Flowing from shadow to shadow, like spilled ink, Kumo was glad to be in the air again. In the clone skin she was free to move. Her mind flashed in many directions, like a jar of released fireflies—each thought having its own reason and purpose. It was already cold, below freezing by many degrees. The scent of the river was chilling into the air, and dropping. Kumo followed it toward the charter house. JuJube didn’t think she had noticed where they were going that day—the day he borrowed the solar car to bring her here. But she did. Kumo noticed everything.
The part of her mind that was ticking so ominously made her wonder about JuJube again. What was it? Everything was all wrong. She kept thinking about the daruma doll. The one she had hung on the door handle of the closet. Then her mind flashed to the shrunken heads, veered away from the thought, and circled back. She pulled it out again. Yeah, there it was. Dammit all to hell. There was something about that one shrunken head that faced the others. She stood in the alley a second, waiting a moment before crossing a path lit by solar-powered lights. It was late. A nasty feeling stung her in the spine. What was it? Shit. Her heart beat fast from fear and from outrage. The head was David’s. Well wasn’t it? She wasn’t sure. She’d have to find that out though, later.
And Motler nothing more than a Navvy data retriever. She wondered why, as she trotted across a filth-filled alley. She pulled her thoughts away from Motler, from JuJube, like she pulled dead skin away from a blister.
The Pinkies. She had her skull juggler’s plan. Was it only in the circus that leopards and clowns met? She had sparking rosettes of hate etched on her soul. The Pinkies represented everything she hated about men—all men. The male animal with a sharp rump and no memories. She was female—and not even a fashalt at that. To her world, she was only a varmint with sex organs. Welcome as a rabid badger. How many rough blows had she suffered? How many times had she been an unwilling step for the selfish souls of her fellow opposite gender? And the Pinkies, so white and so male, were like living stiff boots of conquerors. A flame of desire warmed her murderous expectation. It paced from eye to eye.
The snow came quickly, white hornets stinging in the thin atmospheric night. It stopped as suddenly as it fell. Cut out of the sky with huge shears of cold air.
Kumo picked up her pace, her soft boots like paw pads in the squeaky, grey snow. She hesitated, listening with her inner instincts more than with her ears—and then she dashed off to the right. She was used to the gnawing cold—a night wanderer—but she knew when to burrow in for the evening. She wasn’t actually warm in the clone suit—even though the Mikan thermals had been chemically altered with Vigowear polytherm, but she could function well enough until she was able to dig into some polytherm packing straw. She felt naked without the jacket Pink Fly had ruined. One woman naked under God.
“God?” she whispered.
Rituals ran the streets like stray dogs. The full Eucharist moon passed between her lips, fell on her tongue. She didn’t chew—but felt its fossil weight on her mind. Its ancient bone bread filled her whole being. The stars were still in the sky, steely snipers waiting for their chance to get in a clear shot.
Kumo stopped in her tracks and then sank to the ground in a sheet of moonlight. Kneeling there, head bowed, she welcomed that familiar feeling. Some old wyekan—wandering and searching for a willing host—pounced on her and snarled. Kumo growled with intention. A vision of the method washed over her mind and a laugh crept up her throat. The Pinkies would meet their justice. Call in the bears, she thought, the little bastards will mock no more.
She spat at the image and the spit froze almost before it hit the ground.
“Oh no,” she said aloud. She was certain she wasn’t going to make it before the cold quick-froze her—but she ran anyway—lungs bursting and legs already cramping. Instead of running down to the river, she ran back along the tracks towards Tommy’s tank.
In only a few blocks she began to slow. The coughs were beginning, shaking her and racking up flecks of blood that fell as black diamonds in the snow. The ice had formed a glassine mask over her leather one. Her goggles and suit were frosting with rime. Her limbs were wood and her lungs refused to accept the frigid air—they hurt. Her nostrils stung. She stopped, bent over, and began beating her hands against her shoulders. Suddenly Kumo stood bolt upright. She cupped her hands to her mouth and began to yell.
“Tommy! Toooommmmmmmyyyyy!”
Uchida, deep in the warmth of his reconstructed chemical tank, head bent low over the worktable, hands full of tiny instruments, and with circuits, vacuum tubes, wires all spread out before him, cocked his head. Someone needs me, he thought. Then he shrugged. They all need me. He decided to ignore the call—but then again, he pricked up his ears and listened to the tiny, gnatlike voice whispering in his enhanced ear.
There was something remarkable and irresistible about the timbre of the voice.
