what we do today. Then make your call.”

Roland.

Dawn broke just as Rolling Fuck pulled to a long, slow stop by the shore of Lake Waco. The city had taken the long way around the reservoir, which had added at least an hour to their journey but also put a sizable water barrier between Rolling Fuck and the advancing forces of the Heavenly Kingdom. It had been a tight fit at several points, and Roland had enjoyed watching the wheeled city crunch over several abandoned homes and many a street lamp. But eventually the pilots and navigators had found a suitably large public park and brought Rolling Fuck to rest there.

“It’s a nice sunrise,” Manny said. The kid stood next to Roland, on a wooden deck built onto the side of the Main Roller. Skullfucker Mike had assured them this spot provided the best vantage point to watch the rising sun. It looked like he’d been right in that. The sky around them was a heady blend of red and orange that brought up fragmented memories of Mai Tais and fireballs in Roland’s head. Clouds clustered at the tip of the horizon, ripe to bursting with the color and light of the new day’s sun.

Roland nodded. “Yeah.”

“It’s a shame no one who lives here gets to see it,” Manny said. “I’ve never seen the city this empty.”

Roland looked over at his young friend. The boy had seen a lot for his age, and Roland could see how much it pained him. Sorrow had a scent all its own. The plunging levels of norepinephrine and serotonin brought out the sharp stink of cortisol and the greasy odor of opioids. Lurking just behind those smells was the odd spicy tinge of the IL-18 protein. Roland could almost hear it weaken the valves of Manny’s heart.

“I imagine this sucks extramuch for you. I mean, you’ve been where they are, right?”

“Twice,” Manny said.

Roland nodded. “I can’t exactly recall,” he admitted, “but I expect I had something to do with the first time.”

Manny looked over to Roland. Chemically, it was clear the kid was battling a melange of sadness, trauma, and anxiety. His actual thoughts, though, were just as hidden from Roland as they would be from any stock human. Perhaps more so. There were moments when Roland feared he was losing the ability to read human emotions, or even display them properly on his face.

“What’s that look you’re giving me?” he asked, finally.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t tell what the look on your face means,” Roland explained. “And I’m curious. Are you angry at me?”

Manny shrugged, and then he sighed. His shoulders slumped. His head drooped forward and down just a bit.

“No,” he said. “I’m not angry. What would I even be angry about? If you can’t remember what you did back then, are you even the same person who did those things? And even if you are, maybe you were doing the right thing. I assume someone was, at some point, in that fucking mess of a war.”

“Maybe everyone was,” Roland offered.

“I know the Heavenly Kingdom think what they’re doing is right,” Manny said. “I also don’t give a shitting dick what they think. They’re murderers. They can all sit and spin.”

“You’re confident that me murdering the lot of them is the right thing to do, then?”

“I’m confident that it’s better than letting them win,” Manny said.

Roland nodded quietly and stared out at the rising sun. The red had faded and the orange had grown brighter. He could see the shape of the sun behind the clouds. Mist rose off the field in front of them and, across the lake, a low light fog rolled in over what appeared to be an old golf course.

“You’re probably right about that,” Roland said. “But where does it end?”

“It ends when they’re beaten, and Austin is safe.” Manny’s words were forceful, but he looked down and away from Roland when he spoke.

“You know that’s not true,” Roland said. “I forget my own name a lot of the time and I still know you’re full of it. Killing these fucks buys Austin time. And probably not a lot of it. There are still millions of guns and millions of pissed off, desperate people in this ragged chunk of country.”

“So what are you saying, Roland? It’d be better to just let the one place around here that isn’t terrible get eaten by darkness?”

“No,” Roland said, “but read the writing on the damn wall. This place,” he waved his hand out in a gesture that encompassed the whole horizon, “is fucked. Don’t stay here and die with it.”

Manny crossed his arms in front of himself and leaned forward onto the railing of the deck. His head slumped into his hands and he was quiet for a while. Roland knew the army of the Heavenly Kingdom was less than forty miles distant. The scent of that vast, ramshackle horde had grown more prominent over the last few minutes. His nose took in the stink of diesel, the ozone odor of discharging batteries, and the cumulative reek of hundreds of vehicle’s worth of engine oil. Behind those prominent smells lurked the foul, gangrenous stench of ten thousand men sweating stress and fear out of every pore.

Roland looked down, over the deck onto the yellow grass that led up to the shores of the lake. The warriors of Rolling Fuck had started to assemble themselves there. A large group of men and women had started to unpack dozens of Quadrophracts. The four-legged robots had been built by Boston Dynamics, back before the fall of the old U.S. They’d been meant to ferry men and equipment up steep Afghan mountainsides. Roland stared at them, and–

–he stalked through the lab, a razor-sharp machete in one hand and a machine pistol in the other. The air reeked of blood. Ahead of him, he could smell the fear-sweat wafting off two engineers as they hid beneath an overturned metal table. Pieces of robotic equipment were scattered on the floor. Roland reached out his senses, and felt that these were the last two people alive in the facility. He stepped forward, swinging his blade in an arc that he knew would end in flesh–

Roland shook his head and pulled himself out of the past. The flashes of memory were growing more frequent. Guilt came with them. It took some effort to force his mind to focus again on the world around them. Roland looked back out at the mustering yard.

Warriors donned armor—a fantastic array of old-fashioned polished steel plate mail, ultramodern powered body armor, antique flak vests, and a significant number of costumes. He watched as a man in armor that mixed the aesthetic of a Polish Winged Hussar with an Imperial Stormtrooper helped a woman in a crop-top neon green ghillie suit as she locked a pair of rocket launchers onto the flanks of one of the four-legged robots.

Over to his left, another group of warriors had started to assemble the city’s vehicle pool. Ramps had descended from garages in the bellies of the rollers. A slow, steady stream of armored vehicles motored their way down the ramps and into ragged lines on the field.

The bulk of Rolling Fuck’s vehicles were either modified APCs or armored motorcycles sporting portable field guns or automatic gren­ade launchers on side-cars. There were tactical arguments for the use of such vehicles in open field combat, of course, but Roland suspected they’d mainly been picked because they were fun to drive. Almost every vehicle’s engine had been souped up well beyond any potential battlefield benefit. Most of them also had nitrous oxide tanks although, Roland suspected, those were more for huffing than they were for speed.

“Where did they get all this stuff?” Manny asked Roland.

“I’ve got no idea,” Roland said, “but when the old government fell it left behind a lot of equipment. Bases and bases full of moth-balled ordnance. My guess is these guys got in early, before the rush, and grabbed whatever they could.”

At that moment Roland caught Sasha’s scent moving down one of the spindles above the Main Roller. His hindbrain guessed she was headed to the deck he and Manny occupied. Roland couldn’t smell Jim—who was good at staying hidden—but he knew that Sasha couldn’t have known where they were on her own. That meant Jim had likely sniffed Manny out, and made the same assumption about Roland’s location that Roland made about Jim’s.

It wasn’t long before the sliding metal door slid open and Jim and Sasha walked out onto the deck. Jim was in his familiar battle-gear. His blood-red chaps almost shone in the blinding light of the morning sun. He had a smug, self-satisfied grin and gigantic pupils that spoke of recent drug use. Beside him, Sasha looked disheveled and exhausted but jittery. He could smell the coffee wafting from her pores.

“Hey fucknuts,” Roland said. “Hey Sasha.”

She looked confused for a moment. Jim just nodded and said, “Hey shitbird. Hey Manny.”

Manny waved vaguely at them without turning his head to meet them. He continued to look out at the army assembling in the field.

“It’s a pretty cool show down there,” Roland said. “I kinda wish I had some dissociatives, and maybe a blunt. Now would be the time for one.”

“Awwwww shit,” Jim said. “Just so happens, I got both.” He stepped up alongside Roland, extended his forearm and then tapped his left index finger to the back of his right wrist. The tip of that finger detached and rolled up onto his knuckle. A line of white powder poured out onto the back of Jim’s other hand. He offered it to Roland.

“Sure,” Roland said, and railed the line.

Ketamine wasn’t Roland’s favoritest of drugs. He preferred MXE if he was going to snort a dissociative and, in all honesty, a big bottle of DXM-heavy cough syrup mixed with vodka was even more his speed. But hey, drugs was drugs. Once Roland had finished, Jim poured out another line and offered it to Manny.

“No, thanks,” said the fixer.

“It’s pretty good stuff,” Roland said in a helpful tone. “Ketamine goes well with unspeakable violence. It might be fun to watch the battle that decides the future of your people from inside a K-hole.”

Manny looked offended.

Roland shrugged. He glanced at Jim, who gave him an I-don’t-know-why-you’re-looking-at-me look.

“I’ll try some,” Sasha said, “I mean, f– fuck it. Why not?”

It was a little cute, how she stumbled over the fuck. Roland found it endearing. It seemed Manny did too. The cocktail of dopamine, testosterone, and oxytocin that wafted off him made his feelings as clear as day.

