Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits (Zoey Ashe #1)

by David Wong

When the phone’s hologram blinked to life it startled the crap out of her, as she had forgotten the phone was in her lap and for one terrified moment thought a tiny ghost had emerged from her crotch. Zoey flinched, cursed, and splattered chili everywhere before she figured out that she was not in fact going to have to undergo an incredibly awkward and invasive exorcism.

Will said, “Don’t let this question alarm you, but do you have any weapons in the vehicle?” “No! Why would I—Wait, I have a spatula …” “Well, we have no indication your pursuer is a pancake, so we’ll abandon that angle for the moment. Now I will need you to stay calm. We can’t outrun him in this vehicle. I’m going to have you get out.”

The actual spelling of the city’s name was Tabula Ra$a, with a dollar sign instead of an “S,” because that’s what happens when a bunch of rich douche bags build a brand-new city in the desert and reserve the right to name it themselves.

Zoey didn’t want to be paranoid, but there was something about the man in the loincloth made of charred doll heads that made her nervous.

Zoey had immediately assumed he was another crazy who had come for her, but then he had just silently taken a standing spot at the other end of the car and she felt bad for prejudging him. Still, Zoey studiously avoided looking in his direction; as any mass transit commuter can tell you, the only way to counter the dark powers of the mentally ill is to avoid eye contact.

“You’ll see. The population sign comes with an epilepsy warning. Oh, and you can fight a bear, if you want.”

“So you get enough dirty money and you can just spend yourself clean?”

“Take a look around the world, girl. Men don’t never grow up. Get a bunch of us together with no ladies around and it’s all boner jokes and headlocks. Your daddy just had enough money that he didn’t have to hide it like the rest of us.”

Echo shook her head and muttered to Will, “I keep imagining him up there, laughing at us while we scrambled around the country trying to figure out exactly which trailer park he spilled his DNA in.” Budd adjusted his cowboy hat and said, “‘Up there’? Echo, I don’t know exactly what religion you believe in that has Arthur Livingston makin’ it to Heaven, but I reckon I wanna join.” Andre said, “Eh, probably just bribed his way in.”

Echo Ling, on the other hand, made an expression that could suck the laughter out of a child’s birthday party. She turned on her heels and said, “Well, she’s definitely Arthur’s daughter.” Zoey stared into Echo’s back and said, “If I hear anybody say that again, I’m never opening that vault.”

“I said I want you to sit down and explain it to me. Stop looming over me. It’s rude.”

She scooted over an end table that had an expensive-looking table lamp on it so it blocked the door. The table wouldn’t delay someone breaking in for long, but would maybe give her a few seconds to try to escape out the window. Plus she would die knowing she had made them break one of their expensive lamps, so screw them.

She thought about going back for her golf club and decided if the situation deteriorated into a golf club duel to the death, she probably was already screwed.

Everyone in the room stood silently in place, staring at Zoey, as if the universe had finally created a moment so awkward that it had stopped time itself.

And then Will started laughing. Echo Ling, sounding near panic, said, “What just happened?” Will wiped his eyes, straightened his tie, and walked out of the vault. As he passed Zoey, he said to Kowalski, “You might want to take your foot off my boss, before she fires all of us.”

When he let go of her hand, she lunged in and hugged him. He reciprocated the hug about as much as a tree trunk would, and clearly wasn’t a fan of the way she spent the next ten minutes crying into his lapel. But he waited it out in silence, which Zoey thought was polite of him.

The toilet voice came back to ask if she was okay, apparently if you sat on it too long it started to assume you had died.

Andre swallowed a wad of chili dog and said, “Is that why we’re here? Jesus, Budd, I would have sobered up first.”

“I’m not a nice guy. But I am on your side. Don’t confuse the two. You hate me because I’m blunt and have no patience for wasted time or wasted words. Because I’m not nice. Well, a lot of nice people are nice because they’ve figured out it’s a great way to get things from other people. Some of the slimiest snakes I’ve run across have been nice. So let me tell you now, if you ever see me resort to being nice, run.”

Budd said, “You couldn’t have known this, but in this part of the world it’s considered a grave insult to set a man’s pecker on fire.”

“Consider this your tryout period. Your interview involves finding Molech and crushing him like a grape.”

“What is it with rich people thinking they can starve the poor into good behavior?”

“I hope I’ve done this right. If I’m heading toward, well, what I think I’m heading to, then there’s a better than even chance this will be my last day. And that’s okay, because if I do this right, I’ll spend this last day saving the world. Granted, I’ll be saving it from something I myself unleashed, so you know, don’t build any monuments to me for it.”

Molech gestured toward the black guy with the beard and said, “This is my right-hand man, Black Scott. And don’t call me racist, that’s the name he gave himself.” In the background, Black Scott shook his head and silently mouthed, “Nope.”

Armando appeared in the door of the bathroom with his gun drawn, because in his world even a vomiting woman was apparently a problem that could be cured with a well-placed bullet. Zoey told him she was fine and he kind of awkwardly put his hand on her shoulder, as if he had seen somebody do it on TV once.

