Zoey stepped out from behind the cover of the van door and watched the crowds flee from her like a puddle from a dropped stone. The buzzing drones swirled around her, brushing strands of Zoey’s hair as they whipped past to go overwhelm some stubborn target.
She looked to her left. A semi was there, towing a huge stainless-steel cylinder. That’s what had rolled the van, presumably having been hijacked/stolen by the bad guys who had been lying in wait at the intersection. The driver of the vehicle was isolated from the drone swarm, the black specks bouncing off his windshield like bees, trying to get at him.
Zoey looked for the Viking. About ten feet in front of the overturned van was now a clump of six people, their heads together, arms locked, forming a human dome around the Viking who was kneeling in the center, shielding him from the swarm. The barrel of his gun poked out between two torsos.
All of this had been planned and practiced. This infuriated Zoey.
Will said, “Zoey! Get to cover!”
Nah.
Maybe it was her mom’s stupid confidence-building hand cream. Maybe her sanity had finally just snapped. Or maybe she was just getting sick of this shit. Zoey strode through her insect swarm and dug into her jacket pocket for a band to tie her hair back.
One of the kids she’d thought was no older than thirteen was standing next to the igloo of human shields, holding his ears, crying, the drones crawling around his face.
“Stop!” he cried. “Make them stop!”
Zoey stopped near the bullet-riddled front of the van. “Get out of here! All of you! If you get a couple of blocks away, they’ll leave you alone!”
The kid didn’t move. No one did. These people were nuts.
“Please!” cried the kid. “Make them stop! Please!”
Camera drones above, bystanders with their own cameras on all sides. These people were creating a propaganda clip they could snip out of context and use against her forever.
Zoey said, “Van, turn off the countermeasures. Drones, uh, go back home. To the van or whatever.”
It was never totally clear to Zoey what voice commands would or wouldn’t be understood, but the swarm of tiny drones swirled their way back to her, landing on the pavement around her feet. They actually set themselves on the ground in formation, in perfect rows. Ready to take off again if asked.
To the Viking, she said, “I know this is probably too complicated for you to grasp, but if you kill me, you don’t get the money. You need a confession. If you just wiggle my dead jaw and try to imitate my voice on camera, they’re probably going to notice.”
The people forming the human igloo around the Viking stepped away from him. He stood there, working a lever on his machine gun, looking smug.
“And I am not leaving here without that confession,” he shouted back. He didn’t need to shout for Zoey’s benefit, they were at casual conversation distance now. This was all for the benefit of the witnesses.
Zoey put her hands on her hips. “Dude, the vehicle behind me has a dozen other countermeasures I can order, including one that will turn your body into a roman candle. But I’d prefer to talk it out. So to you, to everybody watching the streams, I’m telling you that we didn’t kill that guy.”
The Viking smirked. “We have witnesses, cow. Anonymous staff from Salt Lake Wellness.” That was the upscale mental health facility Zoey had done her time in over the summer. “We have copies of the report from the doctor. Your admission was not due to a nervous breakdown, but from a neurological side effect from eating human flesh.”
“What? Holy crap, you people have made up a whole mythology here.”
“Look. Your left hand is trembling! Another side effect of the disease.”
“I just crawled out of a car wreck! I have burns!”
“We have anonymous experts who say you would have had to have eaten over a hundred human livers to show these kinds of symptoms. More, if they were the livers of children, which we all know is your preference.”
“Will you listen to yourself? You just keep adding things! You know, it’s almost a compliment to how clean of an operation I run now, that you’ve had to make up something that sounds like it came from a B-horror screenwriter just before his heart exploded from a coke overdose.”
“Stay back, Blackwater,” shouted the Viking.
Will had circled around to the other side of the van. He was carrying something.
The Viking aimed his gun at him and barked, “Drop whatever that is.”
It was a black object the size of a lantern. Will set it at his feet.
The bystanders had been pushed back about a hundred feet, but were creeping in again, curiosity drawing them like sharks to a shipwreck. The passengers in the stopped vehicles had gotten out to spectate. This included the Viking’s accomplice who’d been driving the semi. He was now standing by the vehicle holding a black club—one of the shock-sticks you could see all over the city these days. They could stun you, or turn your chest cavity into a smoking hole, depending on where the wielder had set the dial. The guy was close enough that he could be on top of Zoey in about three steps.
The Viking shifted his aim slightly and said, “You, too. Stop right there.”
This time he was talking to Wu, who had shambled up from behind Will, like a zombie. In addition to the arm that was already in a cast, he was now also bleeding badly from his scalp and dragging one leg behind him, as if he couldn’t bend the knee.
Zoey said, “Well, it looks like we’re at an impasse. I’m not declaring myself to be a man-eating liver addict just because you’re pointing a gun at me. If we start allowing truth and lies to be decided that way, society will … well, keep being exactly like it is.”
“If you don’t confess here, we’ll take you to a place where you’ll have more time—and incentive—to reconsider. Enoch, stun the cow and bind her hands.”
The guy from the semi approached and a crackle of blue sparks flickered from the end of his baton. He took two steps forward—
In a blur, Wu flew toward the man, chopped his throat, punched him in the balls, grabbed the baton, smashed it, and twirled the guy around so that Wu was now using him as a human shield. It took about four seconds from beginning to end.
The Viking said, “Let him go! You think his life is worth a million bucks to me?”
The guy said, “Hey!”
To the Viking, Will said, “You’re new in town, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“You’re new in town. Maybe you came here for this particular bounty?”
“Shut up!” To Wu, “You’ve got five seconds to let him go!”
“I can tell, because you’re using a firearm. The device at my feet is a propellant cooker. They’re well known around here. When activated, it will send out a pulse that will detonate every live cartridge in the vicinity. Including your spare magazines and the ammo belts you have draped over your torso for decoration, assuming they’re real. Please take a moment to visualize it.”
“Shut up!”
Zoey said, “It’s an objectively stupid invention, but we didn’t design it, so don’t blame us. The last time somebody set one off in public the hospitals had to treat over three hundred accidental bullet wounds. We are, after all, in America and, also, Utah. There’s also the fact that all of those bullets would be firing wildly just feet away from the tanker truck over there. I don’t think any of us, including the bystanders and the people working in these buildings, want that thing going up.”