Zero City Read online

  Out of the dark, a huge figure was shambling along the street, moving hunched over as if struggling against a fierce wind.

  “Hey, Sarge!” Ben called out with a wave. “Over here!”

  Shuffling along, Harold paused and stared at the men with his good eye. Many people, when they first met him, instantly thought him to be a mutie, with his bent back, mottled hair and distorted features. But in truth, he had been one of the most handsome men in the ville until he fell through the top of a greenhouse, the shards of glass reducing his good looks into a grotesque mockery in less than seconds. And even worse, a sliver of glass had stabbed into his head, producing little blood and healing quickly, but his mind was gone, terminated like a cut cable. All that remained of the master sergeant of the Alphaville sec men was a powerful body, forged to even greater strength by the endless toil of brutally hard work.

  Harold came their way at a leisurely pace, trying to smile, but only managing to distend his lips and drool slightly. In his powerful arms, he clutched a tiny box covered with flowery wallpaper.

  “What’s prob?” he said with slurred words, bobbing slightly. “Bad rock?”

  Hands resting on his hips, Ben laughed. “Yeah, that’s right. It’s a bad rock. Toss it on top of the wall for us, would you, pal?”

  Harold blinked at the titanic stone as if registering its existence for the first time. A soft wind blew over the work site, carrying the smell of hot dust from the outer desert. Somewhere, a wolf briefly howled and was abruptly silenced.

  “Sure.” Harold grinned. Putting aside his package, he started to bend to grab the rock, when a song repeated in his addled mind about lifting big things “up from the knees.” He had to listen to the voices in his head, he admonished himself. They were friends.

  Bending his knees, Harold slid his thick sausage fingers underneath the rock and grunted slightly as he lifted the quarter ton of polished granite to his chest.

  “Where?” he asked in an embarrassed tone. “Forgot.”

  Open mouthed, Felix could only stare as Ben directed Harold to the wall. Gingerly, so as to not hurt the puny wall, Harold placed the slab on top and stepped away quickly. Sometimes when he moved things they fell over, and he didn’t want to get hurt. For a split second, there flashed through his mind a kaleidoscope of images-a ladder, a push from below, falling toward the wall...but then they were gone and forgotten.

  “Good job, Sarge,” Ben said, slapping the giant on the shoulder. “Get along. Dinner is waiting.”

  “Yar,” he said, drooling. Tenderly retrieving his box, Harold ambled away, so very pleased to have helped a friend in need. Softly, the voices in his head started to whisper that they really weren’t his friends, but he covered his cauliflower ears and shouted until they stopped. Everybody in the ville was his friend. Didn’t they always ask him for help? He was as important as the baron! And today was a special day. He clutched the canvas bundle in his arm even tighter. Harold was going to get married today!

  Watching the broken goliath shuffle away, Felix fanned himself with a battered cloth cap. “Son of a bitch. I ain’t never seen nothing like him!”

  “Strong as a machine,” Ben agreed, finding his shirt and pulling it on over his head. “And just as dumb. We get him to do a lot of our work for us.”

  “Doesn’t the foreman know?” Felix asked suspiciously.

  “Naw, he does it, too. We all do.”

  Unwrapping the rags from his hands, Felix privately smiled at the news. That was important information to file away if he ever decided to rat to the baron on laziness in the construction crews. Might become foreman himself that away. “If that thing ever goes insane, be mighty hard to stop.”

  “Crap,” Ben scoffed, reclaiming his own hat, a battered baseball cap with the letters removed from on the bill. Only a few loose threads showed where the embroidered logo of some predark company had once been. “A bullet in the head will stop anything.”

  Felix scowled deeply and cast his eyes to the cloudy sky. “No,” he said. “There are some things a blaster can’t stop.”

  Fully understanding what the immigrant was referring to, Ben felt a rush of fear and turned up the wick on the lantern as high as it would go. The area was filled with brilliant light for several yards in every direction.

  “Come on, let’s get inside,” Ben suggested. Staying near the lantern, they hurried toward the barracks and a meal long overdue.

