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“We’re your best bet, Talent,” the woman snarled. “There’s a KOS out for you.”
“A what?”
“Kill on sight,” the woman said.
“What are you talking about? I’m an American citizen. You can’t just shoot people. What the hell?”
“We can shoot all the animals we want,” the man snarled.
“I want to punch him,” Armo said, looking back at Dekka.
“Feel free.”
So Armo swung his paw, caught the man on the jaw, and left him lying unconscious atop the woman struggling to reach her gun, which had landed a foot beyond her outstretched fingers.
And then, a tingling warning of danger and Dekka turned, already knowing what she would see. During the brief melee Dillon had removed his gag.
“Everyone! Attack them! Kill the mutants! Kill! Kill!”
He danced back as police and EMTs, tourists and staff spun, stared, fixed their aim, and rushed at Dekka and Armo.
“Hah! In fact, you two mutants kill each other. Now! Yeah! Kill each other!”
Dekka took a step back from Armo, and Armo did from her. But then, neither of them attacked. In fact, neither had any urge to obey.
“Do it!” Dillon roared, as Saffron disentangled herself and ran to his side. “Kill each other!” As Saffron leaped to the attack, Dillon amended quickly. “Not you, Saffron.”
But Dekka and Armo both were busy coping with the attacks of the controlled, fending off wild-eyed retirees and moms and even a few kids, trying to do as little damage as possible, but retreating all the while toward the exterior doors.
Madness inside the casino. And no way now to get at the boy with the impossible-to-disobey voice as he retreated behind a phalanx of dozens, maybe a hundred or more maddened zombies.
Madness outside the casino as well. Screams and roars of rage, gunshots, the sounds of fists thudding against flesh, sirens, alarms . . . chaos! All of it bathed in the eerie neon light of millions of bulbs.
Dekka and Armo, punching and kicking through the mob, searched for their motorcycles and found them knocked over, but still where they had left them hastily parked on the sidewalk. They shoved and pushed and, when necessary, pounded people. Then, just as Dekka had managed to fire up her engine, a woman leaped at her, landing sideways across Dekka’s gas tank, her face so close Dekka could feel the warmth of her breath. And before Dekka could take her paws from the handlebars to push the woman away, her dreads struck.
Until that moment the effect that happened when she morphed—her dreads turning to agitated snakes—had seemed like nothing more than a bit of a threat display, a bit of theater. But in the blink of an eye, a dozen of the snake-dreads had struck, sinking tiny black fangs into the woman’s cheeks and nose and neck.
What happened next forced a scream of horror from Dekka’s own lips. Because the woman changed horribly, and with brutal speed. Her skin shriveled, wrinkled, and turned the putty color of an old desktop computer. Her eyes swelled in their sockets, stared at Dekka in uncomprehending horror, then dimmed and, like her flesh, shriveled until they were little more than two white-and-red raisins at the bottoms of empty eye sockets.
Armo, seeing that Dekka was just staring and shouting in terror, reached over, grabbed her shoulder and said, “Ride!”
Dekka shook herself, pushed the dying woman aside, and hit the throttle.
CHAPTER 15
The Bacterium Screams
AS SHADE WAS ripping through the Ranch, Malik lay on his back, looking up at trees. They formed intricate patterns, leaves lower, pine needles higher, black lace doilies against a spread of faint stars, just appearing.
Cruz sat nearby, looking down at the Ranch and feeling a mix of emotions, none of them pleasant. She beat herself up for not being with Shade down there, though she knew she would only slow her friend down. She felt desperately sad for Malik. Malik, eternally morphed. Malik who had not just lost his home and family to Shade’s obsession, but now had lost his body, and soon, perhaps, his mind.
And what can you do about it? Cruz asked herself.
Nothing. Nothing but be carried along, one of life’s little bits of flotsam and jetsam in the river Shade.
She felt bad sparing even a little energy for self-pity, but it was there just the same. Before she had met Shade, Cruz had just barely begun on her own path to understanding herself. She had spent most of her lifetime in futile efforts to be what she was not, to please a father who would never love who she really was, and a mother who was cowed and defeated and quiet, like someone out of The Handmaid’s Tale.
She had been trying to figure out how she could start on hormone treatments. She’d been walking it all through in stages in her mind—do the hormones and see how that felt. Maybe breast surgery and see how that felt. Then, maybe the serious surgery, the one that would make her fully physically female. She’d spent ridiculous amounts of time just trying to learn the legalities and had come up against the fact that she was basically stymied until she was eighteen. And then, if she could maybe get a job and maybe get health insurance and maybe this and maybe that . . .