“Hell yeah, girl,” Jim said with an exaggerated Southern twang, “get on over here and rail this.”

“That means ‘snort it,’” Roland said, helpfully.

Sasha approached Jim’s arm. She looked him in the eye, then looked over to Roland and, last, to Manny. Then she stared down at the powder as if she was hoping it would say something to her. It didn’t, but she leaned in anyway and snorted about half of it before she sneezed, and then retched and then staggered to the side of the deck and vomited over the side.

Jim and Roland laughed in sheer joy. Manny, being a good person, moved to hold her hair back and help her deal with the pukey aftershocks. While the humans engaged with their frailties Roland and Jim did a couple more lines each.

“That was terrible,” Sasha said, a few minutes later.

“Yeah,” Jim chuckled, “it takes some getting used to.”

And then the door slid open again. Skullfucker Mike walked out onto the deck.

“Oy, asshats,” he called out. “We’re about to war up. You should get down to the field ASAP if you want to see the face-taking.”

“What?” Manny asked.

“Excuse me?” Sasha said at the same time.

Mike just laughed and clapped them both on the shoulders.

“I’ll explain down in the field. Get a move on.” He nodded to Sasha and added, “There’s a puke-wash station just inside and to the right, next to the bathroom.”

“Right,” Jim rubbed his hands together in excitement, “why don’t you kids go roll with Skullfucker Mike. I’ve got to get Roland over to my mechanic so we can suit him up.”

Roland didn’t like the eagerness in Jim’s eyes, or the excitement in his voice when he said that. There was something indecent about it. But a promise was a promise. So Roland nodded and gave Manny a little squeeze on the shoulder.

“I’ll see you soon buddy. This won’t take long.”

Manny.

“Skullfucker Mike?” Manny asked as the chromed man led them through the gantrys and toward the elevator. “What exactly is so special about Roland? I mean, he’s a nice guy, but what makes him so much scarier than other chromed folks, like you and Topaz?”

“What do you know about Roland’s past?” Mike asked in return.

“Very little,” Manny admitted. “He doesn’t seem to remember much. I’ve sussed out that he was in the Army, back before the Revolution. He’s talked about fighting in Turkey. But also in Dallas and Denver and a bunch of other American cities.”

Mike nodded. “Yeah. We met in Dallas, back before it was ciudad de muerta. I’d just been dishonorably discharged from the Marine Corps for…” he frowned, shook his head, and continued. “It doesn’t matter what for. I was broke and I had a body fulla Uncle Sam’s chrome. He wanted it back. I wound up taking shelter in the White Rock Commune. Roland was there too. He was pretty political back in those days, always quoting Bakunin and Öcalan and Red John.”

“Did you guys actually know Red John?” Sasha asked. Up until that point she’d walked quietly in the rear of their little group. The few times Manny had glanced back she’d had her head down, stuck in her own little world. But now she was alert and engaged. Manny guessed it was hearing the name of the famous revolutionary that had done it. That’s odd, he thought.

“I never met the guy,” Mike said. “But Roland did. He was in real deep with that whole circle. So was that weird fucker, Jim. I was tight with Roland but I never got into the political side of things. I liked smashin’ stuff and they needed stuff-smashers.”

“How does this relate to why Roland’s…Roland?” Manny asked.

“Well, I’ve known ol’ Roland for a while, back when he was still fully himself. He was always cagey about his background. But we had our theories. And mine was that he’d been part of Project Orange.”

“What was that?” Sasha asked.

“Holy fuck,” Manny said.

He’d heard of Project Orange, although he wasn’t surprised Sasha hadn’t. The AmFed was the closest descendant of the old United States. They’d have kept most of the bad stuff out of their history books.

“Well y’know,” Mike said, “through the ’20s the military struggled with declining enlistment numbers. All the little resource wars that climate change sparked created the need for a capable, nimble force that could project power without requiring a public commitment of force. So back in the late ’30s the U.S. military started fuckin’ hard with gene-editing tools and biomods. At first it was just basic upgrades to select combat units, early versions of the healing suites y’all both have now. Then they moved on to carbon-fiber-laced bones, bullet resistant skin, nano-healing suites. The end result was Project Orange, the best warriors in the entire military loaded down with experimental, self-adapting neural and physiological upgrades.”

“Yeah,” Manny added, “it was a real success right up ’til they wiped out a whole city.”

Skullfucker Mike nodded and looked back to Sasha. “He’s talking about the battle of Incirlik.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Sasha said. “A U.S. airstrike hit a giant munitions cache. Like ten thousand people died.”

Skullfucker Mike gave a noncommittal grunt.

“That was one version of the story,” he said. “The story I heard, the story everyone told back then, is that it was Project Orange.”

“They blew up the city?” Sasha asked.

“They didn’t blow it up,” Manny said. “They just…butchered everyone, mostly in hand-to-hand combat.”

“The DARPA guys miscalculated,” Mike nodded to Manny. “They’d entirely revamped the endocrine systems of these soldiers. It made them immune to exhaustion and gave them perfect situational awareness, but it also made bloodshed…” He trailed off and frowned while he searched for his next word. “Addictive.”

“So what happened to Project Orange?” Sasha asked.

“Well,” said Mike, “the scientists did what scientists do. They refined things. They revised their hypotheses and tweaked their creations until the Joint Chiefs had another job for the Orange Team. They must have done well for a while. Incirlik was ’39, and no one heard shit from them until ’41, when they hit that protest in Denver.”

“Six hundred dead,” Manny said, reciting the facts he’d memorized a half-dozen times during his elementary education, “including a sitting senator.”

They reached the lift doors, which slid open once they got close. Sasha and Manny stepped in first and Mike followed. He fiddled with the control screen on the wall for a moment–

“I’m just making sure this thing is set to normal human speeds. We don’t want any more puke from y’all today.” Mike winked at Sasha as the lift doors closed. There was a soft “klump” sound, and Manny felt the lift descend.

“So yeah,” Skullfucker Mike continued, “the President deployed the Orange Team against a fortified camp that had blocked off access to most of downtown Denver. They cleared out the camp, sure enough. After the bloodbath, some hackers with the Jester Collective took close to a terabyte out of the Pentagon’s servers. It contained a few files on Project Orange and a partly redacted report on the Incirlik Massacre.”

“And then?” Sasha asked.

Mike shrugged.

“And then they disappeared. They weren’t used during the Revolution, and they’d have been pretty damn handy for the old U.S. at a couple points. Midway through the war, we recovered some intel that they’d been wiped out, some terrible accident in orbit. Only…”

“Only Roland,” Manny said softly.

“Ayep,” Skullfucker Mike nodded. “That was certainly my suspicion. Still is. But the fucker’s never confirmed it. Or denied it. Not that he remembers now, anyway.”

The lift reached the ground with a gentle bump. Its doors slid open to reveal an army. Six-hundred people in three large clumps out by the shore of Lake Waco. To the left was the city’s vehicle pool. In the center were the infantry, bedecked in a ridiculous melange of medieval weaponry, small arms, and hand-held field artillery.

And then, to the right, were the Quadrophracts. The sight of them took Manny’s breath away. There were well over a hundred of the strange, horse-like robots. Most of them were still being fussed over by the riders: having bolts tightened, weapons belted onto their chassis or, in a few cases, old time-y leather saddles strapped onto their backs. Manny saw one saddle with what looked like a large purple dildo attached to it.

The Quadrophract riders were the most uniform group of warriors on the field. While Rolling Fuck’s infantry wore everything from Roman Legionary armor to bikinis made of bullets, the cavalry wore nothing. Even from here, he could see that every nipple in the group was hard as diamond. They were all covered in the same sort of LED tattoos that Jim wore. But where his took the form of ever-writhing snakes, theirs appeared in blotches of gray-black static all up and down their bodies.

“What are they?” Sasha asked, voicing Manny’s thoughts too.

“The elite,” Skullfucker Mike said. “The best of the city’s warriors. Real tough mother-fuckers, mostly former soldiers who augmented their government-issue upgrades way back in the day. Some of ’em have five or ten thousand hours of combat experience stored in their bodies.”

“Why aren’t you out there?” Manny asked.

“Eh,” he grunted, “Quadrophracts make my ass look big. Besides, Topaz is a sniper. She keeps to the rear. And I keep to her. It’s not as fun as fuckin’ shit up at the fronty-front,” his lips curled up into a wistful smile, “but we all gotta grow up sometime.”

While Sasha and Manny gawked, the Main Roller’s other lift descended. The doors opened just twenty feet to their right. Nana Yazzie was the first one out. She moved slowly. Some of that was surely due to her advanced age, but there was also a note of ritual to her movements. It was something in the arc of her spine, the cadence of her step, the way she held her head. The enormous gold-bladed knife in her hand didn’t hurt either.

Behind her walked the citizens of Rolling Fuck. There were around fifty of them in the lift. But as that group walked forward, ropes and ladders began to roll out from all around the enormous wheeled city. Within a matter of minutes hundreds and hundreds of people had descended. More continued to disgorge from the lifts under the Main Roller and the Rear Roller.

