Zero's Return (84 page)

“You don’t need to hold
those anymore,” he said curtly to Twelve-A as he withdrew a long needle from
his medipack and opened a fist-sized jar of silvery liquid.  He dipped the
needle in the liquid and carefully replaced the lid on the jar.  He packed it
carefully back into the medipack before he turned back to Nine-G.  Without
ceremony, he flipped Nine-G’s bloody wrist over so he could see the vein, then
jabbed the needle into his arm.  He withdrew the needle and waited long enough
to make sure it wouldn’t bleed too badly, then replaced the spine in his
medipack.

Snagging up his supplies,
he rushed over to Shael and dropped beside her.  Despite what he had feared, he
couldn’t find any blood, no wound of any sort.

I put her out before
she could enter her mindspace,
Twelve-A said.  The minder had followed him
over to Shael’s body, looking down at her in white-faced horror. 
All I
wanted to do was trade them some food, Joe.  They needed food.  I didn’t want
to hurt anyone. 

Joe spun, grabbed
Twelve-A by the shoulders, and hauled him onto his tiptoes.  As Twelve-A
blinked up at him startledly, Joe leaned down into his face and shouted, “You
knew
these sooters were near the camp and you didn’t
tell
me?!”  He motioned
at Mike’s crumpled body, not releasing Twelve-A from his white-knuckled grip. 
“Even after you saw what they did last time?!”

Twelve-A started to look
away and Joe shook him.  “You’re supposed to be
protecting
these
people!”  He dug his fingers into his shoulders and dragged him until their
noses were almost touching.  “Nine-G took that bullet protecting
you
. 
They were aiming at your
head
.”  Into his face, he bit out, “You. 
Would.  Have.  Died.  Do you even understand what that means?!  Nine-G could
have
died!
”

Twelve-A gave him a
startled glance. 
You mean he won’t?

“I caught it in time,”
Joe growled.  “Though, eventually, we should try to get that damn bullet out.”

Relief washed over
Twelve-A’s face in a wave so innocent and naïve it was painful.

Joe shook him again,
making the telepath’s blue eyes widen startledly.  “You don’t get it, do you?!”
he snapped.  “The rest of the people we meet aren’t
like
you!  They’re
like those three ashers who kicked you until you were hemorrhaging inside. 
They’re going to shoot first and ask questions later.  If you want your people
to live, you have to keep the bad guys
away
from here.  And if
you
don’t
wanna do the dirty work, tell
me
to do it.  Understand?  I
will
take care of the problem.”  He pointed at the field of corpses that were even
then still twitching in the evening sun.

Twelve-A had tears in his
eyes when he nodded. 
I understand, Joe.
  The rest of the experiments
were standing around in nervous clusters, looking like skittish melaa,
obviously having no idea what had just transpired, visibly wondering why
Twelve-A wasn’t vegetablizing Joe for yelling at him.  At their feet, Shael was
sitting up, looking as startled as the rest of them.  Clearly, none of the
others had made the connection that their Fearless Leader could have prevented
all
of their misfortunes, every single one of them, had he simply pulled his
peace-loving, posy-sniffing head out of his ass and realized that the world was
a hell of a lot darker than it was light.

…and then Joe realized
that he was still trying to make the minder think like a bitter, war-hardened
Congie and he released Twelve-A’s wiry shoulders in a spasm, feeling dirty to
the core.

His shit rubbed off and
he got people killed.

Feeling sick of himself
and death and Life in general, Joe turned away from the teary-eyed minder and
muttered, “Tell everyone to settle in for the night.  We’re not going anywhere
until Nine-G is better.  From now on, you tell me the
moment
anyone gets
close. 
Anyone
.”  Joe turned back to face Twelve-A, his voice going
cold.  “Or I’m
leaving
.  You understand?  I swear to the Jreet Sisters
and I swear it to the Dhasha Mothers—you let strangers walk in on us without
warning me again and I’m
gone
.”  He jabbed Twelve-A in the chest.  “And
I
won’t
be coming back.”

I’m sorry, Joe.
 
Twelve-A sounded miserable.  And…cowed.

Which made Joe feel ten
times worse.