“No, you can stay, in case Tre turns out to be an assassin. Just turn your head if there’s nudity.” This prospect seemed to alarm Armando quite a bit.

“When a billionaire makes a career scumbag disappear, no one goes to jail. A man like that, I could do him in the parking lot of the police station and they would send me a fruit basket at Christmas.”

“Zoey. This is taking place in a crowded public park. There may be children there. In the real world, bullets that miss their targets keep traveling until they hit something. They fly through windows, and into the bodies of bystanders. And even successfully killing a bad guy creates blowback, sets off a whole chain of consequences that are impossible to predict. Guns always represent a failure of negotiation.”

“I’m making fun of your alcoholism because it’s the only thing I know about you.”

Molech said, “Oh, look, she’s funny. Hmm, let me do the math—funny girl, absent father—want me to guess which antidepressants you’re on?”

Well, that and the fact that if he was caught in-country, he would immediately be executed for the crime of human trafficking, and the news would trigger an international incident that could very likely result in nuclear war and a subsequent chain reaction that would render all human life extinct from the universe forever. But of course no investment is completely free of risk.

Arthur had never personally killed any man, in fact. But as far as he was concerned, if you stood in his way, you made your own choice. The market is a machine, if any man is so foolish as to try to stop the works from turning, he should not be surprised when he gets ground up in its gears.

She talked about what her father had done to her, and what he had promised he would do to her if she ever tried to leave. None of that mattered, of course. The market is a machine, and these are just the noises the gears make when they turn.

Arthur kept them clean and comfortable right up until the day they stopped being profitable. The market is the market, and it’s not his fault the market says young women are cheap and plentiful and spoil faster than green bananas.

“So are you saying Will’s nickname isn’t The Magician?” Will said, “One time, I get caught on camera doing the one coin trick I know …”

It revved its engine, and the pavement trembled in fear.

But men in suits don’t wind up in shallow graves in the woods, do they? No, they ride behind tinted windows and make conference calls and negotiate away the lives of little people like Zoey and Melinda Ashe.

Will said, “Molech, Zoey will not negotiate with you if you kill her mother. This is actually true of most people you’ll encounter in a business setting.”

“That your cool magic trick is really just a bunch of tedious repetition?” “Yes. That, right there, is the difference between the heroes and the nobodies. The difference between people like you and people like me. People like me know that there is no magic. There is only the grind. Work looks like magic to those unwilling to do it.”

but she was having trouble focusing due to the gun that was being pressed so hard into her temple that it was making a dent in her thoughts.

“The moron with the gun, who tripped and ruined the whole thing?” Budd nodded toward Will. “Why don’t you ask him? Fella’s sittin’ right here.”

Zoey made an exasperated sound. “To make him a supervillain costume. Duh.” Both Andre and Will started to make some dismissive joke, then stopped themselves.

Will entered, apprehensively. “It’s all set, if everything goes south, a Pinkerton has instructions to get your cat to a safe location.” “Do you think he’ll actually do it?” “He didn’t take the assignment seriously until he saw what it paid. And he won’t get the other half of his check until he brings proof of cat life to the attorney, so I don’t see why not.”

“Exactly. So I think all of this, the whole project with Raiden and this stupid dream about super powers, he thought what so many guys like him had thought—that with enough money and technology you could smooth out the flaws in society like ironing the wrinkles out of a shirt. Stamp out the crime like a comic book superhero and turn this place into a utopia. But you know it doesn’t work that way.”

Rage and terror filled Stench Machine’s eyes. The sight of an old foe who had tormented him time and time again, haunting his dreams. Then came the steely resolve of an animal who has decided that enough is enough, that he’s going to make a stand. With a meow that Zoey had no doubt meant, “This ends now!,” Stench Machine darted across the floor. Zoey screamed at the cat. He did not respond to her command, because he is a cat.

He rushed forward, picked Zoey up and got a glimpse of her busted-up face. “Goodness. Are you all right?” Will, who had blood running out of his mouth and was likely nursing several grave internal injuries, climbed to his feet and growled, “Move.”

“You ever run into a new coworker, ask them their name, only to have them tell you they’ve worked there for five years? That was Gary, a man so dull and forgettable that he never appeared on your radar. It’s like that was his superpower. A stealth human being. We never stood a chance.”

She shoved the cat into Will’s chest, who immediately set him on the floor. If he got cat hair on his suit, he would probably shrivel up and die like a salted snail.

Scott shook his head, grinning. “I mean this with all honesty. People say Molech is bad, but you, Blackwater, you’re ten times worse. We may burn in hell but the devil gonna greet you like an old friend.”

“They are from me. The flowers are to get well, the vase is an apology, for what I did to your car. I actually did not know it was so valuable, I picked the one that seemed most capable of speed. The explosion was, in retrospect, probably an excessive touch driven more by ego than practicality. I do succumb to a flair for the dramatic, from time to time. I believe your people had rubbed off on me.”