The riders had all formed into ordered ranks. They stood at something very much like a military attention. It was the only time he’d seen post-humans do anything in an orderly fashion.

Nana Yazzie stood in front of the cavalry, and the human civilians clustered behind her in a big semicircle. The other warriors gathered behind them. Mike maneuvered their little group to a hill that overlooked the whole scene. It took almost twenty minutes for the entire city to gather.

“What are they doing, Skullfucker Mike?” Sasha asked, only stumbling a bit over the curse word in his name.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” he replied. “She’s about to take their faces.”

Roland.

The process of getting ready for war made the bile rise up in his gut. That was curious. Roland’s stomach didn’t still produce bile, not the same kind of bile it had when he was human. It had been years since his nervous system had been natural enough to respond to anxiety with any kind of physical symptom.

And yet, there it was. The bile, or the hallucination of bile, curdled at the bottom of his stomach while Jim’s men strapped him into the murdersuit. The armor they’d constructed was altogether different from the powered armor he’d faced a few days ago in Dallas. It was also different from what little he remembered of the armor he’d worn as an American soldier. That made sense, of course. Roland’s wetware got better with time and experience. Gear did not age so well.

He watched while Sardar, Jim’s mechanic, bolted a gauntlet into place over his left forearm and hand. He could tell it was made of boron-nitride carbon tubes, but the weapon’s blister carried a sextet of tiny rockets that were not familiar to him.

“Sar’, what are these things?”

A smile split the little man’s dark, handsome features.

“Scatter rocklets,” he said with relish, “each of them contains twelve guided solid-fuel warheads. The left hand are all antipersonnel, built to blow up big. The right hand rocklets,” he tapped the second gauntlet, which sat on the work table next to him, “those pack a tiny bronze dart. One’ll penetrate a Leopard Mk5’s front armor, no problem.”

Roland sighed and looked around at the workshop of death that Jim had flown out here. From the outside it had looked a bit like a shipping container, but painted a glossy white. It’s edges were rounded and smooth, and the whole thing looked slick enough that it could have been an Apple product.

Inside, the box was wall-to-wall weaponry and armor. Jim’s personal stash. Roland couldn’t actually name any of the weapons inside. Most were similar enough to older weapons systems that he could make an educated guess as to their capabilities. But there were strange new things on the walls that he’d never seen before.

Jim sat in a comfy chair at the rear of the workshop and watched Sardar work while he sipped scotch out of an enormous ram’s horn.

“So is this, like, your man-cave or what?” Roland asked him.

Jim took a deep gulp and then smiled.

“I find it relaxes me,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time curating this collection over the years. I spent a lot of time working on that suit, too, so don’t fuck it up.”

Something tingled at the back of Roland’s mind. The suit had clearly been built to his specifications. That suggested Jim had been planning this for a while. But Roland had been retired at CamelToe until very recently. So how–

“Hey man, I need your port,” Sardar said.

The squat mechanic held up a pair of fiber-optic cables that terminated in peculiar boxy plugs, not unlike an old ethernet cable. They were connected to a metal breastplate on the table. Roland pointed to a pair of lumpy white scars on his lower back.

“The input sockets are in there. They’ve scarred up, you’ll have to cut them back open. But it should still fit. The nice thing about DARPA engineering is that a bit of blood and skin never gets in the way.”

Sardar set to work carving the sockets back open. Roland felt the pain as a distant sort of itch. He was having a hard time focusing his senses on his immediate surroundings. The smells of the advancing army presented an almost overwhelming flood of data. Roland had loaded up on ketamine and vodka to quiet his hindbrain, but all that interfered with his introspection.

“You built this thing for me to wear, Jim. How long have you been planning this?”

“Years,” Jim said. His forthrightness surprised Roland.

“Your pacifism is a mistake,” Jim continued, “brought on by your overactive conscience. There is so much more you need to do in the world. I figured at some point you’d realize that yourself. So I kept my men working.”

Sardar lifted the heavy metal breastplate up over Roland’s head and settled it over his shoulders. The weight was comforting. A cold electric shock ran through his body as the armor connected to his central nervous system. Roland felt parts of himself wake up that he hadn’t truly realized were asleep. Something in him had missed that feeling, and he felt guilty for that.

“I’m taking this thing off the instant the fight’s over, Jim. You wasted your money.”

Jim’s smile only deepened. “You’ve forgotten how fun it is, Roland.”

“And you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a fucking human,” Roland countered. “Have you always been a sociopath? Is this what I was like, back before whatever took my memories?”

Jim’s amused smile didn’t shift by so much as a nanometer. Roland felt a spike of irritation before he was distracted by Sardar.

“Raise your hand, please,” the mechanic said. He lifted up a four-­barreled machine gun on a circular frame and slid it around Roland’s right arm. Sardar bolted the weapon into place while he explained.

“It’s a stacked charge machine gun, magnetically fired. Similar to the old Metal Storm weapons. But this fucker’s capable of putting out twenty thousand rounds per second.”

“How long can it fire?”

Sardar laughed, “A little less than a second.”

The mechanic turned back to his table and Roland tried to direct his wandering mind back to the conversation with Jim.

“You’re going to love it,” his old friend said. “I know you’ve BEEN loving it. When you fought your way out of that city I could smell the dopamine wafting off your brain from all the way out here.”

Sardar snapped a cuisse around Roland’s thigh. The armor also sported a bulky weapons blister on its outside edge.

“Gas grenade launcher,” the mechanic explained. “It should go great with the frag rocklets.”

“Oh, so we’re committing war crimes now?” Roland asked Jim with more indignation than he really felt. Jim rolled his eyes.

“It’s just tear gas,” he said, “mostly, at least. I may have included some aerosolized LSD in there. I’ve been on a big psychochemical warfare kick lately.”

For a little while Sardar worked in silence. Jim drank and Roland stared near him, but not at him. The self-inflicted haze in his head had cleared a bit. That meant his hindbrain grew louder. By now it was all but shouting about the approaching army. Roland felt a trickle of adrenaline, oxytocin, and endorphins. His left hand twitched involuntarily. He felt the power of the weapon’s system around him, and he felt the power in his own body. Something like arousal gripped him. Roland fought it down as best he could. But it lingered there at the edge of his consciousness.

“I’ve been remembering more,” he said to Jim, as much to distract himself as out of a desire to get it off his chest.

“Mmm?” Jim cocked an eyebrow in interest.

“I’ve had a few big flashes of memories. Once, when we drove into Dallas past the site of the Lakewood Blast. I remembered–”

He locked eyes with Jim and Jim nodded back. His eyes said “I know,” so Roland moved on.

“The memories come most intensely when I’m in combat. I remembered hiking with Topaz. I remembered burning the TAZ in Denver. I got flashes of you and me in Mexico and…a lot more. I’m still sorting through it. It’s confusing, because there’s no timeline for any of this, just dissociated memories I know happened at some point.”

Jim leaned forward. His eyes flashed with excitement.

“Interesting,” he said. “Tell me, have you been able to draw any conclusions about who you were from what you’ve remembered? Have you gotten any insight into the old Roland?”

Roland frowned. He’d been so focused on trying to remember his old life that he hadn’t given much thought to what the memories he had said about the man he’d been. As he pondered, Roland’s mind lingered on the memory of shooting the Cheney boy in the back of the head.

“I think I used to be a lot more like you,” Roland said.

Jim grinned. His lips curled up to reveal long rows of white, straight teeth.

“That’s true,” he said. “Why else do you think I’ve missed you so much?”

Sasha.

A part of Sasha had believed that, after the Heavenly Kingdom, nothing she saw would ever shock her again. That part of her was proven wrong when Nana Yazzie’s aged, arthritic hand began to messily carve at the first warrior’s face. Her target was the young woman with the chromehawk Sasha had seen in the war council. The carving was a messy thing. It took the better part of a minute for her to slice and peel the skin free. Sasha noticed that there was very little blood. It was messy, but not as messy as it should’ve been.

Once she was finished, Nana Yazzie stepped back with the woman’s face in her hand. As she did, dozens of citizens stepped forward. They pulled out daggers, swords, straight razors, and switchblades of their own. Each civilian paired off with a warrior and began to carve. Some of them were quick and practiced. The motion of their hands reminded Sasha of an autopsy video they’d watched in one of her pre-med classes.

But other citizens were cruder with their cutting. A few verged on brutal, hacking and slashing at the faces and necks of their persons. None of the post-human warriors showed any signs of pain or discomfort. They just stood unmoving and, without their faces, seemingly without emotion.

“I don’t understand,” Sasha said. She hadn’t expected to say it out loud; the words just slipped out.