Tommy jumped up, knocking over pieces of metal and delicate components. He hurried on his Vigowear and grabbed a hot snap blanket. In a second or two he was out the door. His arti legs pumping faster than those of a normal human. His arti lungs unaffected by the cold. In a few minutes he stood by the trembling Kumo, who was laughing uncontrollably, coughing blood, complaining of being hot, and attempting to take off her suit.
The first stages of hypothermia had already set in. Tommy rushed her into the hot pack and locked it up—then proceeded to carry her the full quarter mile back to his chemical tank. Tommy was shaking his head at her and gesturing for her to sit down again and drink up. He loved using the signing, his hands singing in the air.
His graceful gestures had a nostalgic, calming effect on Kumo. She was mesmerized by his movements and understood the signing well enough.
Finally, she sighed and buried her face in the warm blankets. Tommy could barely stand the velvety feel of her muffled sentences.
“Those insect collectors torment me for fun. Every day I have to burrow into pain. Those handicapped dogs shove muzzles in shit piles. I am a free predator! I don’t want their petty domestics. To hell with their pus-filled pastimes. Why don’t they get sick and die? Putrid dogs. No better than old people, wiggers put out to die by stingy relatives. I only want to be left alone.”
Kumo jerked an arm toward the wiredog screens. Tommy’s head slumped onto his chest and he sniggered.
Tommy made the sign for a Pink Fly and then ran a quick gesture across his neck.
“I’ve had it. Here, look at this mess, Tommy.” She stood up and turned her back and dropped the blanket so that he could see.
Tommy stared at her for a long time. His masks were off, showing his beautiful and smooth face. His heavy black eyebrows shot up. Droplets of sweat ran down his face. He signed for a fly again.
“ ‘Endgame,’ says the spider to the fly.” She made a sound like two wet stones clacking together.
Tommy nodded.
“And, Tommy…” She gave a great cough and crumpled back into the polytherm. “…I’m going to need your help.”
An inscrutable smile crept across Tommy’s features.
“To make Kumonosu.”
Tommy laughed a low, sinister laugh.
“You’re smarter than I thought, Tommy. Smarter than anyone thought.”
Kumo coughed again, her arms cramped with a tremendous charley horse, but she said nothing. They hurt, but she was used to these cramps now. Nothing had been the same since her time in the crane.
She lay back on the sleeping platform and looked at Tommy’s tank. The stray junk was gone and replaced with boxes and crates and cartons of spare parts and wire. The walls were covered with high-tech panels, patch cords, monitors at every angle, components with the guts ripped out, blinking digital lights, whirring reels, laser discs, transformers, sparking cables, and digital UV meters. Kumo let her eye rove around the tank until it settled on Tommy’s old stained and tattered motorcycle jacket.
“Can I have that old jacket, Tommy?”
He shrugged. “Help yourself. It’s my fishing jacket.”
Kumo made a face, but she still wanted it. She got up stiffly and went over to it. She lifted it off the hook. It smelled more like clone leather than fish. As she was about to put it on, one of the fishhooks sewn under the lapel snagged her finger. She pulled back the barb and lifted it out, smiling.
Kumo was confused by the tank. It contained at least two million credits’ worth of equipment. An electrical chemical smell tainted her lungs. She approached the walls. Sixteen monitors registered her. The rest recorded some distant scene she didn’t recognize. A nasty schemer had siphoned all this stuff off and plopped it right into Tommy’s tank. A “master plan.” Probably the whim of some rich Japanese. Some government KGIs?
KGI. Cagey Eye. “I wish I was rich,” she said aloud. She brought the jacket back to the bed and set it beside her.
This time Tommy laughed and was verbal. “What would you do if you were rich, Kumo?”
“I’d buy one of your best Karakuri market pairs. I’d move out into the country with plenty of holo material and solar packs and food and jugs of scotch.”
“The country! There’s nothing out there but those closed-down genetic reservations, frozen deserts, and howling winds.”
“I’d burrow into the ground like a badger. Every night I’d sit on the mound and wait.”
“Wait! What would you wait for?”
“For the coyotes to come.”
Tommy laughed again, howled like a wolf, and sniggered.
“Not like that. Coyotes yippiteroooo. They have a lot to say. You know who I mean, the genetic tribes on all those old Nature Conservancy lands.”
“They have hunters there all the time now, running missiles with joy-sticks to kill the genetic trophies. You’d die out there pretty fast I expect.” Tommy was grim again.
“I’ll die in here pretty fast too.”
“No, don’t worry about it. We’ll fix those Pinkies.”
