Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick Read online

  Finally, Zoey said, “Oh, right. They were playing off the whole cow thing. That makes sense.”

  A fast-talking man was approaching from behind. Zoey thought she recognized the voice. She turned to see Charlie Chopra and his entourage, his eyes wide, a big smile on his face, Cammy the camera drone hovering in front of him.

  “Incredible turn of events, my lovely disciples. And I want to reiterate, if someone tries to sell you a personal flying apparatus, it’s not the flying part that’s hard. It’s the landing. Gravity is what keeps our children and pets from flying off into space, but it is a jealous, jealous mistress.”

  Will walked calmly over to a stopped Mercedes being driven by a middle-aged man who looked like a stockbroker. Will opened the door and stared wordlessly at the driver for five seconds. The driver, also never saying a word, exited the vehicle.

  Will got behind the wheel and said to him, “Buy any model you want, send us the bill.”

  Wu was talking to Zoey, urging her toward the car. Her head felt like it was full of bees. There were faces everywhere, bystanders, people recording, pointing, muttering. Charlie Chopra moved toward her, smiling over his braided beard, clearly hoping to get a comment from her. He was saying something. She wasn’t able to process the sounds. He stopped talking and seemed to be waiting for a response. Zoey stared at him, then felt something in her jacket pocket, the plastic tube.

  She pulled it out and said, “Hey, everybody, buy this … daisy-flavored skin cream. Thanks.”

  Then she vomited tiny eggs onto the pavement.

  14

  Drones tracked the borrowed Mercedes back to their neighborhood, but no one was making an effort to stop them. Zoey told herself not to watch the feeds about the incident on the way back, that she could get more actually useful information in other ways. She made it less than five minutes before pulling out her phone. From the back seat, she watched the string of live camera feeds, blinking from one to the next as the software detected new developments, mostly about crews rushing to the aftermath. The chat streams flowed alongside the feed and a single message was getting reposted thousands of times:

  TOMORROW NIGHT, WE STORM THE WALLS

  They made it back to the estate and pulled into the underground garage. Echo and Andre were standing there waiting next to Andre’s Bentley, rushing to greet them as they exited the car.

  Andre said, “We watched the whole thing. So now they have to throw out all that milk, right? Got bullets in it.”

  “He had all of these people,” muttered Zoey. “These regular people. Just … acting like human shields. Ready to die. Just to screw me. Kids. Some of them. Just kids…”

  She was shaking all over. Cold.

  Wu was behind her, now clutching a towel to his bleeding scalp with the hand that wasn’t in a cast.

  “Wu, go to the hospital again.”

  “It is fine, cuts to the scalp always look worse than they are. The leg hurts but I have full range of movement and an elaborate collection of painkillers in my room.”

  Echo said, “The city’s Unrest Index is at six point five.”

  Zoey said, “The what?”

  “It’s the index that measure’s the city’s unrest,” elaborated Andre.

  “Same system that predicted the riot,” said Echo. “You go over seven and you get multiple riots across the city in specific hot spots. An eight is general chaos that shuts down entire neighborhoods, a ten means all social norms are gone and your city is no longer a city.”

  Zoey tried to keep it together. “But why? Who was Tilley to them? Was he like their president?”

  Will shook his head. “It’s not about him. These things take on a life of their own. It’s a self-sustaining reaction.”

  Echo said, “And they can always find fuel to keep it going. This morning, a homeless man was found dead around the encampment in the park. Natural causes, he was sixty years old and sleeping outdoors. But the city has the stray dogs problem…” She apparently grew alarmed at Zoey’s appearance and stopped herself. “Hey? Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Great.” Zoey didn’t feel like she had complete control over any part of her body at the moment.

  “Anyway,” said Andre, picking up the story, “corpse lays out long enough, dogs will get at it. Chew off parts. Well, somehow through the grapevine, by noon the chunks bitten off by canines became ‘all organs missing’ and ‘lifelong homeless dude’ became ‘valued member of The Blowback community.’ Guess he got kicked out of a Livingston Foundation shelter last month and—”

  “Why would we kick out a homeless person?”