“I’m gonna go move some
bodies,” Joe muttered.  “And keep the People the hell away from them!  No need
to give them nightmares.  Hopefully they won’t attract kreenit until we can get
out of here.”

Twelve-A nodded, and the
People immediately moved away from the field of corpses, sinking back into the
treeline, dragging Nine-G into the forest with them, leaving Joe alone with the
chaos he had wrought.

Joe couldn’t bury them—it
was too much effort and already too late that night—but he could go and look at
every single dead man, woman, and child and wonder what their lives would have
been like if he hadn’t pulled the trigger.  He wondered how many other kids had
been left behind, too little to carry guns, now starving wherever their parents
had left them, waiting in vain for their families to return.

Seeing the small, scrawny
corpses, a much-too-big rifle or pistol beside each tiny, limp hand, never
before had Joe wanted so badly to be alone with Jane.

Instead, he pulled his
twenty-three victims into rows, sat down in front of them, and drank.

When he had run out of
whisky and tears, he walked over to his pack and lay down, propping his head up
against it, stewing in the silence.  Then, a few rods off, he heard the
tentative sound of sulfur striking as Alice built a fire with the book of
matches he’d given her, while every one of the People looked hungrily on.  Like
little kids, none of them liked the darkness.  If anything, they feared it more
than they feared spiders or snakes or bad guys with guns.  Or death. 
Especially death.

In the distance, he heard
several of them pounding on a hollow log with sticks, giggling at the sounds it
made.  Alice was blathering in her professor’s voice about how important it was
to save matches, even though Eleven-C could make enough matches to light the
world on fire.  Her devotees, of course, nodded as if she spoke the Sisters’
Scrolls.

None of them seemed to
realize or even care that twenty-three corpses lay in the weeds a few hundred
rods off.

They didn’t understand. 
None of them did.  But Joe, having seen it a thousand times before, understood
it all too well.  And it was something, as he lay there thinking about those
twenty-three bodies, listening to his giant friend snore under a pile of doting
experiments, that made Joe even more aware of how different he was.  He was
dirty. 
Tainted
.  Unlike Joe, these naked furgs he now ushered around
through the woods like carefree children, were
pure
.  Even Twelve-A, the
mind-numbingly naïve sooter he was, was
pure
.

…And Joe was all that was
standing between them and society crushing them, remaking them in its image. 

Yet, only moments ago,
wasn’t
Joe
trying to do the same damn thing?  Hadn’t he tried to force
Twelve-A into that same bitter distrust of his fellow man?  Hadn’t he
wanted
them to shed that purity, to take on the same hardness that Joe carried in
his soul?  Hadn’t he just spent the last rotation trying to ‘toughen’ them? 
What had been his goal, really?  To turn them into jaded, unhappy Joe Dobbs
simulacrums? 

Lying there, listening to
them laugh and giggle, Joe wondered if he could afford to be around the People
any longer.  He wondered if he could even stay without destroying their
innocence.

For long minutes, Joe
stared up at the ever-darkening, oddly-blue sky as the People started bringing
Alice sticks and pinecones to burn as night descended on them, thinking about
what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten there in time.

“You burning
tell
me,” Joe shouted into the silence.

I’ll tell you,
Twelve-A replied, sounding as deeply swallowed by despair as Joe himself felt. 
I’m sorry, Joe.

“Dumbass pointy-eared
sootling,” Joe said, feeling the tug of tears again.

You’ll know as soon as
I know,
Twelve-A assured him.  Then, almost gently,
Furg.

Joe knew that the minder
was trying to cheer him up, add a little levity to drag him out of his despair,
but when he closed his eyes, he saw Mike’s crumpled body, the pale, lifeless
head of his little girl lolling in the grass, his little boy with a circular
ring of white ribs showing along the edges of his hollowed-out chest cavity.

Death.  Everywhere he
went, his shit rubbed off and people died.

Under his leaden right
palm, Jane was singing his name. 

CHAPTER 27 – To Grab a Congie by the Hair…

When Slade returned to
camp, Tyson looked up from sharpening his big Zero-lookalike Prime Sentinel
replica ovi that Slade had always found particularly gaudy and distasteful. 
“You’re still alive,” Tyson said.  As if he expected otherwise.