“Yes, I’ll fix those Pinkies. But there are always the Hoodoos and their zombie minions, and Mikans, and people who act like friends, but only want to break you apart and suck the marrow from your bones.”
“You can’t expect the tribes to take you in. Out there you would be alone. You’ll be one of the people, but a tribe of one.”
Kumo nodded. “Yes, that’s the biggest luxury of all—isn’t it?”
“I don’t think they made many WIs. I think that was some twisted joke. They don’t want intelligent animals like you out there, scheming like wolverines to smash their caches.”
Kumo shrugged. “There might be a Ba tribe.” Kumo had been thinking of it.
“Genetics were a waste of everyone’s time. All you got were creatures who were too smart to be animals and too vicious to be humans.”
Kumo grunted. “But hardier than both, Tommy. There’s a lot to be said for the integrity of mixed genes. A sort of mongrel vigor.”
“Can’t see leaving the Earth peopled with savages.”
“It’s how we started. Anyway, which do you prefer, enhanced psychopathic tin men like yourself to lead the masses?”
“Lead the masses. Is that how you see it?”
“Isn’t that what you’re planning? Set yourself up as some kinda messiah and then have the flock follow you. Fools. Where are you gonna lead those people?”
“Just where they always wanted to go.”
Kumo looked at him from the side of her wide eyes as he came slowly down the ladder. “Where’s that?”
“To hell,” Tommy whispered.
Kumo stood up and walked toward him. “I thought you were a man-god, Tommy. Just what are you and the Mikans doing?”
She moved further into the camera angle. There was a brief hesitation and then a chorus of voice-print perfections in sixteen different languages shouted her words back at her. Kumo let her jaw drop open. Sixteen computer-altered holo images of her dropped their jaws. She saw herself as Asian, black, white, Indian, blond, and even as a bipedal badger with a short muzzle and a black mask. Kumo pointed to that one and Tommy laughed long and hard.
“You’re a fucking revolutionist. Sonuvabitch.” Kumo looked at him in fear and distrust. “How can you be a revolutionist in this nest of fascism?”
“I have many—friends.”
“Do you?” Kumo sniffed suspiciously. “I never saw any.”
“These are powerful friends.”
Kumo grunted. “Revolutionary fascists I suppose. The worst kind of madness.”
The holos kept talking back to her in their own languages.
She grimaced. “This place is like some ETS self-monitoring shuttle.” Something crackled and showered them with sparks. Tommy swore, and then moved his squeaking scaffolding and climbed back up to do repairs.
“It’s a special project.” He called down to her. “You’ll know all about it in a few days. Everyone will.”
Kumo sensed a very disagreeable feeling about the “everyone will,” but she just stared at Tommy amidst the chaos of wires with dumb awe. He worked skillfully and adeptly as a spider mending its complex webwork. He was so far ahead of her that while she’d been peering in the mist he came up behind her to pass again.
“I already guessed, Tommy. You and those Mikans. Nobody’s really going to China are they? Where are they going?”
Tommy laughed then, guffawed so that flakes of rust fell down on the boxes.
“You know everything, my tupu friend.”
Kumo frowned. “Let me use some of this shit, Tommy. I’ve got parasites. I need a CPU with a skinhead’s K of bubble.”
He waved at her. “You work over there.” He pointed at a cam CPU and an empty box table. “Tommy finishes up here. Don’t talk anymore okay? You’re annoying.”
“Yeah? Well fuck you too, brother.” Kumo jerked her chin at him, but immediately forgot him as she conferred with the system. She booted up the appropriate software, and remote-accessed her files in the locker. One by one she digitally fed the images into the memory.
This was going to be a good flytrap. Prayers of steel. Hopes of steel. Ruins of steel. Stainless steel death.
When she looked up, the high-res shots on Tommy’s monitors had zoomed into somebody’s private Mickey dwelling. Straight satellite work. He’d tied into that too.
She looked up at him, saw his stern face.
“I won’t,” she replied, and went back to work. About four hours later Tommy interrupted her with coffee and some glo-nuts.
“I hate sanpuru. It’s like eating soft wax.”
Kumo popped one of the bite-sized glo-nuts in her mouth. “Those Mikans are pure, crazy, fanatical shit, man.”
“You prefer Hoodoo hamburgers?” Tommy asked dryly.
“I prefer a private, personal God with manna made out of real food.”
“No such deity.”
“No?” Kumo asked. “You don’t know anything about a God, Tommy. You’re just a karakuri ningyo.”
Tommy gave an annoyed laugh. “It’s absurd. Why should an animal want God simply because it’s given the gift of human speech?”