  “Bit a member of the staff. Anyway, that was enough of a connection for the conspiracy crowd. Counting the two dead from the situation you just came from, the narrative is that you’re on a rampage. Just eating enemies left and right.”

  Zoey had a sudden, vivid memory of a bullet brushing past her right ear and found her legs would not support her any longer. She decided to sit down on the concrete floor, and then lie down. It was nice down there. Cool. She curled up. She could not stop shivering.

  She vaguely sensed everyone above her going nuts, running to her. She felt Echo’s hand on her arm. Even with her eyes squeezed closed, she knew it was hers.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay. I just need a minute. Just … continue the meeting. I’ll listen from down here.”

  Will, amazingly, did just that. “All right, the good news is we’re much better informed now than when we left this morning. We know everything we need to know aside from the exact manner of Tilley’s death, and that was always irrelevant. We need to map the anatomy of this group and find where it’s weak.”

  A pair of cowboy boots approached. Budd had arrived. From the floor, Zoey said, “Hey, Budd.”

  Echo said, “She’s in shock.”

  Andre said, “What’s the thing they’re all saying in the chat? About storming the walls? They think they’re comin’ here?”

  Zoey decided she was done with this meeting. She got up and shuffled away, muttering something about needing the bathroom, saying not to follow her, that she’d be right back.

  15

  Zoey took the elevator up to the library, emerged from a hidden door behind a sliding bookshelf, and made her way to her room. She stumbled into the bathroom, splashed water on her face, and concentrated on her breathing. She stared into the vanity mirror. There was something hard and lumpy in her hair, a splatter of molten glass or plastic that had landed there and solidified. She cut it out with scissors. Her jacket and both shirts had burn holes around the shoulder. She took them off and tossed the shirts in the trash. This revealed pink burns on her shoulder and arm, overlapping with the rainbow-shaped scar on her back left by that stovetop all those years ago.

  There was a chair in front of her vanity. Before she knew she was doing it, Zoey picked it up and swung it at the mirror, shattering it. Stench Machine went sprinting away. She hadn’t even known he was in the room. She found him crouched in a corner, his hackles raised. She got down on the floor with him, put him in her lap, apologized.

  Wu knocked on her door—Zoey knew his knock—and she yelled that she was fine. A couple of minutes later, this was followed by a different knock. Her mother’s.

  “Come in.”

  Zoey’s mother rushed in, got down on the floor with her, put her arm around her.

  “Oh, honey, oh my god. Z…”

  “I’m fine. Fine. I’m … I’m fine.”

  “Talk to me, Z.”

  “It’s nothing. It’s everything. Things are bad, Mom. In the city. Those people who hate me—”

  “Your trolls?”

  “It’s not just that. Not anymore. It’s all turning toxic. It’s in the air. People are dying. Because of me. Because they hate me that much. Everyone. They all hate me. I can’t … I can’t fit it in my head. All that hate.”

  “Honey, look at you! This place, these people. This is making you miserable. How loud does the universe have to scream a message
at you before you hear it? Let’s get out of here. You and me. Let’s just go.”

  “I … don’t completely disagree with you.”

  “You never once, in all of your years, said you wanted something like this. The money, I mean. The businesses. And I was there for every one of your phases. When you were eight years old and said you wanted to be the first girl to play in the NBA, I bought you that basketball goal, the one the neighbor boys broke. Later on, you wanted to be a pilot. Then a standup comedian. In your time with Caleb, all I heard about was how you wanted a family. You wanted to be a cool mom, one who travels, takes her kids all over the world. That’s your real life. This, all the money and endless meetings with these … lizards, these reptiles in suits. It isn’t real.”

  “Whatever I do, I have to clean up this mess first. Otherwise I’m no better than Arthur. Running away.”

