New Title 4 (18 page)

When Big Maggie had given him the job at the OneStop Mart, Lucas had told her that he was new to the area, that he was in fact a college student from Iowa that had come to the city for school and needed a job that wouldn t interfere with his class schedule. That had been the first of a larger number of lies. He had, in fact, lived in the city his whole life. That life had been spent on the eastern-most outskirts of the Hill, but for most of that time he hadn t been aware of what went on there at night. He had thought the world was a perfectly sane and fine place, or at least as sane as it could be when he was more or less the man of the house. His mother had done her best to raise him and his two sisters alone, but she had needed that extra little bit of help around the house he had provided. He had never gotten away from his duties to his family long enough to make many friends, so his little sisters had been all he d had. He hadn t gotten out of the house enough to realize just what kind of place it was in the neighborhood next door until he had been thirteen and he d done his first real attempt at teenage rebellion. The end result of that first excursion out into the nighttime neighborhood had been his first real lesson about sex, and it had come from a demon he ran into doing business with an elvin prostitute in an alley.

For some reason he found his thoughts going back to that incident as he watched Tuffy come over the hills to help tie up Caleb, Phil, and Gloria. He hadn t actually had any real reason to be out that late other than he wasn t supposed to be. Up until the day she had died, Lucas hadn t been sure how much his mother really knew about what happened on the Hill at night, but she couldn t have been completely oblivious to it. She had to have had some idea, but not enough that she hadn t forbidden him even more from going out at night. But on that particular day he had been more tired than usual of always being the responsible one. He couldn t even remember why. Maybe it had been something one of his sisters had done. Either way, he d felt the urge to not be the perfect hero of the family anymore. He d wanted to be the bad one for a change, but he hadn t had enough idea of what bad meant and the worst he could come up with was staying out late.

He hadn t been out for any longer than half an hour before he passed the alley and heard the noises. He had been sheltered up to that point, but he at least thought he had known sex when he heard it. The alley he had been passing was dark, but he could still clearly hear the groaning and moaning, the sound of skin slapping rhythmically against skin. He d been intrigued, and he d had a hard-on. He d wanted to see. So he had gone down the alley, slowly, careful not to make any noise of his own. There was a dumpster in the alley that he had been able to hide behind, and it was close enough that he had been able to see the shadows of the two people as they ground against each other. But he hadn t actually been able to see anything specific until the headlights from a passing car briefly illuminated the alley and he had seen the details of the couple.

The woman had been beauty beyond anything he had ever seen before. Her skin had been a flawless cream color and her hair had been so blond as to look almost white. The dress she wore had been green, gold, and white and had shimmered in the brief light like fine silk. But while the material of the dress had brought to mind the fair maidens of hundreds of clichéd fantasy novels, the dress s cut had been something else entirely. The hem was extremely short and exposed her long legs. The top of the dress had been low cut so it would barely cover her nipples even when it was not pulled down for someone s easier access. But as amazing as that sight would have been to his budding pubescent mind under normal circumstance, his eyes instead caught and stayed on her ears, which came to sharp points.

If she was everything he had ever expected beauty to be, then the man she was with (her client, he realized to call later) was something out of his nightmares. He d never liked clowns even when he had been younger, but after looking at this thing clowns had become enough to make him want to scream. It had looked like any other man might in clown makeup, with a red afro wig and a huge red nose over a white painted face. His pants were the type some clowns wore with the gigantic hula-hoop waist that could only be held up by suspenders, except the suspenders had been undone and the hula-hoop pants rested in a puddle over the shapes of his enormous shoes. All the exposed parts of its body- the legs, the butt, the quick glimpse of something else between its legs he didn t want to think about- had all been the same grease-paint white as his face. Even his pointed and barbed tail, lashing out behind him with each thrust, had been white.

The headlights went quickly, but there had still been a glow from the thing s red eyes. The elven woman had started speaking actual coherent words about then, and Lucas had been too petrified to run away.

Then float baby. Go ahead and float!
That was when the clown-thing had moaned, and there had been a sound as he pressed up against her one final time. It sounded suspiciously like a bike horn repeatedly going off. That was when Lucas had finally run, and when he had realized how perverse and twisted his neighborhood of the Hill really was.

He watched the zombies hold Caleb, Gloria, and Phil down as three more zombies with wooden chairs came in from where he d been keeping them in the east. With most of the zombies he didn t have to concentrate too hard to get them to do what he wanted. All he needed was to think what he wanted them to do and they did it. A few tried to resist more, although none so much as the corpse that Phil had been having his disgusting relationship with. He d made a few mistakes in playing the song around her, but not as many as he had with some of the others. The fact that she could resist him more was strange, but nothing he thought he would have to worry about for much longer. He would take more satisfaction in what would happen to her and Phil than any of the others. Phil may have been human and therefore maybe not as deserving as the inhuman things around here, but whenever Lucas saw him and his zombie all he could think of was that clown demon and the elf prostitute.