He came up close behind Kumo and traced the collar of purple on Kumo’s bare neck.
“What’s this?”
Kumo laughed. “Sukoshi kega o shimashita.”
“How did it happen?”
“It had to do with my part of a performance piece. I made a misjudgment.” Kumo spoke sadly.
“Very crazy, those fucking artists.”
“Yes, that’s right, Tommy. You’re the sane one, yes? You dropped out. Kerist, I have bad dreams about all of this, Tommy. Here, lean down.” He leaned down and she pushed his hank of black hair away from his forehead.
“What’s this?”
“Thought I might find seven horns or something.” Kumo gave him a faint smile.
Tommy shook his head, put his arms around Kumo. “Let’s not worry about God so much, Kumo. Animals have no souls. You should rejoice in that.”
“And what about angels, Tommy? Don’t they have souls either?”
Tommy looked straight ahead. “No, angels are like eagles or tigers. They have no mercy, just a cold brilliance and glittering eyes watching for prey.”
Kumo shuddered. No, Tommy wasn’t going to China. She couldn’t see it even though she was certain he had connections straight from Japan.
She leaned her head back against Tommy’s chest. She knew he was a snuff, couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t loved her into oblivion. And the strangest thing of all was that the only place she felt safe in this crazy world was here, in Tommy’s tank. Her lids closed over her feral eyes. Her skin was satin and amber, yet marred with scrabbled tissue and hundreds of scars from the hard life she’d seen.
Still, she had a way of moving, and stretching, a large erotic animal offering some sandalwood-scented secret to Tommy’s skin and steel. He pressed his mouth to her bare shoulder, while pushing her back on the bed, his left hand supported her head as they flowed down, to the thick quilts and the soft buttery light of the heated lamp. Kumo rolled away from Tommy, holding his advances away with her shoulder. She turned over on her stomach, shielding breasts that she was ashamed of. But Tommy only laughed. He crouched over her like a puma. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to her hands and knees. Kumo made a low dangerous sound, but Tommy put one of his hands on the back of her neck and clamped hard enough to keep her immobile. Once she was still a moment, he entered her, gripping her hard to force their movements.
Afterwards, when they were lying side by side, Kumo placed his hand on his mirror, her face.
“What does this mean, Tommy? What are we?”
“Cub scouts.” He stretched and rolled over on his stomach.
“Huh?” She slapped him on the backside.
He shrugged. “From the same litter maybe.”
“You mean this is incest?”
They both sniggered. Kumo elbowed him playfully in the ribs.
“Tommy, tell me your genetic profile.”
“Why?”
“I want to know everything.”
“I can guess why you want to know.”
“Can you?” Kumo smiled brightly.
“You’ve figured out everything.”
Kumo looked up into his smooth face. “I had it in a dream. Remember, I’m just a dumb beast with a gift to speak.”
“An obstreperous animal who dreams of having a soul.” Tommy laughed. “And the odds?”
“It would be a kind of final miracle.”
“Hu-Wi-SL-…”
“Ba?” Kumo asked.
Tommy looked at her and laughed. They both laughed, slapping their knees. They had this final secret then.
“This is a good time to die, sister!”
Kumo choked on her laughter, and then nodded solemnly at him.
“It is.”
In the low morning sun, the rusty, abandoned steelworks glowed blood-red. It was only two blocks from Tommy’s tank. Kumo photoread most of the interior into the CPU and then, from there, made the appropriate adjustments.
From Tommy she asked for twelve sound chips. He produced them cheerfully, working alongside her from time to time to rid the world of Pinkeye flies. Normally, Pinkies were below his notice—but now that they had been called to his attention, he wanted the whole holy world rid of them.
While she worked, Kumo whistled fragments of a strange tune called “Second Object”—and then laughed at the irony of it all.
It only took a few hours for Kumo to transfer Tommy’s stabilizing cameras, deflected beams, portable lasers, and mirrors to the steelworks.
“I’ll bring them back,” she told Tommy as she noticed him watching her move the junk.
“Not necessary. I’m finished with them.”
Kumo shrugged but she was affected by his blatant extravagance.
She soon moved her bedroll into the steelworks. Her eyes burned at night as she tried to get warm in the polytherm packing straw she dragged into the icehot furnace.
A couple of days later, Kumo went back to Tommy’s tank. He was gone and the whole drum seemed to thrum with the tension of the anticipation of his return. She took a sonic shower, oiled her clone suit, and rustled out the rest of the glo-nuts. Then, feeling the cold pressure of so many waiting machines, she dashed out and hurried straight to market.
