Episode 44, “Something I Can Grab”
[image error]Peyton tasted blood. Stillwater’s fist crashed into his jaw a second time, a third time, hammering him back, throwing him against the cracked facade of the bodega. Peyton sheltered his head, tucking his chin, feeling Big Bill’s attacks crash against his forearms. Shards of the bodega’s plaster dig into his kidneys.
He brought his elbows down on Stillwater’s back. The sharp blows staggered the other giant, long enough for Peyton to ram his right fist into Stillwater’s jaw. He threw shovel hook after shovel hook, left and right, left and right, chiseling away at Stillwater as if he would knock the man’s jaw free of his skull. When he judged the timing right, he threw an uppercut that snapped Bill’s head back. Then he threw a vicious front kick that pressed the air from Stillwater’s lungs. The mustached giant staggered back, across the pedestrian walkway, into the street–
Big Bill turned in time to see the hovertruck that hit him. The collision crumpled the front of the vehicle and caused it to yaw into oncoming traffic, where it smashed a unmanned robot hydrogen cycle to pieces.
The screaming started.
The hydrogen cycle detonated, creating a fireball that cast Bill’s bloody face in orange relief. He staggered through the smoking, burning debris, headed for Peyton, who faced him through the chaos. Vehicles collided as they tried to avoid the flames. Several cyclists went down. Ground cars careened around the growing clot of fallen riders and their machines. An automated traffic klaxon began to sound. The stream of drones overhead was scattered by the whoops of a hovering traffic supervisor, a turbofan model equipped with cameras, loudspeakers, and strobe lights. The supervisor started shouting synthesized calls for orderly movement away from the crash area.
Stillwater jumped and caught it. The drone’s fan screamed in protest. Bill swung the drone like a weapon, smashing aside a pedicab and knocking its driver to the pavement. The drone spun away as if thrown from a catapult. Stillwater was already charging Peyton again.
The two crashed against each other, chest to chest, grabbing for each other’s arms, clinching up in a mammoth, standing brawl that saw them clawing and ripping at each other’s flesh. Stillwater’s hands found Peyton’s face and he tried to gouge his opponent’s eyes. Peyton broke his own hand up and through Stillwater’s arms, slamming the heel of his palm against the other man’s chin. Bill’s head snapped back. Peyton drove the web of his hand into Stillwater’s throat.
Staggering, Bill dragged Peyton to the ground with him, locking his hands around Peyton’s wrists. Around them, people ran, shouted in alarm, even stood and watched in horror or fascination. Peyton rolled his wrists and grabbed Stillwater’s, locking the two together at the arms. Both men exerted as much force as they could, their arms straining, the veins in their forearms and biceps swelling against their livid skin. Stillwater leaned in. His breath was hot and foul in Peyton’s face.
“No room for you,” said Stillwater. “I was first. Me. Big Bill Stillwater. You shouldn’t be here. Now you won’t be.”
Peyton could feel his skin growing hot as he struggled against Stillwater’s grip. The two were so evenly matched that neither could break the wrist hold. “You don’t owe them anything,” he managed to say. “Your life is yours. Don’t be their hammer.”
“I was nothing before they changed me,” said Bill. “Now I’m strong. But there’s only one king of the mountain. There’s only one top dog. That’s me. You die so I can be me again.”
“They’ll hunt you,” countered Peyton. “They’ll kill you.”
“They couldn’t kill you,” said Bill. “They made a mistake. Should have kept me asleep. I liked being asleep. But they woke me up, told me they made you. Couldn’t live with that. As long as you live, I’m nobody. Only one top dog. Only ever one.”
“They’re using you,” said Peyton. “Killing me won’t get you what you want. It only helps them.”
“Helps me,” said Bill. “Killing you is for me. Takes the top dog to kill you. Takes me. Makes me king of the mountain. All I want.”
Stillwater might have said more, but Peyton wrenched his arms apart. Tucking his own chin, Peyton drove his forehead up as Bill’s face came down. The brutal head-butt drove Stillwater’s nose back into his face, crushing it, spraying blood on them both. The maneuver caused Bill to lose his grip.
The sirens of private police cruisers were audible now. The crowd continued to swirl around the two men, while vehicles bypassed the widening ground zero of wrecked conveyances and fallen bystanders. The air smelled of copper and burning plastic.
“Police are coming,” Peyton said. He stood, untangling himself from Stillwater, and turned to run.
