Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (52 page)

The expression on the real Molech's face would have been hilarious, Zoey thought, if she hadn't been seeing it on someone capable of effortlessly vaporizing everyone in the vicinity. He had the look of a chess player who at the same moment realized his king had been checkmated and that the beer he'd been drinking was actually piss. This had been Phase One of the plan—a stage they had simply referred to as “Confusion.” And if nothing else, Molech certainly did look confused. Zoey coughed and a spray of blood splattered across the metallic blue paint of the monster truck hood. She decided that she still didn't feel like her side was winning.

Scott said, “Is that … is that the design you wanted, man?” Molech didn't answer. He looked like he was going to have a rage-stroke. Scott said, “I like it. Kind of got a Greek statue vibe goin'.”

Molech made a sort of hissing growl, then stormed toward where Zoey was tied to the truck and grabbed her by the neck.

“IS THAT YOU? Is this your people doing this? How did he get inside the tower? TELL ME.”

Zoey actually came up with something really clever to say, but her whole jaw was now swollen shut from her busted teeth, and everything was all sticky with coagulated blood in there. Her retort just came out as a series of wet moans and grunts.

He turned toward Scott and screamed, “GET IN THE TRUCK! We're goin' to the Fire Palace.”

Scott said, “Man, think! Don't you get this is what
they want you to do
? I say we move on to the next target, stick with the plan. Whatever little prank they're pullin' back at the palace, that don't matter now. Think it through—what's more important, takin' over the whole world, or having a few hundred million people think you got a baby dick?”

Molech stopped, and thought it over.

 

SIXTY

They rolled to a stop a block away from the Fire and Ice buildings. Zoey had slipped out of consciousness again at some point, but was awaken when the truck lurched to a stop and she felt the cold bite of the barbed wire digging into her wrists. Molech stepped out, and the crowd roared at the sight of him. He sneered up at the grossly unflattering depiction of his anatomy etched into the facade. After Zoey had floated the general idea of changing the renderings, Echo had spent four hours drawing up the designs. She wouldn't show them to anyone, and had never cracked a smile the whole time she was working.

Molech stomped toward a random car—an occupied one—grabbed it by the front end and started swinging it around like a discus. He let it fly and it crashed into the faux obsidian, leaving a massive scar where his own sculpted face had been.

Scott stood by the truck, and sighed.

Zoey got her swollen jaw loose enough to ask, “Is the anatomy right? We had to guess.”

Without looking at her, Scott said, “You know why he's keepin' you alive, right? It's so he can take his time with you later. You know what Molech does in his spare time? He studies torture techniques. Goin' back thousands of years. He's a walking encyclopedia on the subject. If you knew what was coming, you'd already be screamin'.”

Andre appeared on the skyline feed, bellowing a cartoon villain laugh. “As you can see, my humble servant Molech has come to join me in our lavish headquarters! He appears to be throwing something of a tantrum, probably due to having had too much Mexican.”

Molech walked up to the foundation and punched it, unleashing the full force of the plasma from his fist. The wall exploded, leaving a hole like a dump truck had crashed through it. A swarm of shirtless men were scrambling out of the building, Molech's own crew trying to get clear of it before their boss's tantrum brought it down on their heads.

The skyline feed blinked away to a reporter who was standing a block from the scene. Shouting over the chaos, she said, “As you can see behind me, a lone figure believed to be Molech himself has appeared, and is destroying the tower. That's right, he is tearing away at his own headquarters, as if he has had a change of heart, a crisis of conscience if you will. We're going to try to get an interview with him, this powerful story of redemption playing out before our very—”

The noise of the collapsing tower filled the world, Zoey now watching a skyscraper tumble into its own footprint for the second time in three days. Then she saw it again when Molech strode over and did the same to the Ice Palace. The reaction from the bystanders was a bizarre stew of cheers and screams of terror. Plaster dust hung in the air like a thick fog.

Molech stomped back toward Scott and Zoey and said, “I hope that was worth it, bitch. Those buildings were junk and Andre Knox is a pancake now.” To Scott he said, “Give me some good news, partner.”