This week was to be her scene in the sun, as Motler was wont to say. This had been scheduled for months. Kumo had the same piece ready for some length of time. Though she couldn’t see how it related anymore. Nothing related. Kumo was nervous. Now Motler was in charge of the set at market, not Tanaka as always had been.
She trotted through her old section and hunted up the number-seven boxcar. It was still uninhabited, smelling a bit too civetlike for even the lowliest vermin.
The graffiti had all changed to Hoodoo. The Mikan signs were mostly rubbed out or holoed over. Kumo didn’t recognize any street deities but they all looked the same, skinny, skull faced, and square toothed with spooky pop-eyes. “Boring,” she said aloud.
The charter house was bereft of even the crimestop holo. The bento stall drums were full of black goo and the smell of rotten meat covered the area.
Packs of wiggers flowed around the corners of the streets, but even they were looking more wraithlike than ever. The rocky-goat sign at market was toppled. The whole market seemed deserted of anyone she knew. JuJube was nowhere in sight. Dori was dead. David—dead. Yugi, dead. Amos gone to the Bell Factory. She hurried to the Japanese craft section. Kanda was off to China too. Where was JuJube? she wondered. The station was deathly quiet for a market and cleaned up like a corpse in preparation for burial.
She brought up the holo on a small viewer. There was the white flag with the red circle just exactly center. And as the camera zoomed on the red spot, the lines became distinct and the viewer could see that it was a huge red spider. The white web glittered with dew diamonds and three large bundles bounced on the web. The first bundle contained a hollow sugar egg. Inside the egg from a cutaway end, one could see a little fairyland of blue skies and sun and butterflies on daisies. The second bundle contained a giant worker ant. Its mandibles were large, but it was unable to turn its head to free itself from the web. The third bundle struggled with an angry buzz. It was a large wasp whose stinger was immobilized in silk. Its wings could only move enough to give the creature the illusion that it was freeing itself.
Suddenly, with a giant heave, the red spider launched herself into the air, and floated away on a parachute of web. The victims were left to blacken in the sun, with no merciful bite or anesthetizing sting.
Kumo set the holo up in a temp view from her locker and watched it three times. When she checked back into the scene she noticed the Friendly Navvys were standing by. Their golden banners were limp with no wind, and the wiredogs were strangely stationary. They were all watching her holo with opaque black eyes and set, grimacing masks. She looked straight back at them. Their numbers had dwindled. Like missing yellowjackets in late fall, after a good hard frost.
Kumo turned off the holo and bowed to them. One of them, a sergeant, bowed back, then the others did, quick to follow suit.
Kumo walked away slowly, and stiffly. You could always appeal to the protocol of a Navvy. That’s what made them bearable.
That evening Kumo climbed to her vantage point from the warehouse and shouted at the Pinkies below who were performing their boring little ritual with the salt and suds.
She got a head start on them, but it wasn’t long before all thirteen Pink Flies buzzed down the alleyway on the way to the steelworks.
The chase she led them on was almost too easy and she wondered if they were on some kind of brain-cell-crisping drug.
They followed her straight into her holographic web at the steelworks. Kumo was nervous. It was going too well.
When she hit the switch at the door, they all poured in after her. They all shouted at the metal doors when they slammed shut. Realizing that Kumo was also locked in with them, their howls of rage turned to sinister laughter and hoots of derision.
They felt the sounds before they heard them, strange thrummings and thuds. In a short time the derelict steelworks had suddenly come to life. A switch clicked on, whooshed, and then let out a high-pitched keening. The rusted hulks of gears suddenly began to turn. The rust flaked off in the movement. Shining steel and black grease gleamed with naked intent. A pit opened before them and a huge bucket swung out and began to tilt with a high squeal and thunk.
The Pinkies shrieked with horror as a waterfall of molten red steel came cascading down, surprisingly heatless in the iron room. The walls began to shimmer red, then orange.
They milled about in terror but Mute Fly began shouting, “No, not…! Wait—it’s a holo!” After more shouting, the others began to calm, but the yells turned to whimpers as one of the walls began to melt and a big jagged hole opened into it. The sounds of the chips was deafening now and the subsonic levels did more to frighten them than what their eyes told them.
Mute motioned for them to go through the hole, and reluctantly, they did. Kumo was standing at the far end of room—smiling. They took a few steps into the room and then stopped. They weren’t on solid ground, but four hundred feet in the air with the city dizzyingly far below. The Pinkies stood on a steel girder two feet wide and Kumo was poised on another girder beckoning to them.