Tuffy tied each of the three to the chairs with heavy amounts of duct tape and let the zombies carry the chairs back to the eastern pavilion. They would avoid getting within sight of any of the people gathering there just in case there were any more who might be sympathetic with the OneStop employees both past and present, keeping them away until just the right time when Lucas might have use for them. When she was finished Tuffy came up to Lucas and stood in front of him. She had a look in her eyes like she might have been thinking of him as more than just her boss in this situation, but then she had had that look long before she had become a cyborg.

Pretty much, Lucas said, but although most of the details were exactly as he needed them he still had a nagging sense of worry. Mostly it was because of the way the drug had made him act again. He d known this time that the extract might cause him to loose control of his emotions and rampage at random things, but he had thought the knowledge of what might happen would give him an advantage in controlling it this time. But it hadn t. He d felt like a wild man, like he hadn t cared about anything or anyone around him. He d felt exactly like he imagined it did to be any one of the savage creatures of the Hill. But even worse, he had the strong urge to take the extract again.

Are you sure Fluffy is fine all by her lonesome back there? Lucas asked.
No one will mess with her, Tuffy said. We re finally good to do this.
And you re sure you re ready for it? Lucas asked.
Tuffy grunted and nodded. He was grateful that she hadn t said something idiotic like she was born ready, or even worse that she was built ready. She hadn t always been a cyborg, just like Fluffy and Muffy hadn t. She d been a real human, and there had even been a time when he would have considered her cute. She still apparently believed he might one day think that about her, judging by the way she sometimes made subtle suggestions about getting into his pants. He would have gladly let her if he didn t despise what she was now.
Of course her real name hadn t originally been Tuffy. That was just the codename given to her by the mad scientist that had brought her back from the dead. Five people had died when that particular s scientist s giant robot penguin had gone on a rampage, but he had only seen fit to rebuild three of the people. According to the files Lucas had found after he d killed the scientist, the scientist had ignored one of the dead people because the corpse had been too old for his experiments. The other person, Lucas s younger sister and Tuffy s best friend, had been mashed into pulp too messy to put back together.
You know, it doesn t seem like it s been four years, Lucas said. Tuffy cocked her head at him.
It s only been three years, Tuffy said.
Three years that you ve been planning this, Lucas said. Four for me.
Tuffy didn t seem to understand at first, then finally nodded. Right. I m sorry. I almost forgot. Lucas didn t respond to that. Of course she would forget. At the time Lucas had finally decided to do something about the plague that was the Hill she had still been just another stuck-up and self-centered teenager. No metal endoskeleton for her yet, just a desire to go out and get drunk, get laid, maybe even eventually seduce her best friend s cute older brother. She hadn t actually cared at all that her friend and the brother might be going through grief over the recent death of the middle sister. Of course, the official crime report had said Lucas s middle sister had died from unknown causes. That was just because the Hill s so-called special police had covered up the fact that she d been drained of blood with puncture wounds in her neck.
Lucas s mom had been the only one in the family to die of natural causes, but not before she d seen both her youngest children put in their graves, graves that Lucas had made sure were consecrated so none of the horrors of the Hill could get at their bodies. He d promised his mother as she died that he d make sure his sisters were given the vengeance they deserved, but his mother had been too weak from the cancer to give him her blessing.
Lucas looked at Tuffy and did his best to look like he gave a crap about what she said. She was a product of mad science rather than wild magic, but to him she was still a sign of the sickness that was this whole neighborhood. He was sure that a part of her, whether she admitted it or not, liked the Hill just as much as any of those deviants they had just tied up. They all thought this was a game, that it was a joke, that some of this might actually be funny. He put a hand forward and touched her face, and he felt her shudder with anticipation at his touch. Then he took his hand away. It was enough that she thought there could one day be something between them. It would keep her loyal.
And more importantly, it would keep her from suspecting that he planned to kill her right along with every other obscene deviant on the Hill.

When the zombies picked up the chairs they carried all three over their heads so the chairs and their occupants were on their backs, so most of the journey consisted of Gloria just staring up at the sky. The chair backs weren t tall enough that Tuffy had been able to duct tape their heads in one position so Gloria could still turn her head and look at her surroundings, but the odd angle with which she saw everything threw off her bearings. The only landmarks she could use to gauge where they were going were a few hills and the road, and from what little she could see the zombies appeared were taking them the long way around the park to some destination. Lucas probably didn t want the people gathering at the pavilion to see them being carted away just in case they had more sympathizers there than just Wylma. However, with the average speed at which the zombies moved, Gloria actually found herself growing bored despite herself. Apparently she wasn t the only one.

