Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick Read online

  19

  Will was waiting for them on the roof of the estate, the air from the rotors whipping around his overcoat. His hand was wrapped in a bloody bandage, like he’d seen some action of his own. Zoey had decided on the ride over that if Will gave her any version of “I told you so” that she would just start clawing at his face like a rabid raccoon.

  Three of them stumbled out of the helicopter, everyone splattered with crimson.

  Will looked over at Zoey and said, “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. They didn’t have time to do anything.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “I stabbed Chobb’s henchman’s brain with scissors. Someone needs to find my mother. If Chobb is on the warpath after this, then—”

  “She’s been secured and is en route. Budd and Andre are on it.”

  “Oh. Okay. Good.”

  From behind her, Echo said, “I’m fine, by the way.”

  Will’s mouth made it about 5 percent of the way to a smile. “I watched your escape on Blink, I knew you were fine. I’ve never seen eight men get stabbed before.”

  Echo said, “Wu fell off a ten-story railing, nobody’s going to ask how he is?”

  Zoey turned to face him. “You did?”

  Echo said, “He was hit with a stun round from above. There was a team waiting on the top floor. It was an ambush.”

  Wu waved it off. “I didn’t fall all of the way down, I was able to catch myself and swing back onto the railing one level below. Then, many armed men appeared.”

  “Holy crap. How did you get away?”

  “I allowed them to abduct me, then secretly commanded the helicopter to follow. Then I incapacitated the guards and commandeered their vehicle.”

  Zoey said, “With one arm.”

  “The cast allows me to move my fingers a little.”

  They walked along the flat rooftop until they reached a circular iris door that opened to reveal the stairs down to the third floor. Arthur’s old bedroom was nearby, the setup apparently arranged so that he could get to a waiting aircraft if the estate were ever overrun by Koreans and all of his many downward escape routes were blocked (his bed literally had been built with a chute that would take him to the garage at the press of a button). Zoey wasn’t in the mood to point out that the style of door made it seem like they were walking into the house’s butthole. That was okay, as she’d pointed it out every single other time they’d been up there.

  Zoey got halfway down the stairs and found her legs would not support her any longer. She kind of awkwardly sat/fell on the steps.

  “Hey, uh, let’s stop here for a moment. On the stairs. I like to just sit on the stairs sometimes.”

  Echo said, “It’s okay to fall apart a little. Now that it’s safe.” She looked over at Will. “When they sealed up the room, trapped us in there, I panicked, my claustrophobia kicking in. Zoey had to calm me down.”

  Zoey muttered, “That’s not how I remember it. Why is everybody else calm but me?”

  Will said, “Wu is a trained soldier, Echo is, let’s say, built for this kind of thing.”

  “Right, and you’re drunk. Say what you want to say. Say ‘I told you so.’”

  “What would be the point? Either you’ll learn to trust my advice or you won’t.”

  “Did my father do that? Just go along with whatever you said?”

  “Arthur once chased me around this house with a gun because he didn’t like the advice I gave him. I had to put him in a headlock to calm him down.”

  “Do I even want to hear the rest of that story?”

  “Not much to it. Arthur developed a crush on a local Mob boss’s daughter. Mob boss said he’d have us all killed if Arthur touched her. Arthur persisted, the girl started to act interested—the guy could really turn on the charm. I warned him, he ignored me. So, I had Echo go out in disguise and bump into the girl at a bar, do some snooping. She found out the girl was still in love with her college boyfriend who lived in New York. We arranged for the guy to hear about a job opportunity here in the city that he couldn’t refuse, then arranged for the girl to run into him once he arrived. They fell into each other’s arms, they’re married now. Did everything we could to make it all seem like coincidence to Arthur, but he saw right through it. Got drunk and tried to shoot me, a year later he cried his eyes out while apologizing. Said I was right all along.”

  “How did I know your story was going to end that way? It must be hard being the smartest person in the universe and seeing the rest of us mortals bumbling around like idiots.”

  “You’ve worked in restaurants, right? As a server? It’s like that customer who comes in and says ‘I want the grilled cheese, but I’m allergic to cheese so leave it off.’ And you want to say, ‘Now, you realize that’s just buttered toast?’ but the customer is always right and so you do the order exactly like they said. Then when you bring it out they say, ‘What’s this? I ordered the grilled cheese without cheese, you brought me toast.’ There’s a point where you realize doing your job isn’t enough, that you should have gone further, refused to take the order and tricked them into thinking it was their own idea. Saved them from themselves.”

  “Wait, am I the customer ordering the cheeseless grilled cheese in that scenario? Or was it Arthur?”

  “You’re the customer who comes in the day after that, saying, ‘I’ll have the BLT, hold the bacon, lettuce, and tomato.’ I’m not claiming to be a genius, Zoey. I’m just saying I remember what happened last time.”

  “And last time, Arthur’s enemies caught him alone, tore his guts out, and he died so hard that they barely found enough bones to fit in a jar. Got it. And just so we’re clear, this is war now, right? I killed Chobb’s right-hand man. There’s no going back. Whatever is coming tomorrow night, there’s no negotiating our way out of it now.”