“It’s a symbolic thing,” Skullfucker Mike explained. “Before they leave, the city’s warriors give up their identities to the group. They leave their humanity behind in bloody tatters in the hands of their friends and loved ones. It’s a way of making sure the city’s civilians don’t leave a war without blood on their hands. And–”

“And it makes them look fucking terrifying,” someone said from behind them. Sasha turned around. A short, fit man approached them. He had a thin build, but his body was girded with lithe muscle. There was something familiar about his face, but Sasha had met so many strange new people during her brief time in Rolling Fuck. The man smiled when Sasha saw him, revealing pointed metallic fangs. Hey, wait a second…

“Hey, Topaz,” Skullfucker Mike said.

Manny looked shocked as well. He stared at the man in surprise.

“Topaz, what…happened?”

There was a woman with those exact same teeth yesterday, when we arrived at the city. Sasha hadn’t gotten the woman’s name. But she’d born a striking resemblance to this man.

“I felt like a man today,” Topaz said, “what with the war and all.”

Sasha finally realized what had happened. Of course, she thought, these people can change their physiology on a dime.

“Ah,” Manny said with a nod.

Skullfucker Mike walked up to Topaz and the two embraced, and then kissed. They twined their arms together and, a few seconds later, Topaz seemed to finally notice Sasha’s presence.

“Sorry,” he smiled as he spoke, “but I don’t believe I got your name.”

“Sasha. Sasha Marion.”

Topaz stepped closer.

“Well, Sasha Marion,” he said in a low voice, “how are you liking our strange ways and customs?”

“They’re…erm…interesting,” Sasha said, diplomatically.

“Do you find this place more to your liking than the Heavenly Kingdom?”

Topaz stepped closer. Sasha took a step back and then another. The man’s expression was friendly enough but there was a sort of queer menace in the set of his shoulders. It may have had something to do with the very large rifle slung across his back.

Sasha started to sweat. Fear gripped her mind.

“Topaz, back off.” Skullfucker Mike’s voice was devoid of anger, but firm. “You’re scaring her.”

Topaz stopped and stared at Mike. His expression went from placid smile to rage and then back to a smile almost faster than Sasha could process.

“Sorry darlin’,” he said in an artificially chipper voice. “I just wanted to make sure our guest was enjoying her stay here.” He looked to Sasha again. “You are, aren’t you?”

“Y– yes.”

“Goooooooood,” Topaz purred. “Hopefully you won’t be joining any more extremist groups that get my friends killed.”

He turned immediately to Manny and, with barely a pause for breath, embraced him and kissed his forehead.

“I’m proud of you, buddy. As far as I’m concerned, you’re family.”

Manny mumbled his thanks and returned the hug. But he glanced to Sasha, and they shared a “what the hell?” look. Skullfucker Mike seemed to want to plaster over the awkwardness.

“Yep,” he said. “We’ve made some wonderful friends these last couple of days.” He pantomimed looking down at his watchless wrist and checking the time.

“Oh my goodness!” he said, in mock surprise. “Look at the time! Topaz, we’ve got a war to get to. You kids had better find some decent seats.”

Topaz smiled at Skullfucker Mike. His eyes lingered on the big man’s face, and then drifted back to Sasha.

“Enjoy the show,” he said with an empty smile.

Roland.

It was windy on the landing pad. He and Jim stood next to a heavy black VTOL aircraft, the steed that would carry him into today’s massacre. Roland could taste the dying summer and the faint stirrings of a North Texas fall in the air. It was cooler than he’d have expected at this time of the year. Grayer, too. A gust of chill wind blew across his face, and Roland found himself falling back in time again.

He was shorter. The world seemed sharper, even though his senses were dim and unenlightened. Roland felt a hand around his own. It felt big, powerful, and comforting. He looked up and saw a woman standing over him. She was tall, a giant. Her hair was brown and straight and long and clear as day in his mind’s eye. But her face was blank, obscured even in memory. His head turned to track the passage of a blowing leaf. He felt chill, winter air on his arm, and he watched as a red sedan rumbled past them, spraying water into the air as it hit a puddle on the asphalt–

“Roland, pay attention.”

Jim’s voice snapped him back to reality. The other chromed man held a paper-thin tablet in front of Roland’s face. That memory flash had been the most immersive yet, although not the longest. He was a little confused at that. Why that moment? Had it just been the similarity in weather or–

“ROLAND.”

Jim was angry. It was actually somewhat refreshing to see genuine emotion on the other man’s post-human face. Veins bulged at his neck, and his eyes were fully open. Roland caught a harsh whiff of methamphetamine from his breath.

“Alright, alright, fuckin’ chill,” Roland groaned. “What am I looking at?”

He needn’t have asked. Once he focused on the tablet it was obvious that it displayed a map of the area around Lake Waco. Rolling Fuck’s warriors and vehicles were displayed in little blue pin-points. Jim scrolled up a few inches and Roland saw a swarm of red. It was half-over the Brazos right now, and it crept millimeter by millimeter toward their position.

“The river slowed them down a bit,” Jim said, “but the bridges there were still intact. I’d say they’ll hit Rock Creek in about ten minutes.”

Roland nodded and asked, “Couldn’t we have killed those bridges, bought some hours?”

Jim gave a careless shrug. “Why would we want to slow them down? We’re ready enough. No sense in dragging this out.”

There was a strong smell of ozone as the VTOL aircraft next to them woke up. Red lights glowed on the missile pods slung under its belly. The chaingun on its nose cycled. The whole thing hummed with potential energy. It was too modern for Roland to know the make and model, but it reminded him of the Russian Coba assault transport, which had been state-of-the-art back in the mid-40s.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked Jim.

“Well,” his friend said, “we know they’ve got at least a half-dozen mobile anti-air batteries. Old U.S. Patriot IIIs. Inaccurate garbage. Nothing I’m worried about–”

The name conjured up the ghost of another memory. A big Patriot battery wheeled around on its truck-sized chassis. He heard the machine whine of the motors and then the reek of fear hit his nose, as rich and heavy as Texas thunder. There were missiles in the air, aimed at him as he fell. They were child’s play to dodge in his suit. He descended as fearstink rolled up toward him from the soldiers below. The poor fuckers–

“Roland!” Jim shouted. “Am I going to have to find another ­murder-gorilla to take your place?”

“Wha– no,” Roland shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “just memories.”

Jim gave him a long look. “Anything you need to talk about right now?”

“No,” Roland said. “It’s just…the memories are coming at me faster now. It’s distracting.”

“That makes sense,” Jim said. “I’d imagine stimuli that reminds you of your past could prompt your brain into sudden healing. Hmm,” he said as he reached into a bag at his hip. It looked like a standard dump pouch, meant for half-spent magazines in the heat of battle. But Jim pulled out a fully loaded crack pipe. Even unlit, it smelled like burning tires.

“Eighty-nine percent pure,” Jim held the pipe up to Roland.

“Aight,” Roland grabbed the pipe and lifted it to his lips. Jim reached out and flipped on the lighter built into his index finger. He held it under the glass bubble of the pipe. The rocks vaporized into white smoke. Roland inhaled and felt the vapor dissolve into his bloodstream through his mucous membranes. There was a tingle as the crack reached his brain’s ventral tegmental area and said, in essence, “Y’know how much dopamine you were planning to produce? Make a shitload more than that.”

The happy chemicals flooded Roland’s mind. His anxiety at the recently churned-up memories faded, as did the memories themselves.

“Better?” Jim asked.

“Super good,” Roland said. “Can I…?”

Jim waved, “Sure man, keep the pipe. In fact…” he pulled his index finger free from his hand and gave it to Roland. “Keep that, I’ll grow a new one.”

“Cool.” Roland took the finger, flicked it alight and took another deep pull of burning crack.

“So,” he said as he exhaled a plume of cracksmoke, “the plan?”

“Right,” said Jim, “like I toldja, Rock Creek is where we plan to hit ’em. The Edmund Fitzgerald here,” Jim banged a hand on the side of the VTOL craft, “is gonna take you up to around fifteen thousand feet and then drop you right on their heads. I expect we’ll take some flak afterwards but this bird can handle it. And besides,” he raised his voice and jerked his head toward the cockpit, “Anderson’s piloting it today, and it’s not like I give a shit if he dies.”

In response, the nose-gun wheeled around on its mount and locked onto Jim. There was a clanking sound as it ratcheted a round into its chamber. Jim rolled his eyes.

“Fucking pilots. Anyway, me’n my people will be with the Rolling Fuck folks, getting shot at.” He tapped Roland’s helmet, “When we’re ready for you, I’ll ping you both, and Anderson can drop you on top of their asses.”

“So,” Roland asked, “I’ve just got to fall on top of a hostile army and start shooting?”

Jim nodded.

“Right then, let’s get started.”

Manny.

Years ago, in what now seemed like another life, Manny had gone to a watch an outdoor movie at Zilker Park in Austin. Ghostbusters. He was pretty sure it had been Ghostbusters. Hundreds and hundreds of people had shown up, families with children and couples on dates and so, so many dogs. The sound hadn’t been great, and the projectionist could’ve been better, but he remembered the evening fondly.