  “Who told you that? Will? I swear, sometimes it seems like that guy has this hold over us, like he’s a cult leader or something. Honey, this isn’t our mess. And I’m telling you, when this fiasco is over there’ll be another one right behind it. Say the word and we’ll go find Will and tell him off together. What do you think?”

  Zoey didn’t answer. She kissed Stench Machine on the head. He hated it.

  Her mom said, “Can I run you a bath?”

  “No.” The bath would actually run itself just with a verbal command from where they were sitting, but still it was a nice gesture. “This is a mood that not even that tub can fix.”

  Zoey stood, setting Stench Machine aside. “Can you do something for me? Go find Will and just … tell him I need some time. I have to think.”

  Zoey actually didn’t care in the least if Will got this message or not. She wanted to be alone, to give her mother an errand to run. “Can you do that?”

  “Of course.”

  Her mother left and Zoey started to leave after her, then remembered she was still in her bra. She grabbed a T-shirt bearing the logo of a band called Monkey Sheriff, and was still pulling it down as she stormed toward the door, almost knocking Wu over. He’d been in there the whole time, apparently having followed her mother inside.

  Down the hall. Down the stairs. Down the west wing hallway. She kept walking until it ended at the ballroom. She went straight for the tarp covering the giant, humming school bus–sized machine. She peeled it back.

  The machine was black, segmented into rings in a way that made Zoey think of an alien robot caterpillar. She guessed it didn’t have to be an alien robot, but it definitely looked weird. They referred to it as Santa’s Workshop, because it spat out toys. It was the Raiden device fabricator that they believed/hoped was the only one capable of making real, reliable gear. Right now it was hard at work on something harmless: Zoey’s Halloween costume, finished parts of which were leaning against the wall nearby. Zoey took Halloween seriously and she had been telling the truth when she told Alonzo her costume wouldn’t fit through the door.

  But at any moment, she could load up a new task and out the end would fall something small enough to hold in your hand, or that could be implanted inside your hand, with enough power to tear a car in half or turn a crowd of enemies into a scattered field of black, smoking bones. The gadgetry that came out of the machine was intended to transform a human into a conduit of terror, to destroy and kill in spectacular ways. All of it had been designed by a madman who was now dead, and investing in it had cost her father his life.

  If what Will said was true, if all of this chaos was coming from a few ringleaders who themselves were following the prompt of Titus Chobb, she could use this machine to unleash hell upon them. All of them. Put out a call for a group of the most sadistic bastards in the city, give them the powers of demigods, and turn them loose on her tormenters. Become the monster they claimed she was.

  Zoey turned on Santa’s monitor and flicked through menus looking for schematics. What she was seeing was incomprehensible to her, she’d need Echo’s help to accomplish anything. She tapped some buttons at random and at one point it made a scary beeping noise, so she quickly exited out of the menu before the machine could explode or melt down or whatever.

  Then she remembered something her mother had said, and went through a small door into the courtyard. Shoved between some bushes was the rolling basketball goal she’d forgotten she’d bought in early September. Her therapist had recommended it, said repetitive tasks were good stress relief. Well, her city was burning down and enemies were coming to storm her home and rip her to pieces, so this would be a good time for that. She dragged the goal out to a mostly open section of grass, about ten feet away from a sidewalk that would be her free-throw line. A folding banquet table was somewhat in the way, stacked with Halloween party supplies—the stuff was piled all over the courtyard. She grabbed the lip of the table and flipped it over, sending everything crashing to the ground. It took some time to find the ball under some shrubs nearby. It was a little underinflated, she had to slam it to make it bounce off the sidewalk. It would do.

  She shot, the ball bumped the front of the rim, then the backboard, then rolled in. That was a miss. Anything that hit the rim was counted as a miss. Anything that banked in was counted as a miss. That was bad form, the fact that it fell through was irrelevant. Process was all that mattered, her high school coach had drilled that into them. Master the process, and the outcome eventually works out.