  THE TINY GRAY HOUSE stood alone on a cracked parking lot, the single plastic window solid white from the sandstorms that occasionally swept over the ville from the desert. The roof was tough plastic and withstood the acid rains in the spring just fine. Although kind of small, it had been comfy for two, tight for three, and now was too damn big for just him alone.

  When Philip Arnstein and his wife first found the place, there had been a chart posted on the exterior listing the prices for the privilege of parking in the lot. But he had found a rusty can of paint decades ago and used half to paint the exterior twice, giving it a new look that pleased his wife greatly. She had shown him how much that night, by doing things she had only hinted about earlier. He still remembered that night and always would.

  Naturally, the other half of the paint was given to the baron. Sex was nice, but not even the wolves scared him as much as the thought of going to the Machine.

  Sitting in a lawn chair by the open door, the old man shook off those thoughts and lit a corncob pipe with a piece of smoldering oakum. In his withered hands was a whole fresh corncob, nicely dried and completely devoid of anything edible. Smoking contentedly, the oldster started to whittle a new pipe. This one was getting a bit oily in taste and was soon for the mash pot of the brewers. The baron didn’t let anything go to waste. It was his only good point, the bloody bastard.

  Then from out of the darkness, a monstrous shape lunged forward, and the old man screamed in fright, dropping his pipe.

  “Hi, Mr. Arnstein,” Harold said, grinning sloppily. “I got speak about Laura.”

  “Harold, don’t ever do that again!” Arnstein admonished angrily, searching on the ground for his pipe. He found it under his chair and lit it with trembling hands. “Damn near made me jump out of my skin. Thought you was a mutie.”

  “Sorry. Laura?” he asked plaintively, trying to sneak a peek inside the tiny house.

  “Not here,” Arnstein said, surprised he got the name right. Poor dumb thing got lost inside a walled ville. It was pathetic. The new baron should have shot him years ago, but Strichland wasn’t exactly famous for his mercy.

  “Marry,” Harold gushed. “Wanna marry her.” He held out a package. “Brought gift. Dowry.”

  The former sec man stumbled over the big word, and wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. But the voices in his head keep screaming it was the correct thing to do. Ask first. Always ask first.

  “You want to marry my daughter, Laura.” The old man chewed over the pronouncement as if it were unknown meat. Damnedest thing he had ever heard. Why would even this half-wit want to marry a retarded whore?

  “You fucking her?” he asked bluntly.

  Harold felt his face burn bright red, and his vision clouded, dots of blackness swimming before him with a cloud of flies.

  “Yes,” he blurted honestly, remembering how they had once kissed. “We in love.”

  Rad-blast it! The hunchback and the girl were having sex.

  “Sorry, son, but you’re a day late,” Arnstein said kindly. “She was just too much trouble here, knocking over things, setting fires, so I sold her to the gaudy house.”

  Raw horror seized the goliath, his heart pounding savagely in his barrel chest. “She at bad place?” he squeaked like a child. He grabbed the old man and lifted him effortlessly off the chair. A massive hand closed around Arnstein’s neck, cutting off the air. “No! No! I marry her! She mine! You hear me? Mine!”

  Feebly, Arnstein clawed at the hand holding him aloft. He tried to kick Harold between the legs, but he was too far away, his skin
ny foot only flailing helplessly. Finally, Harold realized what he was doing and eased his grip.

  “Baron made me,” Arnstein wheezed. “Everybody has got to work. You know the rules, same as me. Hell, boy, you wrote them! No work means no food. Or worse, expulsion.”

  Frightened, Harold glanced at the rusty wall of smashed cars rising above the ville. Outside, the muties would get you. Laura was too little to go there. He could, but he was strong and knew the great secret.

  But Laura sold to the gaudy house! Raw fury seized the man, and he felt the adrenaline rush of killing flood his body when the ghostly voices commanded him to release the whitehair. He was Laura’s father. Would Laura marry the man who killed her blood kin? Conflicting emotions shook his fragile mind. On impulse, he released the man as if gesturing in surprise.

  “Back,” Harold rumbled menacingly at the man cowering on the pavement. “You get back!”

  “C-can’t,” Arnstein gasped, massaging his bruised throat. “She belongs to the house now. They own her. Probably already at work doing some sec man or farmer.”