Rolling Fuck before a battle reminded him of that experience. The people were different. Very few of them were children. But clusters of citizens, friend-groups and families and families of friends, had set up little viewing nooks across the wheeled city itself and in the field in front of it. The whole scene would have been idyllic, if they weren’t about to watch a battle.

The vehicles, cavalry, and infantry were already almost out of view. He could just barely see shapes out on the horizon, setting up firing positions on top of buildings in Rock Creek. They move so damn fast. Manny didn’t think he’d ever get used to the pace of post-human life. He knew Topaz and Skullfucker Mike were somewhere out there. He knew where they’d be soon and, in spite of their confidence, he worried for them. More than anyone, he worried for Roland.

“Drinks for everyone,” Donald Farris said. He had a tray full of drinks in his hands, fresh from the bar. He sat down next to Nana Yazzie and smiled. Manny and Sasha sat on the opposite side of them, in a booth in the Main Roller’s bar, looking out over Waco.

Donald started handing out beverages. First, familiar-smelling, bubbly drinks in long brown bottles.

“Coca-Cola,” the old documentarian said. “Not the stuff they still sell all over. The original recipe, with cocaine and alcohol. It’s great shit, we go through gallons of it every day.”

Nana Yazzie took a sip from hers and smiled. “It’s quite good,” she said, “and the intoxicating effect is mild. Our chromed comrades have a stronger variant, of course.

“We’re all humans here,” Donald smiled, “more or less.”

Manny took one of the cokes, sipped it, and nodded to Sasha. “It’s really good,” he said, “you should try it.”

It was good. And it didn’t seem like it was too strong. Manny took another sip and smiled as Sasha grabbed her bottle and took a gulp. She seemed to like it.

There was a loud “pop” sound from somewhere up above. Manny tensed up. But then he tracked its origin to one of the landing pads that extended from a gantry tower at least a hundred feet above them. Dozens of small black shapes flitted out from it and soared forward, off in the same direction the army had gone.

“Spy drones,” Donald Farris explained. “They’ll be at the front by the time the fighting starts.”

“This all seems…so weird,” Sasha said. “I think I read about people doing something similar during the Civil War. They’d set up picnic blankets on hills overlooking the battle.”

Donald Farris grunted and shifted a bit awkwardly in his seat. Nana Yazzie smiled and said, “It is a bit like that. The difference is that we’re not doing this to be voyeurs. We won’t see much fighting.”

“What will we see?” Sasha asked.

“Just watch,” Donald Farris said, and reached for a tiny shot-glass filled with a yellow-brown liquid. “But have a drink first. It’ll help.”

Manny took one of the shot glasses and moved to belt it down. But Nana Yazzie put her hand on his.

“That’s fine tequila, son. I’d recommend sipping.”

So he sipped it. And it was good. The burn rolled down his throat and mixed with the cocaine and alcohol from the cola. A comfortable warm haze settled over Manny. He was about to encourage Sasha to try some when another sound intruded. The high hum of drones filled the air. Manny fought down an irrational surge of anxiety. He wasn’t sure he’d ever feel comfortable with the sound of drones again.

Each of these drones was the size and rough density of a rottweiler. They flew in pairs, connected by what looked like a thick, bendy white tube that hung between them. Several pairs settled in front of the Main Roller’s bar in a stable hover. With a whir and a click, the white tubes in between them opened up and unfurled into screens. A second later the screens lit up.

Manny took another sip of truly fabulous tequila and looked back across to his new friends. Donald Farris looked somber, as solemn and gray as a granite wall. Nana Yazzie seemed almost excited, as if she’d reached the first jump scare in a good horror movie. Sasha hadn’t touched her liquor. She didn’t seem to have taken more than a few sips from the coke. Manny found himself wondering what would happen to her after all this.

What am I going to do after this? Manny realized with a bit of shock that Oscar’s wife was the only person he’d messaged in almost a week. He hadn’t sent anything to his family, or his friends back in Austin. He’d had the excuse of his deck being deactivated when he’d been inside the Kingdom. But now that he was back, and his deck was functional, his lack of communication felt less and less defensible. Just thinking about Aisha, and the terrible news he still had yet to deliver, brought a spike of anxiety that was somehow worse than his fear over the coming battle.

There’s a certain sound that happens when a very large group of people all notice something at the same time. That sound shook Manny out of his contemplation and alerted him to the fact that something had started to happen on the screens. He looked up and he saw that all the screens scattered around the city and hovering over the field now shared the same images.

One side of the screens displayed a video feed of a man in full tactical armor, his eyes covered by goggles and his head protected by a black helmet. He was seated in the cupola of an armored vehicle, rolling fast over the highway. Next to that video feed was a picture of the same man, sans armor, in more peaceful days. He was fair-skinned, with red hair and an easy smile. He wore a shirt that, Manny guessed, signified his appreciation for some sports team back when he’d lived in the AmFed. The images sat there, alone, for a second.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Manny looked out at the horizon toward Rock Creek, where Rolling Fuck’s soldiers had embedded themselves. He saw three black-gray contrails rush out from an old office building and toward the highway. The Heavenly Kingdom’s forces were just barely visible to his naked eye, tiny ant-sized tanks and transports. All three rockets hit, and the black smoke of their detonations obscured the head of the vehicle column.

And then, on the video feed, a rocket burst right above the man in the cupola. Manny watched as he was torn apart in a hail of shrapnel. The video, and the still image of his smiling face, were replaced a second later by a looping video of an older man playing with a baby girl. He picked her up and spun her around and the camera zoomed in on his joyous smile. Another video played, of a younger man attending his high school graduation. More videos and still images popped up, displaying gentle moments in the lives of at least a dozen different men.

And then all the screens cut, violently, to video of an exploding APC. Manny jerked back in surprise. He saw that Sasha had reacted similarly. Nana Yazzie just sat and stared, her face unreadable. ­Donald Farris frowned. And when he noticed Manny looking back at him, he waved a gentle hand toward the screen and mouthed the word, “Watch.”

Manny turned back to the screens in time to see them populate with more faces and more looping videos. He watched as children opened birthday presents and celebrated graduations. He saw young men pose with teammates or hug their kids. He saw pizza parties and Christmas mornings and laughter and love and then–

Another vehicle detonated. The screen cleared. And then it populated again with scenes from four more lives, next to video of a detonating Leopard Tank. The parade of shattered lives went on as rockets, mortars, and now gunfire lashed out from Rock Creek and toward the vehicle column.

Roland isn’t even there yet. This is just the beginning. Manny stared out, numb and queasy, and watched as the Heavenly Kingdom’s armored spearhead changed direction and began the drive to Rock Creek. They were firing now too, pouring explosive shot and long-range rockets into the neighborhood.

This is what you wanted, he reminded himself, as the parade of death sped up.

Roland.

It was downright cold at fifteen-thousand feet. Roland relished the bite in the air and stared out the Edmund Fitzgerald’s side window as he hit Jim’s crack pipe for the last time. His synapses bubbled with dopamine now. He couldn’t stop his lips from curling up into a grin as he looked out onto the distant fields below.

“Five minutes to drop point,” the pilot’s voice echoed throughout the cargo compartment. Normally it would’ve held an array of smart bombs or close-assault drones. Today it held only Roland. He stepped forward, toward the rear bay doors of the craft. The feeling of the cold deck under his feet and the elevated hemoglobin levels in his blood brought the threat of another rush of memory to Roland’s mind. The dizzy glee of the crack high helped him shrug it off.

Combat soon. Battle. And battle drugs.

He tried to temper his excitement. He didn’t want to crave that high as much as he did. It’ll just take a few minutes, he told himself, and then I can disengage. He could already feel the Heavenly Kingdom’s army, far below, settling in. Their nose had been bloodied by Rolling Fuck’s rocketry, but they’d suffered relatively few casualties so far. The plan did seem to be working. Dozens of vehicles and thousands of men had already moved into position around the Rock Creek neighborhood. Roland could hear the sound of their mortars, recoilless rifles, and assault guns opening fire.

He reached out with his senses and tried to find Topaz and Skullfucker Mike in the mess, but their scents and heat profiles were obscured by shellfire and smoke. Roland was able to locate Jim, as well as Bigsby and his assault team. They were hunkered down at the edge of the neighborhood, embedded in an abandoned apartment complex and engaged in a furious firefight with the Heavenly Kingdom’s vanguard. Roland could smell the dopamine rushing into Jim’s synapses from fifteen thousand feet in the air.

His heart began to beat faster. He felt his left hand start to shake. Not in fear, but in delirious anticipation of the battle drugs. Another flash of memory took him, and–

–his hand shook so bad he could barely hold the needle straight. He’d already missed the vein twice. “God dammit, god dammit!” he cursed before taking a deep breath and preparing himself to try again–

“Sixty seconds to drop,” the pilot’s voice pulled Roland back into the moment. That memory had felt weird. It had been blurry in his mind’s eye, but Roland’s hands and arms had felt smaller then. Was I shooting up dope as a teenager? He knew the answer, based on his current predilections, was probably.