“Pinkbooties!” She laughed. All of them at once sat down on the girder, unable to move for a moment despite the fact that they knew it was just an illusion. One of the men stood up and yelled.
“It’s solid, solid!” He jumped off the edge to show them and screamed all the four hundred feet down. CPUs adjusted to movement. He’d only fallen five feet but was now out of sight. The real Kumo was waiting below in a trench and she hit the Pinkie over the head and knocked him out. She tied and gagged him—then stalked the other twelve.
The rest of them scaled the imaginary beam and entered a room full of catwalks and running motors. Glowing steel ingots moved on a conveyer belt. The pings of metal and throbbing sound of huge machinery were loud enough to stun them temporarily. One of the men fell to his knees with blood pouring from his nose and ears. The whole structure of the building shimmered like an image in a heat wave.
The sound grew louder and then dropped. Five Kumos stood staring at them. The leader noticed the hesitancy of the Pinkies and screamed. “Bash them—bash them all!!!”
As they jumped forward and began swinging wildly—for none of these were Kumo—they looked around to see their own number increased. All of them had quadrupled now, all of them and their selves were swinging. It wasn’t long before they started swinging at each other. Out of chance and pure ferocity, they sometimes smacked one another just for the satisfaction of connecting with something solid. Leaders were screaming in quadruple for them to knock it off—and they did, but not before a good deal of damage was done.
The images stopped hitting each other. There were a lot less of them now. The real Kumo called to them while fake ones looked on at her. The Pinkies swung chains forward and ran toward her. She disappeared into another room which was all gleaming steel and quiet. No machinery moved, no metal glowed molten. There was a sound like a huge metal handle moving, and thunks like some iron chain slipping. The men and their holo clones looked up and around.
Camera eyes revealed themselves out of reach. A high window burst inwards with a shattering of glass and bent steel. Something black and slimy rushed through the window with a gurgling, sucking sound. It not only looked and sounded disgusting—it smelled horrible. From the far end of the corridor, a wave of the black-brown stuff flowed. Too late to run. The wash of shit lashed around their legs.
Nobody paid much attention to the river of effluvium, they were too riveted on what was floating on the top, huge maggots with evil, lamprey mouths and rows of teeth. These rapidly attacked the holo images with insect fury. The holo images were screaming and going down in the current with the maggots on their faces and torsos.
Other Pinkies tried to help but rarely got a grasp on anything real. When one Pink touched another by accident, the other was sure it was the maggots and struck out blindly and viciously.
The wave of shit passed as rapidly as it had come and the Pinkies that were left stood in the emptied hall panting, staring at each other, wondering who was real and who wasn’t. Suddenly one of the leaders started screaming and clawing at his face. Parts of his face fell off in ulcer orange clusters, fingers and hands fell off. Instant leprosy plagued them all. Immense bottle-green flies flew around them, buzzing ominously. When someone fell he was instantly covered with filthy iridescent flies who would partially consume him and leave a mass of glutinous eggs on what was left. Pinkies began throwing up and slipping in their own puddles of vomit.
Mute Fly was too quick for it and ignored the decaying corpses of his holographic gang members. He followed a long pink tongue waving at him from a small vent and crawled down the shaft of it into another room. His own tongue was now wood in his mouth. He called out to Kumo.
“Aiy now yo in vere!” he screamed. “I mow yo fo what yo are! Come hya! Kumo!!! Faaaaiiiighht!”
Kumo dropped down before him from a junked heister. She was crimson in the cold light of the holo, once again showing a molten furnace all around them. Maggots and roaches crawled along the floor, devouring each other, and carrying phalluses and pieces of testicle in their mandibles.
The Mute stared at her, refusing to look at the insects, though he shuddered. The walls crawled with flaming cockroaches. Some of the roaches were impervious to fire, but others sizzled, charred, and fell in a blackened heap. The whole derelict steam-works had a potent sulfuric smell to it.
The Mute Fly glared at her with hot, cornered rage. Sweat rolled into his eyes and he shook his head. He lunged forward and then jumped back as her sides were ripped open and eight hairy legs thrust through.
Another Kumo came in a side door, a ruby-black Kumo. This one, too, burst open like an overfilled tick. A spider’s legs and mandibles jerked through torn skin. Blood-filled laughter coated the room. A third Kumo came into the room and hissed at Mute Fly. This time when he jumped, his guess was correct. He shat and came in his clone suit as he grabbed her. The elation of connecting with the actual Kumo almost made him faint.
Kumo yowled triumphantly as she heard the remaining Pinkies get rerouted to a room of metal horror. Just as suddenly, she froze and allowed Mute Fly to beat her.