“How about this—approximately every remaining gun in Tabula Rasa is converging on this spot.” This was relayed as if it was, in fact, good news. Almost on cue, Zoey heard the faint sound of approaching helicopters.

Molech grinned, baring his teeth. “Ain't no man felt juice like this, Black Scott. It's God Mode, from here on out.”

The skyline feed switched away from the Fire and Ice aftermath to the collection of ragtag armies approaching from all four directions. And then, abruptly, the feed cut to black, and then to a laughing Andre.

Molech let out a long breath, and closed his eyes. “You freaking people.”

Andre bellowed, “Aha! I see that you have fallen for my trivial diversion! As you can see, I was not in the hollowed-out shell of a casino you thought was my headquarters, but am across town, in the toppled-over ruins of the once-great Parkview apartments. But you do not dare approach! For now, I unveil the true centerpiece of our master plan! Tabula Rasa, behold what is behind me, and tremble! We are in possession of a ten megaton plasma fusion warhead—a weapon powerful enough to turn all of this city into a vast wasteland of molten sand!”

Zoey heard screams and gasps from the bystanders gathered on the sidewalks, and from at least one of Molech's henchmen. On the screen, Andre stepped aside to reveal the bomb—an olive green cone with a yellow tip, about three feet wide and ten feet long.

“We will detonate this device, vaporizing everything within a fifty-mile radius, unless our demands are met within the next sixty minutes. What demands? Stay tuned to this feed, and all will be revealed!”

The skyline feed switched to a still image, a doctored photo depicting a costumed Andre and Molech standing back to back, giving a thumbs-up to the camera. The words “
FIRE AND ICE
” were spelled out beneath their feet, in flashy animated text.

Molech rushed over and grabbed Zoey's face.

“Hey. Wake up. Have you ever been on fire, piglet? Do you know what it feels like to have third-degree burns over your whole body? Do you know what it feels like to then lie on a dirty concrete floor in your own filth, for weeks and months after your skin has burned away? Do you have any idea how long my doctors can keep you alive in that condition? I'm going to ask you exactly one time. IS THE NUKE REAL?”

Zoey spat the blood out of her mouth so she could sputter the word “Yes.”

“YOU'RE A LYING GASH SCAB. Why would you have a real nuke?”

“Why would we have a
fake
one? We bought a machine to build Arthur's designs. That's what we made.”

“So what's your plan, blow up the whole city? For
what
?”

“To stop you from getting it!”

Scott said, “All the hired guns are diverting toward the Parkview site. Looks like every Blink camera in the city is headed there, too. So, what? We goin'?”

The gears turned in Molech's head. He tried to study Zoey's face.

“Yes. No! Goddamn it, that's what they want, isn't it?”

He grabbed Zoey again, squeezing her throat this time with metal fingers. Instantly, her air was gone.

“Tell me what you're planning. You think you know what I'm capable of. I promise, you do not.”

He took his hand away long enough for her to scream, “I DON'T KNOW!” This was the truth, she had pretty much lost track of the plan at this point. “You want to know, ask Will!”

“Hey, good idea. Where is he now?”

“Back at the house. He's controlling everything from there!”

Molech studied Zoey's bloody face once more.

Scott said what Molech was surely thinking. “This sure looks like an ambush, boss.”

“What could they possibly ambush me with, Scott? Whatever it is, I'm kind of eager to see it. Screw it. Let's go.”

 

SIXTY-ONE

Zoey blacked out, she had no idea for how long.

When she felt the trucks slowing to a stop again, she pried her swollen eyes open and had the sense of having come full circle: she saw the wrought-iron front gates of Arthur Livingston's estate—no,
her
estate—standing closed to all unwelcome visitors, the two stone dragon pillars standing vigilant on either side. She expected the Candi hologram to appear and tell them the gates were locked, or for a crazy array of security devices to spring into action and cut them all to pieces.

Instead, the gates simply slid open.

But of course they did. Molech, after all, had someone on the inside.