Roland shook his mind away from the past and focused, again, on the war downstairs. The Kingdom had moved quickly; he guessed around four thousand of their men were already in position. These would be the elite, their most veteran fighters, the soldiers wearing power armor or riding in real armored transports and not up-gunned trucks. He could feel the rest of the Kingdom’s army flung out far behind them, in a long tail that stretched back to the Brazos. How many of these men will die today? How many are already dead?

“Ten seconds!”

His nose caught the distant gasoline reek of a flamethrower opening up on a squad of advancing Martyrs. That’s got to be Jim, right?

“Five seconds!”

The jump light turned from red to green and the bomb bay doors opened with a rush of air and wind that cracked the uncovered skin on Roland’s face.

“Three,” said the pilot.

He stepped out to the ledge and planted his feet. The world whipped by around them at a maddening speed. Roland looked down, focused, and saw the Heavenly Kingdom’s army underneath him. Dozens of vehicles and thousands of men had taken up position in a large park and in several buildings surrounding Rock Creek. Two large gatherings of mortars and a trio of Leopard tanks made up the bulk of the artillery now pouring onto Rolling Fuck’s forces. There were also several large field guns and rocket batteries, currently being bolted into place in an old parking lot behind the park.

Competent. Roland was impressed by how the Kingdom’s soldiers had parked their armored transports to help complete a fortress wall around one side of Rock Creek. They’d sent a few probing attacks of power-armored troopers but, he could tell, they wouldn’t launch a full assault until they’d flattened the neighborhood.

“Two.”

A trickle of endorphins and serotonin joined the soggy mush of dopamine in Roland’s synapses. He closed his eyes and, with a thought, activated the sundry weapons systems that Sardar had wired into his body. The missiles in their pods hummed and the barrels around his right arm chimed in readiness. Lyrics from a half-remembered song flitted through his mind. Time, time, time, for another peaceful war…

“One.”

Roland stepped off the back of the craft and into the sky’s em­brace.

Sasha.

The faces flashed by, along with video clips and curated posts from social media and of course, scenes of death. Some of the men died from sniper fire, cut down as they ran for cover. Others died in long-range fire-fights or from shrapnel. The pace of death had gradually risen over the course of the battle.

Some of that was due to the fact that the Martyrs had sent in several assault teams, to test the mettle of the defenders. Those men had died fast, and badly. Many of them had been burnt alive. The sight of it all should have horrified her. She wanted it to horrify her. Everyone else at the table had tears in their eyes. Even Nana Yazzie was crying, and that lady looked like she’d been through some shit.

Since when do you curse like that?

Sasha felt a pang of guilt at how easily the swear word had come to her mind. Then she felt really, really stupid. She was literally watching people die. She’d killed two human beings fewer than forty-eight hours ago. What the fuck does cursing matter?

But still, the guilt was there. Perhaps what she felt was a betrayal of her past self. Or maybe she was just dumb. Sasha shook it off. She tried to focus on the carnage. It was horrible, she knew that in a detached academic sense. She couldn’t quite feel the horror, though. It was as if shooting Darryl had opened up a great, gnawing hole inside her heart and that hole had spread, like a black film, over her entire body. All her feelings seemed so distant now.

She wanted to cry about Darryl. She wanted to cry about this. She wanted to cry for Susannah and Anne, left alone in that living hell of a Kingdom. She wanted to cry for herself, too. But she couldn’t. And so she didn’t. Instead, she sat and watched as the warrior gods of this strange city helped the Martyrs earn their title.

Sasha looked out at the citizens of Rolling Fuck. Most of the people she could see were crying, and even those who weren’t looked shaken, horrified. The perpetual party atmosphere she’d come to associate with the City of Wheels was gone. It had been suspended to allow for pain. Sasha wanted to hurt with them.

But instead she thought about the offer that man Jim had made. She thought about the squicking sound of the razor blade flipping out of Roland’s forearm. She’d seen the way he fought. She longed for the high that had come with the violence in the clinic, but she couldn’t stand more of the guilt that killing Darryl had brought her. I could be a medic, Sasha thought, Jim said so.

She looked up to the screens again, at the parade of death. She wasn’t sure if any of the dead had been Rolling Fuck’s soldiers. It didn’t look like it. But as she settled back in to watch, something glitched on the screens. The stream of faces sped up, well past the point where she could focus on any of them. Then the flow stopped, sputtered, the picture glitched out and then righted itself.

Whatever algorithm handled the show eventually stabilized, and the individual images on each screen shrank to accommodate many, many more people, a flood of the dead and moments from their lives. The nature of their deaths changed, too. Most of the first wave seemed to come from a sudden burst of explosive detonations. But the explosions stopped and the dying continued, and whatever was killing the Martyrs now moved too fast to be clearly seen.

“What’s happening?” she heard Manny ask. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” the old man said. “That’s Roland.”

Roland.

Forty-five seconds after his feet hit the dirt, Roland had run out of ammo. He’d managed to do a tremendous amount of damage in that short span of time, decimating their mortar batteries with cluster rockets and clearing the Martyrs away from their field guns with a mix of gas and fragmentation grenades. He’d emptied his machine gun in three long bursts, mostly aimed at the infantry who’d been clustered behind the APC barricades when he landed. Then he’d taken to scavenging rifles from the dead and emptying those into targets of opportunity.

By the one-minute mark, Roland’s hindbrain estimated he’d killed or wounded close to a thousand men. The sheer ferocity of his initial assault sent the Kingdom’s forces reeling and cleared a roughly two-hundred meter circle around him. Roland finished gunning down the crew of a Patriot battery and ran for an abandoned anti-tank rifle lying next to a pile of bodies.

Bullets smacked into him from all sides: diversionary fire, meant to distract him from the up-armored Mattis APC that suddenly gunned its engine and barreled toward him. They think they can run me over, Roland realized with something like glee. So he slowed down, reducing his sprint to something like a normal human running speed while the vehicle closed the gap between them.

He jumped at the last moment, landed on the APC’s roof, and punched a hole through the top armor with both of his fists. Then he gripped the ragged metal at the sides of the hole and tore the APC open–

–the smell of fear hit his nose as he tore through the concrete wall. The room held a dozen men, a mix of guards and officers. One man in the middle wore the stars of a general in the United States Army. Some of the soldiers screamed. A few opened fire. But the general just stood there while Roland killed. He didn’t even blink. No fear poured off him.

“It’s our fault,” the general said, once they were the only men left alive in the room. “This is all our fault, Roland. I’m–”

A bullet hit his face and Roland snapped back to reality. The men in the APC below him were dead; it looked as if he’d shredded them with his bare hands. But while he’d been lost in a memory, two more APCs had roared up and disgorged a dozen power-armored soldiers.

They shot him with big guns, weapons meant to hurt monsters. He avoided some of their rounds, but not most. Roland lost the better part of his right hand, a chunk of his skull, and his left knee. It hurt, but that didn’t stop him. He leapt off the Mattis and soon he was among them, ripping off armored plates and shattering bones with his bare hands.

The battle drugs poured into his brain and lit his synapses up like the New York skyline. Roland let out a terrible whooping cry that was half laugh and half scream and he tore into the men as they tried, in vain, to do him real harm.

It took nineteen seconds to eliminate them all. As the last man dropped, Roland realized with some surprise that he could hear Jim’s voice, distant but getting closer. His old friend was charging, screaming out war whoops, and firing those big dumb pistols. Then he heard the familiar crack of a Dragunov sniper rifle—Topaz’s rifle! He remembered it now. The sound was as familiar to him as the voice of his own mother.

Holy shit! Roland realized that, for the first time in years, he could remember the sound of his mother’s voice. Her name and face were still lost in memory, but all this violence was clearly knocking things loose. He took a step back, behind one of the intact APCs, to avoid a spray of heavy machine-gun fire and take stock of the situation. Now that he focused, he could feel the hoof beats of Rolling Fuck’s cavalry. He could sense that many of the city’s infantry had charged out from their positions in Rock Creek to meet the Martyrs in hand-to-hand combat.

The Heavenly Kingdom was not in flight, not yet. But they would break soon. Roland knew it. He could smell it in the air. Time to stop now. Time to let Skullfucker Mike, Topaz, and the others finish the fight. He’d done enough, he knew he’d done enough. And yet…

The drugs. Even after just a few seconds out of direct combat, the high was starting to fade. And Roland wanted more. He thought about cracking another skull and his hand itched. He heard one of the Martyrs open up with an automatic grenade launcher, and thought about how good that gun would feel, bucking against the meat of his shoulder. The man with the grenade launcher was close. Roland could close the distance between them in two, maybe three seconds.

No. You don’t need to do this. Stop. Fewer people will die if you just–

Roland charged.

Manny.

Manny had seen nine people killed by bullets or bombs. He’d seen a good deal more fresh corpses, in the aftermath of firefights. He had a strong stomach and he was not easily distressed by gore. The opening stages of this battle, and the war ritual, had been unsettling, but not because of the violence.