I spy with my little eye, Caleb said. Something that s gray.
Is it a zombie? Gloria asked.
Caleb sighed. Yes.
I wonder why Lucas didn t just kill us, she said.
My guess? Caleb said. He ll need people to test some of the artifacts on. You know, just to show that they re real.
Oh that s just lovely, Gloria said. I hope he actually lets us get to pick which ones we get killed by. I ve always wondered what it would be like to have my brains melted to sugar by the Pretty Pink Thing.
Well at least we know what the Pretty Pink Thing does, Caleb said. With my luck I ll probably be used to demonstrate the effects of That.
And what exactly is it that That does? Gloria asked.
I don t know. I ll let you know after it kills me.
What about you, Phil? Gloria asked. Got a preference? There was no answer, and Gloria tried looking all around her for him. She knew he was being carried right along with them, but she couldn t move her head enough to see him. Phil? You re still here, right?
I m here, Phil said somewhere in the direction of Gloria s feet. I m just do you see Sue anywhere around here?
Gloria looked around but didn t see any sign of her. Sorry, not where I can see right now.
Me either, Caleb said. Sorry, dude.
Lucas might have sent her somewhere else, Gloria said. You know, probably doesn t want her around you when she seems so reluctant to eat your head.
Yeah, Phil said, I guess nothing truly says I love you like saying I wouldn t eat you brains if I had the chance.
Does anybody have any earth-shattering ideas on how to get out of this? Caleb asked. Cuz I m having a little difficulty coming up with anything here.
Nothing at the moment, Gloria said. I suppose when Tuffy took our duffel bags we should have asked her to leave us something to, oh, perhaps cut through all the tape she put around our hands and ankles.
Actually, you should totally do that the next time this happens, Caleb said. Just to see if maybe you can get it to work.
So you re simply assuming that getting duct taped to chairs is something that will happen to us again? Gloria asked.
Honestly, Caleb said, I m kind of surprised it s taken as long as it has.
You have a point, Gloria said. She was quiet for a few seconds before speaking again. She couldn t see Caleb either, but he sounded nearer than Phil did so she dropped her voice low enough that hopefully only Caleb could hear. Hey, Caleb?
He didn t answer right away, but when he did his volume matched hers. What?
What are the chances that you think we could actually die this time?
The chances are always pretty high, I guess. No, not really. Most of the time it really just does feel like fun and games.
I certainly don t have fun. Feels more like work to me.
But work doesn t usually kill you.
It can when you work the night shift around here.
So what would you say are chances are of dying right now?
If I had to estimate? His tone was much more solemn than his words would suggest. About three thousand and fifteen percent.
Oh. Well, I suppose, just in case, I should let you know that I actually had a really good time on our first date. All things considered.
Caleb chuckled. Yeah. Me too. And also, just in case. I should let you know something too. Something I ve actually thought about for a long time now but never wanted to say.
What s that?
I wouldn t eat your brains if I had the chance.
Despite herself Gloria actually smiled. Maybe I wouldn t eat yours either. Maybe.
Hey, guys? Phil said. Sorry to interrupt your heartfelt fatalistic moment here, which I can totally hear by the way, but we really should be trying to think of something here.
Okay, fine, Gloria said. Can either of you get a view of where they re taking us?
Seems to me like they may be taking us to the third pavilion, Caleb said. Out of the way enough that we won t be trouble, but close enough that the zombies can pull us over if they need a guinea pig. Have we really even figured out what Lucas expects to accomplish here? Phil said. We still don t have the pieces really put together.
No, we don t, Gloria said. Caleb, you never got a chance to answer my question before. What exactly does the Confused Amulet of Water do? Ooh, I actually know this one, Phil said. It causes things like firestorms and explosions, although he ll be protected from it by some sort of magical field.
Then why would it be called the Amulet of Water? Gloria asked.
Because it s confused, Caleb said. Duh. And the Confused Amulet of Fire could cause floods big enough to destroy entire coastal cities.
Firestorms and explosions, Gloria said. The answer came to her almost instantly. Oh god. I can t believe that didn t occur to me before. What? Caleb said. What do you think you got?
We ve been going with assumption this whole time that he just stole all that stuff because he thinks he can make a profit, Gloria said. But he didn t just invite the richest people on the Hill to his little auction. Think about it. Wylma, Moorealan, Mary McPhisto, and the Lunatics. What do all those people have in common?
Pretty much nothing, Phil said. Unless you count the fact that I ve heard of them all.
That s exactly what they have in common, Gloria said. You ve heard of them all because they re all the big powers and most influential people on the Hill. And for anyone else who s going to be coming tonight, I bet they re all the biggest players on the Hill. You could probably say that these people are what make the Hill so different in the first place.
Caleb finally caught on. He intends to kill everyone. He took all the artifacts as a way to get them all in one place. All of the people tonight are going to either want the artifacts for themselves or want to keep them from getting into the wrong hands. But he kept one aside that he thought he could use to kill them all at once. He must not realize how powerful it really is.
Oh shit, Gloria said. And just how powerful is the Amulet of Water, exactly?
From what I ve heard, Phil said, it s powerful enough that it won t just stop with blowing up the people in the park. It could very well destroy the entire Hill and everyone in it.
No, it s worse than that, Caleb said. That s only if the person who uses it is practiced with it. Someone who s never used it before but still has a high degree of concentration would probably put enough power into it to incinerate the entire city. And if he doesn t have a high degree of concentration? Gloria asked. If he s, oh I don t know, distracted from trying to control a horde of zombies or maybe by the cravings of the uncontrollable drug he s been taking?
Then the entire state goes up in a mushroom cloud, Caleb said, and most likely the rest of the world would plunge into a nuclear winter. That s the bright side, at least.
How is nuclear winter the bright side? Gloria asked.
Gloria thought she could almost hear Caleb shrug. We d be too incinerated to have to worry about it.