Something was wrong. There was another presence here. A faint smell of onion and cumin rolled down the corridors. Mixed with this was the smell of rotting meat.
She didn’t like what her mind was telling her, no revenge should be so complete. These were not screams of terror, but of pain.
Mute Fly dropped her in fear at the analogue cries. Real Pinkies were screaming in living pain.
Kumo and Mute Fly were both stunned. Mute Fly turned to run but Kumo grabbed him.
“No—wait,” she yelled as he struggled. “Hoodoo!”
“Shit!” he screamed back at her, obviously thinking she was in league with them. He broke free and ran.
Kumo staggered to her feet and trotted after him. Her limbs were weighted down with dread. Those shitting zombies. Goddamn them. They’d been following her and now had them all trapped in here. Her bowels sloshed with liquid ice. She just wanted to hide.
Fly turned into a room with a polished steel floor, took a step forward, and fell into stagnant icy water. Kumo slid to a stop just behind him and, teetering on the edge, was able to right her balance before going into the water. She knew nothing about this fluid. It wasn’t part of her plan.
As she backed rapidly away, she saw Pinkies swarm up to the door covered with huge black leeches.
Kumo hissed at the real leeches. Saliva and blood poured from the wax-white Pinkie faces, now maskless and terrified as they sloshed wetly past Kumo. She grabbed one to help him, but he screeched in fright and careened off the walls.
Mute Fly jumped out last, giving Kumo a tormented glance as he ran past. Kumo ran after him, skidding on the slime from his dripping clothes. She wanted this all to stop now, no more.
Mute Fly suddenly tripped and fell into a huge pile of soft ground meat. It was icy and greasy. He cried out in disgust and dismay and stood stinking and steaming in the cold room. Kumo vomited up a glo-nut mess. There were a lot of zombies, she decided.
“Hey, Mute, it’s only food,” she yelled over his carrying on. He smelled putrid.
“Here, I’ll—I—can help.” She reached for him but he turned and ran down the hallway, looking in all doors for a cleansing clone-water tank. Kumo followed, she’d smelt a bad omen.
They both rounded a corner and ran into a room that held five vats. Kumo guessed it was probably a cooling and dipping room. One of the vats held clear liquid. Mute Fly hesitated, looking desperately at it. Kumo guessed his panicked intent, caught his hand, and held tight.
“Hey, don’t. Who knows what—”
Mute Fly jerked from her grasp, leaving his empty glove in her hand, and dived in the nearest tank. He instantly began hissing, bubbling, and floundering. Some thing in the wax of the water made a strange growl-like snort and heaved and turned. The sides were sloped so exit from the tank was almost impossible without aid.
Kumo leaned over the tank to help, and froze—staring at an ominous filmy residue that was unraveling from Mute Fly. She was reluctant to touch the fluid, but started to reach in anyway.
“Don’t!” The swastika-mask Pinkie knocked her to the floor. He kicked her hard in the ribs with his big boot and she spit up blood. “Leave him alone. Leave him to die there, you stupid animal. We don’t want him out”—he nodded his head to the dissolving tissue—“like that.”
Kumo heard and comprehended. No, they wouldn’t.
A faint drumming echoed down the corridors. The zombies pounding. The Pinkie cursed and ran off. Kumo picked up Mute Fly’s bloody, fingerless glove she’d dropped. She stuck the little piece of dried tongue in it and then tossed them both in the vat. “RIP then, Fly.”
Kumo turned to follow the swastika and get out of the steelworks. She hurried down the corridor but stopped suddenly when she saw that two tall, mirasmic zombies stood in the way. They had absurdly long, sharp-tined forks in their skinny hands.
For all the food they mashed, they certainly looked thin. Kumo thought maybe human flesh wasn’t nutritious. Or maybe it was the drip-dry drug, that BopZ—benzyloxypromezap—modified pesticide, they all took.
She’d never been this close to a zombie before. They had day-of-the-dead bones painted on the grub-colored thermal underpieces they wore. Their faces were waxy white, with greenish circles around their eyes. In short, like slightly decomposed corpses. Inside the dark circles of their eyes, small needle-points glowed red. Kumo had a sudden urge to pounce on the neck of one and shake it like a rat. The rotting-flesh smell that clung to them made her lip curl back. She hugged the wall even closer than she normally did, a lower profile for someone creeping up behind her. The zombies took two steps forward while Kumo pondered her next move. She wasn’t about to go back down the corridor toward the room writhing with butchered Pinkies. The zombies advanced.