That changed soon after Roland landed.

“He’s just tearing people apart…” Manny said, without really meaning to say anything at all. Donald Farris replied with a grim nod.

“It’s hard to watch,” Nana Yazzie admitted, as another dozen lives ended messily on the screens before them. “It’ll be over soon, though. They can’t take much more of this.”

“I haven’t seen any of your people die yet,” Sasha said. “Is that abnormal?”

“No,” Donald’s voice was grim. “There’ll be a lot of injuries, but I don’t expect Rolling Fuck will lose a single warrior.”

“Good,” Sasha said.

“Is it?” Donald asked.

“Of course it’s good, you silly fuck,” Nana Yazzie snapped. That was the first time Manny could recall hearing her angry.

“I disagree,” the old man grumbled. “We’re on a precipice here, the edge of a deep cliff. Every time this happens we get a little closer to falling off.”

“What do you mean?” Manny asked.

“He means,” Nana Yazzie replied with a bit of drunken slur to her voice, “that he doesn’t trust the people of this city. He thinks they’ll get a taste for war and this whole experiment will turn into a nightmare.”

“You can’t trust the dark,” Donald Farris insisted, “and we’re in the dark here.” He waved out at the field and the hundreds of people, in tearful silence, watching the faces of the dead. “Right now we’ve managed to lash together a chain of rituals that keep them peaceful. How long can that last?”

Nana Yazzie glared at him, and then shifted her gaze to Manny. She pointed a finger at Donald.

“He thinks we should have let your people die,” she said. “I think we have a responsibility to intervene.”

“I’m not saying we don’t,” Donald Farris insisted. “I’m just saying, I’ve seen how this story ends. History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”

“Pithy,” Nana Yazzie said, “but– Oh!”

She stopped mid-sentence and stared out into the screens. Manny looked back just in time to watch the flow of dead faces speed up again. The screens jerked and shuddered to accommodate the new flow. Once they adjusted, Manny was shocked again at the violence on display. He saw men run through with lances, gutted by scimitars, burnt by napalm, and trampled under the spiked hooves of Quadrophracts.

“Oh god,” he moaned.

“Ah yes,” Nana Yazzie sighed, “that would be the cavalry. It won’t be much longer now. They’re here to finish the job.”

Roland.

The Knights of Rolling Fuck were a sight to see, truly. It wasn’t often that Roland came across something that registered as completely new to the deep, battered banks of his memory. But there was no déjà vu here, no sense that he’d watched anything like it before. Rolling Fuck’s riders worked in two- and three-person squads, mostly using a mix of hand-grenades, small arms, flamethrowers, and melée weapons for shock value.

Their timing was exquisite. One-hundred riders hit the Martyrs at the same time. They didn’t seem to have specific targets, or goals beyond causing mayhem. But they did this expertly, spiking armored vehicles and field guns with white phosphorus charges and scattering any clusters of Martyrs they could find.

The woman, Kishori, rode past him, her face skinned and weeping blood, as she lobbed a hand grenade toward a group of Martyrs hunkered behind the shattered remains of a public restroom. She pulled a macuahuitl, with an iron trunk and gleaming obsidian blades, free from her belt as her steed leapt over the burning wreckage of a jeep and bounded toward the survivors. Roland followed her, tearing a piece of rebar free from some rubble as he charged.

The restrooms were at one end of what had once been a giant playground in a public park. It had been derelict for more than a decade, but the corpses of swing sets and remnants of slides were still visible. Several hundred of the Martyrs had fallen back to this position trying to create some kind of defensive line. Panic and mass death had robbed them of a lot of cohesion, but they still managed to pour a lot of fire into Roland and Kishori as they charged.

A rocket-propelled grenade hit the chest of her quadrophract and burst, ripping off one of the machine’s legs and sending the chromed woman tumbling to the ground, gravel and rubble embedding itself into the red musculature of her bleeding face. Roland didn’t stop for her. He charged ahead, absorbed a few dozen rounds of small-arms fire and dodged a handful of rocket-propelled grenades.

He hit a group of twenty-three men, hunkered behind a long ­Stihl-glass barricade and several heavy, metal crates. These Martyrs had been trying to get a trio of anti-tank guns back into the fight. They gave up on that once Roland closed to about twenty feet. One of them, an older man with a spine, shouted words of encouragement and charged forward, firing, with a dozen of his men.

These soldiers weren’t wearing powered armor. They weren’t good enough to hit more than one in twenty shots. They wore old upcycled body armor. Only a few of them had bayonets. They presented no real threat. Twenty seconds and I can put every one of these fuckers down for the rest of the fight. No one needs to die. His hand twitched. The river of dopamine in his synapses shrank to a babbling brook. Roland felt a craving rise. Maybe just a few more.

He was among them. Roland found that brave old fucker, picked him up by the skull and used him as a flail until the bones of his face came loose in Roland’s hands. He deployed the razor in his wrist and started slicing off hands and ears. He moved on to slashing tendons and muscles and, eventually, just hacked at his enemies like a drunken butcher. One boy dropped his gun, tried to back away and fell on his ass as Roland stalked toward him–

–the protesters screamed and screamed. They swung sticks and tried to bash him with their shields and he knocked their clumsy strikes aside and waded into the mass. Roland didn’t even consider drawing a gun. He tore. Every fistful of human flesh sent a wash of orgiastic glee bubbling through his brain. A young woman screamed and tried to run. He grabbed her hair and pulled, and the sound of her neck snapping almost made him shriek with joy–

“Please–” said a different man, before Roland shattered his skull against the pavement and leapt up to chase down a trio of fleeing Martyrs.

–he was back in Incirlik, bloody and injured and almost snow blind from the battle drugs. Roland shoved his way through the door and into the air raid shelter. He’d already pulled a grenade free from his harness when he found himself face-to-face with a room of women and children, old men and young boys; civilians. Unarmed.

And, with sudden shock, Roland realized he didn’t care about that last part. His synapses screamed for more. Roland obliged them.

“My God stop, STOP!”

He came back to himself and realized he was on the ground and locked into a pretty darn good half nelson. It took him a moment to realize that woman, Kishori, was the one holding him.

“Oh,” he said.

“What the FUCK, man?”

Roland looked around. None of the Martyrs near him were still standing. It was hard, even for his hindbrain, to identify how many people had fallen around him. He guessed south of a hundred, but not far south. The number was shocking, it implied a longer blackout than any others. What was scarier was the sheer violence evident in these men’s death. Most of them were in more than two pieces.

“Are you gonna flip out if I let go?”

Roland shook his head, and Kishori released him. He turned around, still seated, and looked at the young woman. She was filthy with grime and blood, some of it her own. Her skinless face wept red but, even so, he could still see the judgement in her eyes.

“That was not fucking necessary,” she said.

“I’m sorry, I…”

“Roland!”

It was Skullfucker Mike. Topaz trailed behind him at a sizable distance, sweeping the field with a rifle. Roland tried to catch his eye. Topaz avoided Roland’s gaze for a second or two but then they connected and–

–she stared at him with those big, brown, tear-stained eyes.

“This isn’t what I wanted, Roland. This isn’t what we said we were fighting for. This is just butchery.”

He felt anger at her, blind rage that warred with his love.

“Of course it’s butchery!” he screamed. “The world is built by butchers!”–

“Dude!” Kishori slapped him, hard, and Roland came back to himself. Skullfucker Mike was closer now. Roland looked for Topaz, and found him. He was closer too, and looked worried, but he didn’t say anything.

“Is Roland alright?” Mike asked Kishori. “Was he hit?”

“Sure, but that’s not the problem. He just went bugfuck on, like, a company of those guys. Ripped them apart with his bare hands.”

“It’s a fuckin’ relapse,” said Skullfucker Mike. He knelt down in front of Roland and put a hand on his shoulder. “Buddy,” he said, “it’s done. They’re starting to run. Whole army will be routed in a few minutes. You just sit here and catch your breath and–”

Routed? Roland looked down and realized his hands were shaking. He felt a vast, throbbing emptiness in his synapses. He realized that the emptiness was always there, and had been for as long as he could remember. Most days he hid it under a haze of narcotics but now that he’d had it filled—for just a minute!—its emptiness hurt like an amputated limb.

He looked out and saw that, yes, Skullfucker Mike was correct. Several pockets of Martyrs still held out, but the bulk of the vanguard was either dead or fleeing for the line of transports and technicals that stretched back to the Brazos. It felt like the rest of the army had started the slow process of halting, and reversing its advance. The Kingdom had decided to pull back.

Are you done or not, Roland? asked an evil voice in the back of his skull. If you’re not done, if you want more, you’d better go get it.

Roland leaned back. He looked from Skullfucker Mike, to Kishori, and finally to Topaz. Then he reached behind him, grabbed a busted rifle he could use as a club, and stood up.

