Timecaster: Supersymmetry (21 page)

No sh too much woman for that.”

“m my bare skin.

onTpit. It was a banana. Singing and hopping on the keys.

I checked behind the bar and spotted Rocket immediately. He was well over two meters tall, and easily as wide. Though I didn’t take steroids, practically everyone else did. Some, like Rocket, took it to obscene levels. He wore a black body suit, so tight I could see his pulse. Biceps thicker than my waist. Calves were the size of barrels. Even his cheeks had muscle striations.

I may have wet my pants a little.

I noticed the belt on his waist, and the Nife sheath. Maybe I wouldn’t have to fight him for it. Maybe, if I were low-key and stealthy, I could steal it without having to go toe-to-toe with him.

“Hey!” Rocket pointed at me, his voice so low it didn’t sound human. “You’re the guy that killed my Aunt Zelda!”

I might have tried explaining to him that I didn’t kill his Aunt, that was Alter-Talon, but in three huge strides he was on me, a giant, meaty paw reaching for my neck.

“I’m going to rip off your arms and stick them up your own ass,” he snarled.

That didn’t sound like something I wanted to happen.

But I had no idea what I could do to stop it.

The whole cabin
began to shake, zombies pounding on the walls, the door, the shuttered windows.

My mind raced. With Sata gone, we were trapped here on this earth. And this earth didn’t seem like a very nice place. Without a TEV to get us back, Talon’s wife, and this earth, were doomed.

“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” Grandma was pressing one of the .45s into Alter-Vicki’s hands.

“I learn fast.”

“Safety is off. Aim and squeeze the trigger.” Grandma went to the nearest window, pulled open a slot in the shutter, revealing an eye hole.

No, not an eye hole. A gun hole. She stuck her rifle through the small opening and began firing.

Phin and I took separate windows, each doing the same. A peek into the backyard made my gut clench. There were dozens of walking dead outside; more zombies than I had ammo. I fired and reloaded and fired and reloaded until my hearing was numb and the shotgun barrel was so hot it sizzled when blood spattered onto it.

The undead kept coming.

I backed away from the window, yelling at Grandma for more cartridges. She yelled something back, something that sounded like
kitchen pantry
.

I headed for it, and noticed Alter-Vicki was shooting at the trap door. The st too much woman for that.”

“arthere was at all“Yes.”ove had overturned and a pile of dead bodies clogged the opening, some still, some moving. Phin had muscled the bookcase to the front door, which had a hole in it, a zombie arm reaching through trying to grasp anything it could. I got behind Phin, we put our weight into it, and the bookcase crunched into the arm, snapping it off at the elbow.

“I’m getting ammo!”

He nodded. I entered the kitchen and began throwing open cabinets, stopping when I saw a canvas bag. I took it out, noticed it contained a few syringes.

REJUVEE SERUM. WARNING! DO NOT ADMINISTER AFTER TWENTY MINUTES.

“The pantry! Here!” Grandma said. She stormed past me and opened a cabinet stuffed with bullets.

I lifted up the bag, showing her.

“Put it away, Talon. It’s bad.”

“But…”

“Trust me. It’s not a miracle. It’s a curse.”

“Why do you have it?”

“Human nature. I make mistakes just like everyone else.”

I put the bag back, and Grandma gave me a box of shells. As I was reloading, someone managed to crawl through the pile of dead clogging the trap door.

I aimed.

But I didn’t shoot. None of us did. Not even as it stood up and began shuffling toward Grandma.

I had no doubt I was pointing my shotgun at a reanimated corpse. Sunken eyes. Missing chunks of flesh. Pale, blue skin. Smelled like some fat guys with BO ate bad cheese and took a group shit on a rotting carcass.

But this particular carcass was my grandfather.

Phin stepped up, cracking his zombie double across the jaw. As it staggered backward, my grandpa looked at Jack.

“You brought me back to life?” he said.

Grandma nodded. “You come back every night. I can’t bring myself to shoot you in the head.”