Kumo tried to hold her breath to keep from gagging on the foul stench emanating from them. The Vigowear outfits were covered with rusty spots of grime.
Termites, Kumo said to herself, shifting back and forth on her boots, she couldn’t think of them as human.
Jeezus, they’re so emaciated. She thought she could just take them apart with her bare hands. Their slight forms gave her confidence. Kumo lunged forward and bowled into their skinny knees.
They all came down in a tumble and a strange wet whoosh that made Kumo wince. What the hell was that? flashed in her mind as the zombies grabbed her arms and ankles with their long bony hands. They gripped tight and stabbed at her with the sharp fork tines.
One of them bit into her suit with its artificial shovel-like teeth. Kumo gave a quick jerk and the teeth shattered at the roots, letting blood and enamel fly everywhere. The zombie clapped its hands over its mouth and its partner took the moment to strike down at her with a fork. Kumo grabbed an arm on its downward swing and, scrambling up, busted it hard across her own thigh. It broke easily, like a dry stick.
The zombie went, “Ungh, ungh, ungh.”
Kumo grabbed its wrist and wrenched it hard, marveling at the tight “crack” it made as the thing screeched. The fork dropped on the cement. Kumo snatched it up and jabbed it deep into the lungs of the first zombie. She lunged forward as she struck with the fork and knocked the zombie on its back. The fork went in deep and in a second the zombie was vomiting forth suds of orange, frothy blood.
Uuuucck. Kumo planted her boot heel into the thing’s ruined nose. She hissed as she felt it smoosh into a skull like a rotted pumpkin.
“Shhiiiitt.” Kumo gagged. These things ain’t even real.
With both boots she jumped on the thigh bone of the broken-armed voodoo doll and urbled a hysterical laugh when she saw the bones poke through the rotten Vigowear. Fucking-a. She grabbed its ankle and jerked, positive she could pull the thin tendons apart with the strength of her arms.
The zombie cried, “Hunh, hunh.”
Kumo let go and walked around to its head. She stepped on that too, just like she had the other zombie, who was now only moving convulsively and not consciously. A coil of green snot came out of its nose, and some long writhing worms. Kumo laughed aloud. It was a nightmare she had found here. Not a real thing. It wasn’t human—it was a-a-meat puppet. Kumo threw herself down on her knees on the chest of the broken zombie and heard a satisfying crunch. In a way, she wondered if the parasites had given the zombies the illusion of being alive. Just the movement of the worms through the putrefying flesh animated them.
What was the point of being so skinny? she wondered. Her muscular weight alone could smear them like a frog on a highway. Kumo shook her head again, sicked up a bit, and then pissed on the zombies. She couldn’t treat them like beings—they were just these cancerous, leprous…
Kumo kept her brow furrowed as she ran. She could still hear the snap of the limbs breaking across her knees and wanted to go back, to do it again, just to see if it really happened. If she had taken the thin bones and broken them like toothpicks. Hadn’t she? It was so confusing. The soft lungs, the softened skulls. Like pickled eggs in the shell. Eggshells. The zombies ate the gangs, but who preyed on the zombies? Gangleshanks?
Dung beetles? Kumo thought of their icy, greasy faces and shook her head rapidly. How did those things kill the gangs? How could shit and maggots and those white termites kill gangs? Gangs could pop them like lice between their fingernails.
Or was it that there were so many? Were gangs buried alive in their soft bodies, with matchstick legs and sharpened tines? Toxiphobia. Telling themselves, Don’t panic, don’t panic, it’s just, just…The gouging, the ear ripping, tongues lapping and teeth shoveling in the young gang flesh.
Kumo giggled nervously. Weird world. She went back to Tommy’s briefly, to get her jacket, and some loose credits. He was nowhere to be seen, so she headed out again, to burrow down to Dogton. She found the place she was looking for, prayed, and jerked the handle. Miracle number two, it opened. The hatch dropped straight into the Dogton tunnels. She dived in, slamming the hatch behind her.
She untangled herself and fingered a goose egg on her head, and then ran underground into the heated tunnels. She kept running all the way to Ded Tek, where she surfaced near market and then lit off to her own boxcar. She vomited over and over again, until dry heaves held her in the throes of exhaustion.
She trembled and sweated and cried long and savagely, like a wounded big cat. It echoed like a looped tape, over and over out into the yards. Some artists on the tracks looked at each other through smoky, spooked eyes, but nobody went to see. Nobody dared.
Revenge wasn’t sweet, only its own demon, demanding more hate and blood than any human had to give. In her fingers Kumo could feel the thin cold bones snapping, snapping.