  “Are we sure they’re waiting for tomorrow?” asked Echo. “There’s not a convoy headed this way right now?”

  Will said, “No, there isn’t.”

  Zoey shook her head. “Of course not. They said they’re coming tomorrow, that’s when they’ll come. It’s a huge Blink event, appointment viewing. They want the audience to be tuned in and waiting. That’s their Devil’s Night party. Somebody help me up.”

  Wu did. Her bones were jelly, but she thought she could make it down. They continued down to the second-floor hallway and Zoey said, “I’m taking a bath. Echo, I suggest you do the same, you have the blood of eight men on you. Wu, get some rest. Or go to the hospital and get the five or six surgeries you probably need by now.”

  Will and Echo started walking away, toward the elevator to the parking garage.

  “Wait,” said Zoey, “you’re staying here, right? On the grounds, where it’s safe? Echo, I’ve got lots of showers. Or you can use mine.”

  “No, thank you. I have to go feed my dogs. These people aren’t running me out of my home.”

  “Okay. Will? I know you don’t sleep but this whole house was designed for cranky men to drink and brood in.”

  “No, there’s a card game that I’m late for.”

  She had no idea if he was joking, but he turned to walk away just the same. The pair were fully just going to leave, punching out at the end of their shift. This was, in fact, just their job.

  “Okay then,” she said to their backs. “We’ll, uh, resume the war in the morning. Oh, Will…”

  He turned.

  “For your assignment tonight. Did you … do it? If we had to go after Chobb, is there a way to—”

  He said, “There’s a way. If it comes to that.”

  There was something funny in the way he said it, but Zoey didn’t have the energy to pursue it.

  “Good. Okay. Go home, yeah. Get some sleep.”

  She watched him go, muttering something to Echo as they walked. She’d never asked how he’d hurt his hand.

  Zoey shambled her way toward her room, using the wall to steady herself. Wu followed her, despite him being the one person s
he’d actually asked to leave. On her way, she brought up Stench Machine’s Blink feed to see if she could pinpoint his location in the yard, only to find that it was offline. This was not immediate cause for alarm, as it went off automatically when he entered the house so strangers couldn’t use his feed to spy on their operation.

  “Do you know where—” She opened the bedroom door and saw her cat sitting grumpily on her bed. “Oh. Found him.”

  Zoey patted him on the way through to the bathroom, then stopped cold at the doorway. The mirror, the one she’d smashed with a chair earlier in the day, was fixed. Like it’d never happened.

  “Get Carlton.”

  Wu said, “Carlton, can you come to Zoey’s bathroom?” a phrase that would trigger an alert on Carlton’s phone. Zoey supposed she could just as easily have done that. The man appeared ninety seconds later.

  Zoey asked, “Who fixed this?”

  “The usual maintenance man, Russo. He has been thoroughly vetted—”

  “Yeah, but who ordered it fixed?”

  “I took the liberty, there were sharp pieces on the floor…”

  “Hold on.”

  Zoey calmly walked over, picked up the chair, and swung it into the mirror again. She squeezed her eyes shut as shards bounced off of her face.

  She tossed the chair on the floor, breathing heavily. “I’m not mad, but in the future, ask me. I’ll clean this up. When I’m ready.”

  Carlton had been in his business for a very, very, very long time, and showed not even the slightest sign of confusion or alarm.

  “Very good. Will you be needing anything else?”

  “No, thank you.”

  He left but Wu stayed and he did, in fact, look alarmed. Zoey kicked some shards with her bare toes, her own fragmented reflection staring back at her.

  “Are you … all right?”

  “Yes. I’m perfect.”

  “I was going to head downstairs, unless you needed me for something.”

  His quarters were on the first floor, where he stayed when there was some kind of elevated threat level.

  “Back home,” said Zoey, “we always stayed in places that weren’t intended to last. It was all stuff you couldn’t repair, like paneling, where cracks and scratches and stains just accumulated until somebody would come rip it all out and start over.”

  She walked out of the bathroom, stepping carefully across daggers of broken mirror. She sat on her bed.

  “But,” she continued, “all of that damage, it has a story. Good and bad, you remember the crack in the closet door from wrestling with your boyfriend, you see the little rip in the screen door and remember when you got drunk and fell into it. All those scars, they’re yours, they’re the history of a time spent in a place.”

  “Like Kintsugi,” said Wu. “Your Japanese vase, with the golden cracks. Making the damage a part of who you are.” That vase was in fact in the corner, behind him.

  “Yeah. Right. But this place, since I’ve fixed it up, it’s all so clean. It’s like in a movie, where the main character lives in a huge mansion but you can tell it’s a sound stage, you know what I mean? Never any sign that it’s a place where people lived, no scuffs on the floor tiles, no rings where people have set down coffee mugs. No damage. It’s like it’s not meant for people, like I’m an unwanted guest here. I hate it.”

  “I can bring my three teenagers. The place will be a suitable disaster area within half an hour.”

  Zoey started to smile, but it made her face hurt. She had bruises everywhere. “Do you want a beer?”

  “No, thank you.” He clearly wanted to leave. Probably needed to call his family, explain that work was going to keep him overnight. Again.