“Roland, no–” Skullfucker Mike started to say. Roland didn’t hear the rest. He bolted off, as fast as he could run, in the direction of the fleeing Martyrs.

Sasha.

It was amazing how much she could tell about the course of the battle just from watching the faces of its casualties. The pace of the killing had escalated to a certain level, and then started to slowly fall. More and more of the men died with their backs to the enemy, running. Sasha guessed that meant the army, or at least a lot of it, had started to break. The pace of death slowed to a trickle.

“Well then,” Donald Farris grumbled, “it seems like that’s more or less settled. I’m going to get us another round. I think we’ve all eaten enough guilt for the–”

He stopped. His jaw dropped.

“Oh no.”

Sasha turned back to the screen to see that the roll of the dead had started to increase again. These men were running too, but most of them weren’t dying to ranged weaponry. They were being grabbed from behind, ripped apart or clubbed to death by something moving far too fast for human eyes to focus on.

“Roland,” Manny said in a dull voice filled with sorrow.

Sasha scanned the faces of her tablemates. Manny looked almost overwhelmed with guilt. His eyes were watery and he just kept shaking his head and muttering to himself. Nana Yazzie’s mouth was closed. Her face looked tight and frozen in horror. Donald Farris was quite clearly furious. His face was so red Sasha worried his heart might give out.

And yet she felt nothing.

That’s weird, isn’t it? Sasha could remember how angry she’d gotten as a girl, when she read some story about anti-Christian brutality in Turkey or Illinois. She remembered being horrified by the executions she’d witnessed. But she could only picture her emotional state in those moments from a great distance, as if she were staring at it through the fogged up lens of a telescope.

Why am I not angry? Why am I not horrified? Her concern over this fact actually generated a stronger emotional reaction than anything happening out on that battlefield.

Sasha stared out at the cameras and the continuing parade of violence. She heard Manny cursing under his breath. She heard Nana Yazzie fight back a sob. But Sasha felt nothing. Save, perhaps, a bit of jealousy.

Roland.

The scene out by the Brazos felt less like a battlefield and more like a playground. This might be the highest I’ve ever been, he thought as he broke a man’s neck with the back of his hand. Bullets whizzed by as a few of the braver soldiers tried to cover the retreat of their comrades. Most of them, even the drivers, had abandoned their transports. Hundreds of men were already wading into the river, tearing off their armor and tossing aside their weapons as they plunged in.

The Heavenly Kingdom’s army would not rally anytime soon.

A Martyr turned and drew his knife in a feeble attempt at resistance. Roland caved in the man’s sternum with a fist and squashed his heart like a junebug. Ten meters ahead he saw three soldiers, preparing to make their stand behind an overturned flatbed truck. As he ran, Roland grabbed a discarded rifle off the ground. A Thompson submachine gun, he realized. It didn’t feel like a reproduction either. Roland brought the gun up to his shoulder–

–the Thompson gun bucked in his hand. Roland laughed as he danced through the charnel house that had once been a forward operating base. Most of the National Guardsmen were dead, but his nose told him one of them was still in the game. Roland turned past a Hesco and saw the young man, half propped up against a pile of sandbags. The boy held a hand to the bleeding hole in his gut. His black face was bloodless-pale and young. SO young. Roland didn’t know if he’d ever seen a soldier who looked that young. There was something familiar about the boy’s face.

“R– Roland?” the kid said. And recognition dawned in Roland’s eyes–

–and then he was back. He was about fifty yards further ahead than he’d been before he blacked out. The Thompson gun was still in his hand, pointed at a man twelve yards to his left who was scrambling to get a wire-guided rocket launcher into a firing position. Roland put a bullet through his brain. He turned, past the burning wreck of a semi truck. A dozen bullets impacted his chest and side. Then three Martyrs charged him, their bayonets fixed–

–the hit wasn’t bad. Nothing but a flesh wound. Skullfucker Mike looked worse; he’d lost most of his left arm. Topaz had taken three rounds to the dome but she was still firing her Dragunov. Roland’s mind stretched into the city of Dallas around them. There were a lot of men coming their way. But those men were mostly police, SWAT officers. Nothing substantial. No one who could stop them from getting this bomb where it needed to–

“–go!” Roland screamed as he broke his Thompson gun over the skull of another Martyr. Then he reeled back and dropped the gun. That last memory had felt different, like he’d unlocked something. Roland shook his head. The last Martyr in front of him broke and ran. Roland didn’t even think to chase him. His head hurt, in a way he couldn’t remember it ever hurting before. What the hell is going on? It had all started the second he’d thought about–

“The bomb is small as nukes go. Just about one megaton. It matches the ones at Fort Leonard Wood. The Guardian already released the hacked documents, showing the government considered bombing several of the separatist camps. I think we can trust the American people to put two and two together.”

Jim smiled. Roland did not. This was his plan, but he didn’t like it. He knew, though, that it was the only way forward for the Revolution.

“There has to be another way,” said Skullfucker Mike. “This feels wrong. Really really wr–”

The floodgates of Roland’s mind opened, and a tidal wave of memory swept him away. He dropped to his knees. The Martyrs around him had fled, too shocked and awed to take advantage of his vulnerability. The battle drugs were gone now, or at least he couldn’t feel them anymore. Hundreds of memories assaulted his consciousness. Thousands.

For the first time in years, Roland knew who he’d been. Who he was again.

I’m back.

Roland stood. He took one halting step forward, and then another, and then he leaned against the frame of a broken APC for a little while as he pictured his mother’s face and voice for the first time in years. He wanted to sob. But there was no time.

He knew who he was now. And he knew what he was bound to do if he stayed this way. Roland’s conscience wouldn’t allow that. So he trudged forward until he found the right tool; a hand-held automatic grenade launcher, clutched in the dead hands of a Martyr.

He took the weapon and sat, cross-legged, in the blood-soaked Texas dirt. Roland looked up at the sky one last time and allowed himself a long moment to remember his parents, and his brother, and the day he and Topaz had first met.

And then he closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.

Manny.

Nana Yazzie, Sasha, Donald Farris, and Manny had all rushed to a transport as soon as Roland’s face showed up on the screen. It seems the drones either didn’t know, or didn’t care enough to separate dead friends from dead foes. Maybe that was the point.

Nana Yazzie drove. It took about six minutes for the shiny green jeep to make its way over the broken roads and toward the site of the battle. No one spoke.

They reached the battlefield. There are so many dead people. Manny had seen a lot of carnage in his life, but nothing like this. The stenches of burning flesh, opened bowels, and burning fuel were so overwhelming they almost knocked him down. Donald Farris and Nana Yazzie looked just as queasy. Only Sasha weathered the sights and smells with calm. She stayed focused enough to spot Skullfucker Mike in the mess and direct Nana Yazzie his way.

Rolling Fuck’s soldiers were out in force. They stalked through the killing fields in groups of four or five, searching for survivors or just looking for loot. Mike stood with Topaz and Kishori and a couple of chromed who Manny didn’t recognize. Most of them were seated by a handful of large metal crates in the center of what had once been a large playground. Oh god.

The dead men here had been torn apart. There was so much blood, more than Manny had ever seen. It sluiced around on the concrete like some sort of macabre kiddy pool. The jeep came to a wet stop in front of the group. The act of braking sent a spray of gore out across Skullfucker Mike’s legs.

“Hey,” he said, “what are you all doing here?”

“Roland!” Manny said. “What happened to Roland?!”

Mike looked confused. Topaz raised his head to look at them. Manny was surprised to see tears rolling down his face. His lip trembled a bit, but when he spoke there was steel and fury in his voice.

“He decided to keep killing. I’m sure he’s still killing now.”

“No,” Manny said. “He’s dead…or that’s what the drones said. We have to find him.”

“Get out of that seat,” Mike said to Nana Yazzie. “I’m driving.”

In an instant, Topaz’s tears stopped and, before Manny could say anything, Topaz hopped in the back seat of the jeep.

“Fast,” Topaz told Skullfucker Mike as he took over from Nana Yazzie. “Go very fast.”

It didn’t take long to find him. Roland’s route through the army was painted in red. Hundreds of dead men, maybe more than a thousand, made a clear path with their corpses. That path didn’t end until they were almost at the Brazos, and they saw where Roland had fallen.

Roland’s armored body was splayed out limp, next to the carcass of an old semi truck. There were two very dead men directly in front of them, but neither of them looked to have done him in. Roland hadn’t gone down to enemy fire. He’d jammed a very large gun in his mouth and blown the top off of his head. To all signs, and to all logic, he looked dead.

Donald Farris shook his head and muttered something. Sasha just stared. Nana Yazzie put her hand on Manny’s shoulder.

“He was–” she started to say. But she was interrupted—as Roland lifted his ruined head to look at them. His eyes were still unfocused. Blood drooled down his nose, out of his mouth, and down from the gaping exit wound in his forehead. He spit out several teeth. Manny saw daylight through his skull. But still, Roland was able to speak.

“Who the fuck are you people?” he asked.