She ran toward the caterpillar, or as much of a run as she could manage, anyway. Scott grabbed her by the back of the shirt, yanked her and threw her back across the room. She crashed into a peppermint elf, her shattered ribs sending jets of fire across her torso. She coughed up blood.
Scott said, “Why don’t you just sit tight for a sec. We’re gonna wait for Molech to get here, right about…” Scott held a finger in the air. “Now.”
The wall behind them exploded. Chunks of plaster rained down on Scott and Zoey, and a cold wind rushed in from the courtyard. Molech strode through the dust cloud, brushing bits of plaster off of his superhero costume. At least five henchmen had followed him, all of them looked greatly amused.
Molech glanced down at where Will was sprawled, then looked at Scott.
“What, you started without me?”
“What can I say. Juice don’t wait.”
“That it does not.”
Molech loomed over Zoey. She tried to back away, scooting backward on her butt, nowhere to go. Molech watched with annoyed disdain.
“Tell me, piglet, what story were you telling yourself up to now? What world did you think you were living in? Don’t you get that I’ve been preparing my whole life for this? What have you been preparing for? Don’t bother—I actually know the answer to that question, and you don’t. See, a gazelle goes out and eats grass because it thinks it’s feeding itself. But it’s not. It’s feeding the lion. It’s fattening itself up, to be food. It doesn’t know it, but it was born to be prey—that is its only purpose. So what purpose do you think a dumb trailer turd with no self-esteem and big tits serves, in a world of true men? Maybe I’ll let one of my boys show you. Maybe I’ll let all of them show you.”
Zoey said, “It’s like you have Rape Threat Tourette’s Syndrome.”
“My favorite part? It’s that exact moment when the defiance turns into terror. About fifteen seconds from now, I’d say.”
Zoey reared back and kicked him as hard as she could in the groin, but it appeared the codpiece wasn’t just decorative. Molech didn’t even flinch.
“Well,” he said, “just for that…”
Molech raised up a boot, brought it down, and effortlessly snapped Zoey’s right leg below the knee. Both bones splintered, jutting out of the skin. Zoey was unable to scream, she had torn up her vocal chords too much. She could only lay there, and squeeze her eyes and try to block out the pain. To block out everything.
On the other side of the room, the caterpillar clunked and hissed and wound down. A beep announced its production of object “Zoey” was finished. A little late for that, she thought.
Zoey forced herself to look down and, for the first time, saw part of the inside of her own body, white bone jutting out around ragged muscle and fat from her lower leg, blood soaking through her ripped jeans. She felt herself about to pass out, when she heard a soft meow. Stench Machine had arrived, having tracked down his wounded owner a second time, there to offer whatever assistance he could. It didn’t amount to much.
Zoey hugged him and Molech said, “T-Bone, kill that goddamned cat.”
Zoey’s scream of protest was barely a sound, but she couldn’t stop it. The henchman known as T-Bone reached for Stench Machine, but the cat slipped out of his grasp, streaking away through the ragged hole in the wall Molech had punched open.
T-Bone giggled as he watched him go, but Molech said, “No, go get it. I want you to pull it apart in front of her.”
Zoey said, “Please don’t. Just … please.”
“Go get the cat.”
T-Bone obeyed, chuckling as he ran into the courtyard.
To Scott, Molech said, “You got the camera? Good. Frame me up. This is about to become the Zoey Show.”
Scott brought up the camera, and they arranged the scene to get Molech in the foreground, with the shattered Zoey in the background. They had to pause to move a table out of the way. Then Molech insisted on getting the feed to play on the wall, so he could check it from time to time, see how it all looked.
Finally they got it arranged to Molech’s satisfaction and he said into the camera, “All right, everybody, we got a little off track with our show, but’s all good now. I’m glad this happened, really. I prefer things to be a bit more intimate, if you know what I mean.”
T-Bone reappeared at the ragged hole in the wall and said, “Man, there’s a bunch of trees and stuff out there. That cat is gon—”
There was a roar, and a white blur, and suddenly everyone was shouting.
T-Bone was on his back, with a white Siberian tiger on top of him, ripping his throat out.
Amidst the chaos, Zoey rolled over, and tried to move. Black spots danced in front of her eyes. The pain had blown out the circuits in her brain, she couldn’t even tell if she was feeling it anymore. She dragged herself on her elbows, toward the caterpillar. One of her splintered leg bones got caught against a chair leg, and she passed out.
She had no idea how long she was out. Maybe a few seconds. When she woke up again, it was to the sound of screams, tiger roars, and heavy, meaty punches. She dragged herself again, toward the caterpillar, toward the chute at the end. Nothing on her body worked other than her arms—everything was either numbness or blinding pain. She pulled herself along the black and white checkerboard tile, so slowly, the second time in this ordeal she had felt like she was living one of those nightmares where you run and run and never reach the end of the hall, some horror lurking behind you.
Zoey reached the chute, stopped to breathe, and to try to focus her eyes. Behind her, she heard horrific sounds of a man killing a wild animal. She glanced back and saw Molech stand and laugh, blood on his metal fists. She didn’t have much time. She had no time. They would notice her; they would be on her in one second.
Zoey pushed herself up on her hands, unable to stand. She pulled herself up so she could reach into the into the caterpillar’s delivery basket. She reached in, blindly, and grabbed the object the catalog of schematics knew only as “Zoey.”
It was a football helmet.
Zoey thought, that bastard, and blacked out.