  The words so simply said hit Harold like punches, driving the madness from his mind and replacing it with a deadly cold fire. He turned and stumbled, going down the streets between the array of finished greenhouses. His pace quickly became a sprint, then a lope, as he dashed across the ville to save the woman he loved from being forced into kissing other men.

  The blocks flew beneath his shoes, and the greenhouses passed by in the glittering majesty as if crystal phantoms. Reaching the market square, he plowed into numerous people, his every thought on reaching his goal.

  Music, light and laughter came from every window and door of the building. A few men lounged against the wall, smiling and smoking on corncob pipes. The front door was garishly painted with a vulgar cartoon for patrons who couldn’t read, and the picture fueled Harold into an insane rage. Charging, he simply plowed through the door, ripping it off the hinges. The crash stunned him for a moment, then he found himself standing inside the gaudy house, with a burly man advancing upon him holding a dented baseball bat.

  “What’s wrong with you, Sarge?” the bouncer demanded, brandishing the weapon. “You finally gone crazy, or forgot how to knock?”

  Harold wasn’t sure how to answer the man, so he said nothing. Okay, he was inside, but now what? The giant couldn’t think. His thoughts were muddled and confused. Looking about hopefully, he saw a group of men drinking at tables in the next room. The walls were covered with mirrors, and a pretty girl with garish makeup stood behind the makeshift counter, polishing a plastic tumbler, her red satin dress skintight, her bound breasts nearly spilling out for display.

  “Mebbe he’s been smoking wolfweed!” called out a drunken tailor, who immediately regretted the words as the hunchback stared at him directly with eyes filled with death.

  “You’re going to have to replace that door!” the bouncer stated.

  “No,” he rumbled. “Where Laura?”

  “She’s not here,” the girl behind the bar told him. “Pat sent her home.”

  Was that true? Could it be? Harold felt even more confused when he saw the slut glance nervously at the steps leading to the second floor, and some small part of his brain that could still process information told him she was lying, that Laura had to be up there. Turning, he started for the staircase. The bouncer blocked his way, and Harold shoved him aside. The man flew across the room and hit the wall with a crunch, his limp body sliding to the floor, blood dribbling from a slack mouth.

  “Laura!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Laura!”

  “She’s upstairs with a customer,” the tailor shouted callously. “Wait your turn. She’ll be down in a second.”

  Screaming in fury, Harold took the stairs three at a time to the upper level. A long corridor stretched before him, lined with doors on each side. He could hear odd noises from the other side, squeaking and muffled cries. Choosing one at random, he kicked it open, the door coming off the hinges and sagging to the floor. Inside, two people were on a bed wrestling. They froze in surprise. Without comment, Harold went to the next door and tried again. That room was empty, but strange items made of leather hung from the walls and bedposts. He didn’t understand and left feeling oddly unclean.

  In the room across the hall, Harold found three nude women lying on the bed covers, their limbs entangled to the point where it was impossible to tell where one ended and the next began. He grabbed a random leg and started to separate the moaning women. Each began to scream as he forced their faces upward to see which was Laura. None of them was.

  Leaving the room, Harold shouted her name again as a skinny teenager appeared at the end of the corridor brandishing a homemade blaster, a thin metal barrel attached to the wooden grip by baling wire.

  “Hold it right there, buddy!” the runt cried out, and slid a .22 cartridge into breech of the zip gun. With the other hand, he pulled back a nail attached to a rubber band. “Ain’t no fighting on the fuck floor allowed!”

  His beleaguered mind couldn’t comprehend the full meaning of what was said, but he recognized a threat, and panic for Laura seized him worse than before. Finding he still held the broken handle from the first door in his hand, he threw it at the teenager, catching him in the stomach. The boy doubled over, vomiting, and dropped the blaster. The weapon fired as it hit the floor, a puff of dust exploding from the wall near Harold.

  Not connecting the two events, Harold went unconcerned to the next door and kicked it open to find more people wrestling.

  “What the hell is going on here?” shouted the man on top of a woman with raven-black hair. “Scram, gimp! I paid for this slut-she’s mine for another hour.”