Instead of looping around the winding path through all of the statues, decorations, and the Siberian tiger enclosure, Molech just pointed his hood toward the front doors and gunned it. The truck smashed through a pair of knight statues, rumbled over bushes covered in Christmas lights, and ripped through the fence around the tiger enclosure, the sleepy beasts lazily watching them pass.

They arrived in front of the massive bronze front doors, and Molech came around and ripped away the wires holding Zoey to the hood of the truck. She tumbled off onto the cobblestones, smashing her knees and elbows when she landed. A rough hand—Scott's—hooked under her armpit and yanked her up.

She instinctively started to pull away, and walk on her own—she didn't want to be carried, or dragged, or yanked around by that freaking arm again. She was sick of being cargo. Instead, she fell limp in his strong hands. Making him practically drag her.

The front doors started slowly creaking open, on their own.

Molech said to her, “By the way, are you curious to know who sold you out? To know who it was that you trusted, and shared a roof with, while they were tipping me off? Are you curious to know who told me Armando would be mincing along my rooftop that day?” He turned toward the open doorway and said, “Come on out here and say hi.”

A figure emerged from the shadows of the foyer and strode confidently into view, standing defiantly in the afternoon sun.

The man said, “It's always the last one you'd suspect, isn't it, Zoey? Always the one you underestimate. I took abuse from your father for far too long. And now, today, I finally have my revenge.”

Zoey peered at her traitor through her swollen eyes. That dark complexion, the curly hair, the goatee. The toothpick, jutting from a corner of his mouth.

Zoey said, “Who the hell are you?”

“You know who I am.”

“I … I literally don't. I have never seen you before in my life.”

“YOU SAW ME EVERY DAY!” The man spat the words, in a rage. “In the yard? Trimming the bushes? Fixing the decorations in the courtyard? I was fixing lights on that tree two days ago! You walked right past me!”

“You're … what? One of the landscaping guys?”

“I'M GARY! Gary O'Brien! The gardener! I worked for your father for twenty-five years! We played golf together! I slept in one of the guest rooms! Oh, I knew what you were saying. ‘We don't need to worry about Gary. Gary's too dumb to think up schemes like us. Well, now you're lookin' at Gary in a whole new light, aren't ya?”

“I'm … sorry. I just don't remember you.”

“I want to hear you say it! I want to hear you say you underestimated me!”

Molech said, “Calm down, yard-master. So, she says Blackwater is inside, is that true?”

“Yeah. Go up the stairs, there's a sitting room to the left. They're just sittin' in there. Waiting. No ambush, no nothin'. They didn't even notice the grounds security was off. All because in their wildest dreams, they never could have guessed that little ol' Gary could—”

“And that's all you know? You got no other information for me?”

“No, man, but they're right up there. Go have at them.”

“Good. Looks like we're done here.”

And with that, Molech stepped forward and punched the man.

There was a wet sound, like a bucket of paint splashed against a wall.

And in a blink, everything on Gary from the knees up had vaporized. Fragments of pink and white and yellow flew across the open bronze doors, spraying across the marble tile of the foyer inside. A red mist hung in the air, and then was gone. Zoey screamed, or tried to. It was just kind of a gurgle at this point. Molech hooted in celebration, a sound he'd make rooting for a contestant in a wet T-shirt contest.

He said, “God, I'll never get bored with that.”

They stepped inside and Molech glanced around at the foyer.

“This is a nice place. I might set up shop here after this is all said and done. Let's go.”

They stepped around the spray of gore that had been Gary the Gardener, went past the massive looming Christmas tree, and headed up the grand staircase—Molech in the lead, Scott having to drag Zoey up the stairs like a bag of trash. Doc and the other henchmen had stayed behind, maybe to make sure nobody stole their trucks—Molech clearly was not worried about being outnumbered. Below them, Zoey saw Carlton enter the foyer with a mop.

They reached the buffalo room, and Molech gestured to Zoey to open the door, presumably to take the brunt of any booby traps that lay in wait. Scott tossed her in that direction, and she tumbled to the floor. She reached up and opened the door from her knees.