“That’s so adorable.” Phin winked at her, then peppered his zombie version with buckshot until it looked like a moldy pile of rancid hamburger.

Talk about killing yourself…

I fell into a rhythm of shooting and reloading, shooting and reloading.

But the zombies kept coming.

“Storm clouds!” Grandma yelled over the gunfire. “We just need to hold out a little longer!”

I had no idea what that meant, but then I was in a cabin on an alternate earth with my grandparents who died when I was a kid and we were surrounded by zombies, so my mind had left familiar reality a while ago. Maybe rain made zombie the antidote for the nanopoisonem

ut the ps dissolve. Maybe the undead feared lightning.

Couldn’t blame them if they did. Lightning was scary.

I reloaded again, noting there weren’t many shells left, but the zombie population hadn’t diminished by much.

“They’re getting in!” Phin yelled.

I shot a glance at the trap door, but that was so clogged with bodies nothing could get through. Then noticed the bookcase beginning to topple.

I ran for it, bracing it up with my shoulder, heaving against it while swatting the zombie arms reaching through the door.

Something grabbed me, yanking me forward, pulling my arm through one of the holes and outside into the zombie swarm.

I screamed. How could I not?

Phin wrapped his arms around my waist, and we both strained to get me free.

Then I felt it. The worst possible thing a person could feel in a zombie apocalypse.

Teeth on my bare skin.

Unfortunately, this one had two jaws, both upper and lower, and when it bit down on my wrist I felt my skin break.

Oh no…

Oh no no no…

I ducked out
of Rocket’s reach, backpedalling until my ass hit the counter behind me. My arms hung at my sides, useless. I was so scared I’d completely forgotten how to fight.

Rocket snarled and took a step toward me.

I tried to remember the last time I’d encountered Rocket, what I’d done to beat him, and it came to me in an uncomfortable flash: I’d had weapons and had gotten ridiculously lucky.

But maybe there was something I could learn from the past. I dug into my pocket, my fingers grasping the FMN pill Phin had given me.

It went under my tongue, tasting a lot like memories, with a hint of spearmint.

Then I thought of my previous bout with Rocket.

The effect was amazing. I had full visual, aural, and even sensual recall of our fight. I even remembered my own thoughts. It all played out in my head like it was happening for the first time.

Rocket throws a roundhouse, much too fast for a guy so big. I manage to pull away from the brunt of it, but he catches the very tip of my chin. The blow spins me, and I drop to my hands and knees, trying to discern up from down. My eyes gravitate to the counter. In one spring, Rocket leaps on top of it. His combat boots are almost as long a the antidote for the nanopoisonamCan you matter“Yes.”s my arm.

I crawl in the opposite direction, feeling the vibration as he jumps to the floor. Moving as fast as I can, I scurry under a heavy, faux-wood table, and try to remember where the front door is. From under the table it is tough to judge.

Several people laugh, and I realize I am the source of their amusement. This isn’t the first time Rocket has put on a show for them.

The table suddenly disappears. It reappears on the other side of the room, crashing into the wall twelve meters away. I stare up and see Rocket looming over me.

I cleared my mind, hopping out of the memory and back to reality. Incredibly, Rocket was still in mid-step; though time had ticked by in my brain, it hadn’t in real life.

It made a weird sort of sense. A thought is pretty fast—it is just electrochemical signals travelling a very short distance from neuron to neuron. So recalling thoughts with the Forget-Me-Not pill was almost instantaneous.

Rocket loomed over me. If he did what he did before, he would throw a roundhouse and knock me down.

I anticipated his move, ducking before he swung, threading through his legs and darting under the counter, coming up on the other side just as he began his leap.

I reached out, pushing one of his gigantic boots while it was in the air, shoving with all I had to knock him off balance.

Rather than land on his feet, Rocket landed on his hands and knees. I caught him in the nose with a palm strike, bursting it like a ripe tomato. But that didn’t seem to bother him, and he backhanded me so hard I spun around twice before smacking into the floor.

He stepped off the counter, looming over me.

Again I concentrated, trying to remember a similar situation in our previous encounter.