  But as the stranger resumed his actions, Harold saw in horror that it was Laura under him. Her slim arms were tied to the bedposts, her nude body splayed like a cow for slaughter. Her blue eyes were closed, a dirty rag stuffed in her mouth, and his new wife made little whimpering noises as the big man between her legs began pumping again.

  Stepping to the bed, Harold punched the man in the face as hard as he could. Blood sprayed from the impact, and the stranger flew off the bed, tumbling to the floor in a tangle of clothes.

  Looking down at Laura, he saw she wasn’t really naked. Her clothes were undone and in wild disarray, her breasts fully visible and the tangle of ebony hair between her legs exposed.

  A moist pink slit ran along the downy triangle, and it fueled a strange new hunger inside the hunchback.

  “Don’t you move!” a cold voice said from the doorway.

  Instincts honed in a hundred battles before his accident, Harold sensed real danger now and spun with his hands clenched for a fight.

  Standing in the ruined doorway was a hugely overweight woman dressed in frilly clothes and holding a longblaster. Not a homemade model like the kid in the hall, but a proper shotgun. She worked the pump and pointed the muzzle not at him, but straight toward Laura. Harold moved between them to protect the girl.

  “Smart move, Sarge,” Patrica stated. “But this is loaded with bent nails and glass, boy. Cut you open like a fish.”

  “Mine,” he offered in simple explanation, pointing at the bound girl. “Mine!”

  The gaudy house madam shook her head, never taking her eyes off the hunchbacked giant. “No, Harold,” Patrica said quietly. “Laura is mine. Her father sold her to me. I own her.”

  Harold lowered his head and took a step forward.

  Instantly, the madam triggered the blaster, blowing a hole in the plasterboard wall the size of a sewer grating. He stopped the advance as she worked the pump action again, but didn’t relax.

  “Mine,” Harold repeated, his deadly hands still extended.

  “Sergeant O’Malley, listen to me,” the madam said slowly. She was armed, but if the shotgun didn’t kill him on the spot, he’d rip her head off before dying.

  “Harold, by the law of the ville, this was a legal transaction,” Patrica said in a motherly tone
. Sex appeal wouldn’t work on the enraged idiot. She had to be nice. “The baron himself is a client here and encourages whoring. It’s a service to the ville. We forge treaties between families. Immigrants don’t get raped anymore. It’s a good thing. Sluts are special people. The ville needs sluts.”

  “Gonna marry her!” he screamed, spittle coming from his slack lips. “Father said okay. Called me son!”

  “She mine!” Harold repeated, glancing at the bound girl supine on the sweat-stained bed. “Mine.”

  “Interesting.” Now the madam felt more in control. His tone was softening, and she was starting to understand. So old man Arnstein had sold his daughter cheap, knowing the ville hunchback was in love with her. That’s why nobody else wanted the girl, in spite of her incredible beauty. Well, she’d settle the score with the old cheat later. Right now, she had a brain-dead Hercules who wanted to walk off with her prize slut. No way Pat was going to let that happen. At least not without making a profit. Maybe the sarge could be of use to her in certain matters. Debts to be collected, break a few legs. She might have him under her control for years.

  “Well, that’s too bad about her father, Sarge. I paid for her fair and square. Canned food and shoes. A good knife and two blankets without holes.”

  “Me buy,” he mumbled, not sure of what to do. Things that had to be moved or broken, invaders or muties to kill-these he could fathom, real things you could touch. This was beyond him, and the voices were beginning to whisper terrible bloody suggestions.

  Tucking the shotgun under her arm, Patrica laughed heartily, making her whole body jiggle. “Oh, my poor young fool. You work shoveling boiled crap in the greenhouses. You could never steal enough vegetables to pay for a beauty like this!”

  Behind her, the skinny kid reappeared, the tiny blaster in his grip, a savage expression on his face. Harold looked directly at the boy the way he did with the desert wolves, and the teen went pale, backing into the corridor.

  The package in his back pocket suddenly felt warm, and Harold removed it. “Got this,” he said, tossing the bundle to the woman. It landed on the floor between them.