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Julian’s muscles constricted in a bid for freedom, and Bruno jabbed the gun under the guy’s jaw more deeply, staring at Zoe. At the blood, flowing from her ears. “She’s deaf,” he announced. “She can’t hear your commands. You’ve got a rogue robot on your hands. And no off-switch. Congratulations. Asshole.”
“Shut up!” King pulled Lily back against himself. “Zoe!” He let loose with the gobbledy-gook again. Zoe ignored him. Gasoline pattered the dusty floor with shiny, oily drops. The fumes were sickening.
“Hobart!” King bellowed. “Stop her!”
Bam.Hobart tried to obey. Zoe shrieked as the bullet hit her shoulder and spun her around. The gas can dropped, nozzle side down, glugging, cascading down the stairs.Bam,this time the thigh, but Zoe got up like a zombie ghoul, and still came on, bleeding.
She hit the gas can with her foot. It bounced to the foot of the stairs, liquid still glugging out, spreading in a pool. Zoe tumbled to the foot of the stairs, and lay still. Hobart walked over to her—
Her knife flashed up, stabbing into his hamstring. Hobart screamed. His gun went off, the bullet thudding into the stairs. He fell backwards—and Zoe was on top, slamming her fist into his face.
A rapid movement caught his eye. Lily jerked to the side, and the movement caught King off guard, pulled him off balance. The two of them hit the aged, cracked wooden banister, which had born Bruno’s weight when he fell against it, but could not bear the combined mass of Lily and King together. It cracked, sagged. Gave way.
“No!” Bruno yelled, as King and Lily toppled out into empty air.
* * *
They took flight.Part of her hoping maybe it was all over. She might break her neck, please God. But the fall wasn’t far enough. They toppled in a sickening three-sixty flop, everything spinning—
Thud.The sudden stop stunned her. King was beneath her, his face empurpled, gasping for air. Horribly close. He’d landed on his back. Her on top. She’d knocked out his wind. She scrambled away, and crab-walked through a puddle of gasoline, groping for the duct-tape cell phone necklace. Jerked them off, threw. One ended up in a pool of gas. The other fetched up against a tassled velvet curtain.
Zoe and Hobart had paused in their combat to watch their idol fall, horrified. Lily looked frantically around for a weapon. A banister slats lay on the floor, a chunk of the handrail still attached, jagged and sharp. She seized it, hauled it back, loading a vicious swing at King.
Zoe and Hobart forgot each other, and lunged to stop her.
* * *
Bruno jerked the pistol up.Bam. Bam.Hobart’s head disintegrated. Julian exploded into action, flipping him onto his back, slamming his gun hand to the ground.
The gun flew from Bruno’s fingers, spinning across the floor. A pinkish arc of Hobart’s blood and brain tissue had spattered across the room.Boom.One of the cell phones exploded. The sound hit him, like a blow to the center of the chest. The puddle of gas burst into dancing flames with awhump.Flames licked, leaped, spread. Fast.
Bruno tried to regroup, but Julian drove him hard, and he could only catch what was happening in jagged flashes out of the corner of his eye, like stop-gap animation amid a desperate dance to avoid the blows crunching into his ribs, the boot heels flying towards his chin. Julian fought like a demon, but the stench of burning hair dragged a split second of attention Bruno could ill afford, to see Zoe lurching to her feet—on fire. Hair, clothes, face. Her back was aflame, her hair a torch, her face blistering. She’d fallen in a puddle of gas.
She didn’t seem to feel it. She just shambled towards King, arms outstretched. Smiling, as her skin crackled, melted. Come to mamma.
Lily backed away from the flaming apparition. King staggered back, screaming desperately. Words Zoe’s ruptured eardrums could not hear. On she came, relentlessly. King’s back hit the base of the curving wooden staircase.Thwack,Bruno’s distraction earned him a elbow to the jaw which sent him spinning way too close to a pool of dancing flame. He twisted and skittered to keep from falling into it, which opened him up to a devastatingwhap-bamdouble punch to his kidneys. Down he went, oof.Fuck.Julian came at him, boots flying. Bruno jerked an arm to block a kick, and saw Lily, swinging her strange, jagged edged club—
Whack,right between Julian’s shoulder blades. The kid stumbled forward with a startled grunt, turned—and witnessed King, clasped in Zoe’s fiery embrace. Clothes aflame, mouth wide, issuing a rasping, inhuman sound. King fell, Zoe on top of him, into the flame. They roared around them, closing until only their legs emerged, jerking. Shiny, blistered hands poked out of the blaze, groping for the bottom of the tassled velvet curtains, which were also on fire.
Julian bolted towards his master. Dove in, heedless of the flames, trying to pry King loose. The blazing curtain gave way, and billowed down onto the struggling knot of people,tha-whump. Crackling.
Bruno and Lily were alone, in a roaring inferno. The heavy folds of burning cloth writhed, flopped.Bruno pushed himself up, to a sitting position. Lily straightened, and tossed the makeshift club to the ground.
Bruno got to his feet, and gestured towards the door. “Let’s go!”
Amazingly, she shook her head and backed towards the staircase that was not yet in flames. “No! The kids are still in there!”
Her voice sounded like it was coming through thousands of miles of phone wire. He shook his head. The movement made everything hurt.
“They got out!” he yelled. “Julian chased them onto the grounds!”
“Not them! The babies!” She headed back up the stairs.
Babies?What in the flying fuck…?
Boom,the other cell phone exploded. Bruno barely heard it, he was so deafened by gunshots. A new pool of flames whooshed into existence, threatening to engulf the second staircase, where Lily had gone. The other was already a solid wall of flames.
The air was hot, the smoke thick and greasy. He heard himself, from faraway, screaming obscenities as he leaped the flames to the foot of the stairs, practically barbecuing his testicles in the process.