  She had become a starter her sophomore year, after four other girls had gotten suspended for drugs. That was on the varsity team, too. Granted, they were too small of a school to have a JV team, but still. She was good, had been even better back in middle school before she started smoking, before the hormones went to work on her body. She loved the contact, setting a screen that knocked another girl on her ass, running through sweaty elbows to get to the rim, standing in among three girls taller than her and boxing out, tipping the rebound to herself. Talking trash. Nobody came to the games. It didn’t matter.

  She shot. The ball bounced off the front of the rim, came right back to her. She shot again, knew it was a bad one before it fully left her fingertips, watched it clang off the right side of the rim and go flying. She went to go chase down her own rebound but Andre caught it and bounced it back to her. He had been standing out there the whole time, waiting for her.

  She shot. Nothing but net.

  She said, “You’re like Budd, following from in front. So, do you people take a vote every time to see who has to come talk me down?”

  “Eh, somebody usually volunteers.”

  “Last time it was Echo. When I got mad about the air conditioner?”

  “That’s because you specifically said that if any of us came after you, that you’d stab us. Had a kitchen knife in your hand. She was the only one who thought you wouldn’t follow through.”

  Ah, the infamous Air Conditioner Tantrum. Growing up, air-conditioning was an expensive luxury reserved for days when it was so hot that a normal life was not possible. Summer nights were about fans, an open window, and partial nudity, the sticky clamminess acting as your alarm clock. When she’d moved in with Caleb for those couple of years, his rental house in Lafayette had central air and Zoey freaked out anytime it was turned on before July or after August. She always imagined money flying out of the window. The Casa de Zoey, on the other hand, ran off of a geothermal system and solar panels. She had no power bill, according to Will. So, she got to where she was okay with leaving the air on, but it made a weird noise, an almost imperceptible whine that gave her a headache. She mentioned it one day and somebody guessed it was some squeaky bearings, or some other tiny flaw deep in the system. Crews were there the next day, and the day after. When they left, the noise was gone.

  Then, by sheer chance, Zoey happened to see the invoice for the HVAC repair: $26,423.

  Enough to feed a family for months. Enough to get a homeless person off the streets for a year. Money she’d burned to solve a minor annoyance.

  She had thrown a fit, made a fool of herself,
demanded they undo the repairs (which of course was dumb, they’d just charge that much again to put the broken parts back on), demanded she be consulted on every expense in the future (also dumb, unless she wanted to start scheduling panic attacks every hour). Then she had stormed out of the room and Echo eventually came after her and brought her a cupcake, which was incredibly demeaning and also worked.

  Zoey shot. Again, nothing but net.

  She said, “Want to play a game of horse?”

  “Nah, don’t think your back could support my weight.”

  She gathered the ball, and just held it this time. “They know we didn’t kill Tilley. Or do any of the other stuff. They have to know, deep down. The whole thing about us being cannibals, or whatever. They don’t even believe it, they’re not even trying all that hard to make the story consistent.”

  “There are things people actually believe,” said Andre, “and things they only pretend to believe because it’s convenient. But over time it don’t matter which is which, it all just blurs together. People are like that.”

  “Okay, so why would they choose to believe this particular awful thing?”

  “Because they hate you, Zoey. And because they hate you, they need to come up with a reason to hate you. See, because otherwise, they’re just bad people.”

  “What? That doesn’t even—why do they hate me in the first place?”

  “When you played ball, were you best buddies with all the other girls on the team? Did you all hang out together in the off-season?”

  “No.”

  “But when you were together on the court, when you won, you felt something. Maybe any other time you couldn’t carry on a conversation with any one of them without wanting to blow your brains out, but on the court, you suddenly had a bond. All of them differences fell away. That’s why we have sports, the game is just a pretext to let you go out there and feel that.”

  “So it’s just a game to them? Is that it?”

  “Well, that feeling, you get that in a war zone, too, only a hundred times stronger. So call it a game or a war or whatever, ultimately it’s just about that bond. So, yeah, the thing they hate isn’t even you, it’s a fictional version of you they’ve crafted to be as hateable as possible. The more they hate you, the more they love each other.”