I twist onto my back and thrust my foot at the one place I know he doesn’t have muscles, right in the balls. My kick bounces off, harmlessly. Then Rocket raises a size thirty-eight shoe of his own. I can picture my rib cage and pelvis being crushed, and don’t much care for that picture, so I tuck in my arms and roll sideways.

His stomp makes the floor shake. After a few revolutions I get on my hands and knees and stand to face him.

Rocket has a smile on his face, obviously enjoying himself.

“This is the part where you beg me not to kill you,” he says.

“Does it help?”

“No. I’ll kill you anyway.”

He steps closer. I step away. I try to run left. He gets in front of me. I feint right, then left, but he blocks each attempt, gradually boxing me in. It takes less than thirty seconds for him to herd me into a corner of the room. Nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.

“You gonna beg?” he asks, his over, unconscious.

os staggerGexpression playful.

“Please don’t beat me to death.”

“That’s not very good.”

Back to reality. A kick to the balls didn’t work. Begging didn’t work.

So what worked?

Back to the memory.

He throws an easy jab. I take it on the shoulder, and it knocks me back into the wall. The impact makes my eyes water.

Another jab. I bring my arms up to block, and it feel like I tried to stop a bus. Rocket is just playing with me, like a deranged child who pulls the wings from butterflies. I’m nothing more than a toy for his amusement. Something harmless, to be used and then forgotten about.

That pisses me off.

I latch onto the anger, using it to push back some of the fear. Rocket lobs another jab my way, but this time I sidestep it, grab his shirt, and ram the top of my head up under his chin.

The roider staggers back. When he regains his balance, he jams two giant fingers into his mouth. He pulls something small and blo
ody out from between his lips, then looks at me, amazed.

“You knocked out my—”

I repeat the maneuver, cracking my head against his jaw so hard I see stars.

Rocket yelps—probably the first time he’s ever made a sound like that—and then spits two more teeth onto the floor.

I got to my feet.

Rocket advanced, threw the expected jab.

I slipped the punch, grabbed his shirt, and head-butted the fucker.

The roider staggered back, then repeated the same action as before, reaching into his mouth and pulling out a tooth.

I repeated my prior action as well, cracking my head against his jaw.

He spat onto the floor, then said the obvious, the expected.

“You knocked out my teeth.”

I put up my fists.

Cut to the memory.

I clench my hands and raise them.

“Just shut the fuck up and fight, bitch.”

For a fraction of a second, Rocket appears uncertain. Then he comes at me.

He swings. I duck. He feints. I dodge. I swing. I connect. No effect. I kick. I connect. No effect. He kicks. I jump away. He punches. I dodge. I punch. I connect. No effect. I punch. I connect. No effect. He punches—

too much woman for that.”

“m went slack.

ke—catapulting me off my feet, flipping me end over end until I come to rest on my belly, sucking air and exhaling pain, my cold hands and shaking legs the first symptoms of going into shock.

I unclenched my hands. Going toe-to-toe with this guy was suicide.

Instead I reached around my belt and tugged out the knife Grandpa gave me.

The blade was no more than ten centimeters long, and pointing it at Rocket made me feel all kinds of inadequate. I might as well have been holding a child’s toy. Even if I stabbed him to the hilt it couldn’t penetrate anything important. The guy wore his muscles like a thick suit of armor.

That’s what I needed right now. A suit of nanotube armor. That stuff could even repel the Nife on Rocket’s hip.

But I didn’t have nanotube armor. All I had was Phin’s little buck knife. So I did my best, thrusting it forward like a fencing foil, putting all of my weight and strength into the blow, burying the blade in Rocket’s waist, hoping to puncture his kidney.

Rocket took a quick step back, yanking the knife handle out of my hand. He stared down at it sticking out of his belly, then at me, blood dripping down his face.

A terrible, deep, throaty sound came out of his mouth. Low and rhythmic.

Rocket was laughing.

“Let me show you a real blade,” he said, going for his Nife.

I remembered how this played out.

Rocket reaches behind him and grabs something in his belt.