“Thanks for the vote of
confidence.”  Slade grabbed a half-eaten burrito from the plate beside the fire
as he passed and started stuffing it in his face, staring at the fire, trying
to plan out exactly how he was going to win a staring contest with a Congie. 
If he cheated, she’d kill him.  He really didn’t want to die, but he didn’t
especially want to be her slave, either.

“Where’s my stuff?” Tyson
asked, frowning.

“She took it,” Slade said
distractedly.  “What sorts of things would you do to prepare for a staring
contest with someone of your own species?”  He had thought about getting naked
as a distraction, but had decided against it when he realized that a Congie had
a lot more experience being naked than he did, and it would probably just make
him uncomfortable.

And, it seemed, if he was
within twenty
feet
of her, certain…facets…of his anatomy were going to
be embarrassingly…willing.  Which she would certainly use to her advantage. 
Dammit.

It took him a moment to
realize that Tyson hadn’t answered his question.  When Slade turned to look,
Tyson was staring at him.

“You realize,” Tyson
said, “you came back here
without
my stuff, covered in bruises, head
wrapped in a bloody towel, with a black eye and a swollen face, grabbed my
burrito, started
eating
it, and asked me how to win a staring contest as
if it were a life-or-death problem?”

Around the burrito, Slade
said, “Yeah, so?”

Tyson gave him an odd look. 
“What kind of staring contest?”

Slade grunted.  “The one
where you can’t lower your head or look away.”

“Can you blink?” his
second asked reluctantly.

“Yes, otherwise your eyes
would dry out and you would go blind,” Slade said, frowning at the stupid
question.  “These things can last for
days
.”

Tyson stared at him for
much too long.  Then, “If I were to tell you that your mother was on some
really interesting medication when you were conceived, what would you tell me?”

“Seemed to work out
pretty well for her,” Slade said, swallowing another mouthful of food.  “Why?”

“No reason.”  Tyson
cocked his head at him.  “Why do you need to win a staring contest?”

“Because she’ll put me in
a thong if I don’t?”  Slade gestured vaguely with the burrito.  “Or something. 
We haven’t worked that part out yet.”

Another long silence. 
Then, “I’d ask you if maybe you got a little too much sun out there,” Tyson
said, “but you’re always like this.”

“Oh come on,” Slade
demanded around a mouthful of some unidentified meat, “you never heard of
ka-par?”

Tyson sat down on a
fallen long beside him and pulled a knee up into his laced fingers, raising a
brow.

“It’s an alien dominance
ritual started by the Dhasha.  Whoever wins gets to do whatever he wants to do
to the loser.”

Tyson stared at him.  “Or
she.”

“Huh?” Slade took another
bite.

Eyes on his burrito,
Tyson said, “You said ‘he’ gets to do whatever he wants to the loser.  You’re
gonna try to stare down this Congie?”

“Yes,” Slade said,
frowning at his tone.

“You’re fucked.  I get
your gum.”

“I’m not gonna lose,”
Slade said, offended.

“Your case of gum says
you do,” Tyson said.

Slade snorted.  “You
don’t have anything I want.”  He took another bite of Tyson’s burrito,
finishing it.  “See?” 

Tyson narrowed his eyes. 
“So let’s say she wins,” his second said.  “Then what?”

“She won’t win,” Slade
laughed.

Tyson gave him a flat
stare.  “I get your gum.”

“Fine, whatever, sure,”
Slade said, waving him off.  “I won’t lose, so it’s not an issue.”

#

Rat spent two days
sleeping, eating, and generally preparing to whip the soot out of Zero’s
brother in ka-par.  She still wasn’t sure what she was going to do with him
once he had him, but she’d get to that when they came to it.  She was
relatively sure that he wouldn’t try to renege on his ka-par because 1) he was
terrified of her, 2) he seemed utterly insane, and 3) he actually seemed to get
turned on when she kicked him in the face. 

Rat grinned, bemused by
the powder-puff.  She knew she was going to have a hard time actually killing
him when the time came.  Though, she thought with a frown, if he swore to serve
her, she supposed she could effectively keep him from breeding, which was what
concerned Mekkval.  Or she could cut off his nuts.  That would solve the
problem, too.