“Don’t care,” said Bill. “I was nothing. Nothing until they made me Big Bill. They wake me up. They tell me they made you. Big as me. Strong as me. But you’re not. When you die, Big Bill is left. Big Bill is the best. Nobody’s better than me. I won’t be nothing. Not again.”
Stillwater lunged, grabbing Peyton’s leg and pulling him to the pavement again. The two men rolled back and forth, finally rolling into the burning wreckage of the hydrogen cycle. Peyton felt his skin peeling back under the flames. Stillwater’s howl of pain echoed his own. Still Peyton’s fellow giant held on, tying him up, keeping him pinned to the ground. Heat from the burning cycle licked at his neck and shoulders. A puddle of lubricant plasma began to spread around the bike; this too burned. Bill roared as the plasma reached him, igniting him, clinging to him like napalm. He began pounding on Peyton’s chest with his clenched fists, trying to crush Peyton’s ribs and collapse his lungs. Peyton shifted, catching Bill between the scissor of his legs. The two giant men strained against each other, locked in position.
The burning tire of the hydrogen bike was within his reach. He grabbed it, heedless of the pain, and ripped it free of the chassis, shoving the fiery tire into Stillwater’s face. Bill began to cough and choke as he fought off the clinging, burning synthetic rubber. When the flames reached his eyes, he screamed.
Peyton had to get away. There was no telling how long he and Stillwater might stay locked in combat. They were too evenly matched. The flames turning his skin black were painful, so painful. He would heal quickly enough, but first he had to get clear, get free, roll the fire out, let his skin–
No, he thought.
Peyton fought his instincts. He reached into the burning wreckage of the hydrogen bike, breathless as the inferno took his arm, burning through his flesh, scorching him to the bone. The pain was… indescribable. He thought the word as he clawed deep into the burning corpse of the bike, deep into the oven that was baking his arm. He could not feel his fingers. He prayed he would still be able to will his hand to clench.
Hissing and spitting, the jellied tissues of his eyes weeping down his cheeks, Bill reached for Peyton’s face. Peyton stretched, pushing his legs to full extension, holding Bill out and away from his torso. The wounded giant still would not give up. He dug his fingers into Peyton’s thighs, trying to separate the muscles, pulling himself along Peyton’s body. Blinded, he crawled upward, his fingers curled to pluck and rend.
He’s going to claw out my eyes if he can reach them, thought Peyton.
Peyton would have screamed, but the boring of Big Bill’s fingers was nothing compared to the tunnel of fire in which his arm was lodged.
Give me something I can grip, he thought. Give me anything I can grab.
There! His arm stopped; his shoulder joint registered the resistance. He forced himself to make a fist, to roll to one knee, to raise the burning hydrogen bike above his head. His vision began to blur, to gray, to turn deep purple. He was passing out. The pain was so intense it had almost left him.
Stillwater howled. Peyton could not hear his voice. The sirens, the screams of the bystanders, the downdrafts of the drones, the police and news helicopters now whirring overhead: he heard none of it. His head felt thick. He had only moments. He had to do it. He had to succeed. It was the only way to fight his way back to Annika.
It’s selfish to want what you don’t need.
“I WANT MY DAUGHTER!” Peyton screamed, swinging the burning bike like a club, crushing Big Bill’s skull under the flaming frame of the vehicle.
Over and over he lifted the bike up and swung it down, smashing Bill’s face, splitting his skull, smashing his brains to burning pulp and digging a furrow into the pavement beneath. Before he was done, the fire was almost extinguished. Finally, inevitably, he dropped the charred bike frame, extracting his smoldering, blackened arm and ashen hand. He stared at the limb and flexed fingers he could not feel.
It would get better. It would get better soon enough.
“Stop where you are!” came an amplified voice from overhead. “You are under arrest!”
Peyton was already running. Cradling his injured arm, he pumped his legs with all his remaining strength, crashing through the crowds and smashing aside trash containers in the alleys he forded. He barely felt the pavement beneath his feet. He ran faster than he had run in his life. He ran for his freedom. He ran for Annika.
“I want my daughter,” he said softly. But Annika was gone. He stumbled from alley to alley, his arm and hand aching, Annika was gone and he did not know what to do.
He stopped at a public medical kiosk. He had chits in his pocket. He could at least spray his arm with burn gel. He reached out to touch the screen.
The kiosk’s screen illuminated. The caduceus symbol rotated slowly. But at the touch of Peyton’s uninjured fingers, it disappeared. The screen turned black.
The image of a gold pocket watch began to dance across the screen.