  “When I first showed up here, right after my father died, when it was all of his stuff still here, I went down to that glass room at the end of the estate, with the hot tub. When I first saw it, there was a woman’s bikini top draped over a rail. And I remember thinking, hey, a party happened here. It kind of put me at ease, a little bit. Then later, Carlton told me that bikini top was always there, he was told not to move it. My father left it as a little hint to any girls who showed up that taking their tops off was both customary and expected.”

  Wu said, “He was passionate about what he believed in.”

  Zoey got a beer for herself from the mini-fridge. She sat back on the bed and rubbed her forehead.

  “Why are they going to make me do this? Why do they want to turn me into a monster? Everything was fine. Why couldn’t they leave it that way?”

  “How many people do you intend to ask that question?”

  “I figure I’ll keep at it until I get an answer that makes sense to me. Will says it’s a core of psychopaths surrounded by a much larger group of bored idiots.”

  Wu gave it some thought. “I suppose. I would take it one step further and say that a psychopath is nothing but someone who is pathologically bored, to the point that they would burn the world just to break up the routine.”

  Zoey fell back onto the bed. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  “No, I mean … in general. I wake up exhausted. Every day.”

  “You are twenty-three. If you can stick this out and push through, you will find it gets a lot worse.”

  She laughed, a little, then groaned with the pain.

  He started to leave, but she said, “Is it weird that I don’t know anything about you?”

  “I am not offended that you do not ask about my personal life, if that’s what you mean.”

  He was still standing with one foot out of the door. Politely answering questions from his weird boss, probably hating it more than the mortal danger he’d just been in. But the thought of being alone was killing Zoey.

  “Wait, it just occurred to me that you said you had three teenagers at home. Were you serious?”

  “Yes. One is in college, actually.”

  “Really? Wait, how old are you?”

  “How old would you guess?”

  “Thirty? Somewhere around there.”

  “I am forty-six. As of last month.”

  “Wow. I missed your birthday. And you never get to see your kids, you’re always here.”

  “You are putting all three through very good schools. All destined to work very long hours to make sure their children have the same. Good night.”

  He started to leave again. Zoey rushed to think of something else to say.

  “Do you like working for me? Am I a good boss?”

  Wu, clearly now wishing he’d missed that railing and fallen to his death, said, “You are fine.”

  Zoey covered her eyes with a hand. “Oh, my god. You hate me, don’t you?”

  “Not at all. But you and I have, let’s say, very different values. That is not a reason to hate a person. In fact, I would say you should beware of any men my age who too easily relate to women your age. We are from different worlds.”

  “Well. I’m sorry I missed your birthday.”

  “Will there be anything else?”

  After a torturous pause she said, “No, thank you.”

  He closed the door. Zoey curled up on her bed, sticky dried blood on her hands and feet, pain settling over her like a cloud.

  The monitor above the bed was on, and she hadn’t even noticed. It showed her what was, according to the ranking tag in the corner, by far the most popular feed at the moment: a group of guys huddled around a tiny table inside one of the storage apartments at the Screw. A single piece of pizza sat on a paper plate and they prodded it with a plastic knife, as if they were afraid to touch it.

  “And you see these bits of meat on here? That’s not sausage,” said the scruffy kid from earlier. “We got a sample to a friend for analysis. That’s human flesh right there. This backs up the rumors we’ve heard from the VOP evidence team, that at least one of the pizzas the cow brought to us had part of a human finger in it. We’ll try to get DNA and see if we can match it up with any missing pers—”

/>   Zoey said, “Turn that shit off,” and the house understood.

  20

  Zoey woke up in the usual way, with Stench Machine batting at her face with his paw, demanding to be fed. She fought a war against her stiffened limbs to sit upright and almost jumped out of her skin when she saw that she wasn’t alone.

  A figure was sitting in the chair in the corner.

  A light automatically clicked on, revealing Zoey’s mother, curled up in the chair, asleep.

  “Mom?”

  She stirred and stretched. “Heeeey.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Got in last night, they said you were in bed already. I didn’t want to wake you. I snuck in, wanted to make sure you didn’t have nightmares. You always mumble when you’re dreaming. Remember that, when you were little? When I used to come in and crawl into bed with you?”

  “How much do you know? About what happened last night?”

  “I was given a carefully edited version of events by your friend Will.”

  “I think we’re at war.”

  “Aren’t you always?”

  “No, it’s different this time. They, uh, are apparently coming after us, somehow. Tonight. If you stay here today, behind the walls, you should be safe.”

  She was shaking her head. “No. I have work, then we’re all going to the Black Parade. Got to get to the good spots early.”

  “No, Mom, that’s a terrible idea—”

  “The bad people can hurt me or not hurt me, but I’m not going to imprison myself. That’s doing their job for them.”

  “Will you do it, as a favor to me? So I won’t worry?”

  “Will you step away from your life? So I don’t worry?”

  “Come on, Mom…”

  “I mean it, Z. You could do it anytime you want. Take what you can get away with, an amount they won’t come after you for, and we’ll go away together. Go back home if you want. Could go take a trip to Estes like we used to, see the elk.”