Zombpunk: STEM

  "IF MY BELLY RULES MY MIND," it read, "THEN WHAT RULES YOU?"

  #

  It would have disappointed Eydie to learn that Nathan had seen none of this. When the first thump of the music hit, bodyguards came charging out of the wings. A phalanx fell in around Dr. Raul, bustling him quickly away stage left. Nathan's new Big U goons hurried him off stage right. Before Nathan could realize what was going on, he was in the rear seat of his town car, a bodyguard at each shoulder, speeding away from the Opera House.

  "What the hell?" Nathan asked no one, looking back over his shoulder, watching the Opera House recede through the town car's rear window. "Where are we going?" he asked one of the goons.

  "There's a secure location prepared–" the goon began, but was cut short, as another fast-moving vehicle T-boned into the town car, throwing Nathan sideways. The two bodyguards followed him as the car careened wildly.

  They hadn't driven a hundred yards away from the Opera House.

  Instantly, Nathan was being manhandled. The bodyguards seemed unfazed by the force of the collision. They were up and bustling Nathan out of the car. Exposed in the street, they drew handguns out from under their dark suits. Two almost identical men emerged from the other vehicle, also brandishing weapons.

  The two pairs of dark-suited goons exchanged a number of single-word commands, communicating in some sort of abstracted, authoritarian code. The exchange satisfied no one, culminating in a single shot. The goon to Nathan's left dropped like a sack.

  His partner took cover behind Nathan's body, answering his attackers with three quick cracks from his pistol. But Nathan wanted no part in playing the role of a human shield. Nathan squirmed from the goon's tight grip, and when the struggle let a foot of air between them, the attacking pair of goons opened fire.

  Nathan watched the heavyset man fall to the ground. He went down face first, in a way that told Nathan he was dead before he hit the ground. Before Nathan could react, he was again flanked by two dark-suited bodyguards, almost identical to those that lay dead in the street. Nathan was hustled into a second town car that sat idling in traffic. When the door swung closed, the car sped off. The whole attack, from collision to escape, could have taken no more than ten seconds.

  Jude was waiting for Nathan in the back of the new town car.

  She was smoking, watching Nathan from behind her bulbous, dark sunglasses. She didn't speak as the car maneuvered in and out of traffic. She simply watched Nathan as he craned his neck back to watch the corpses of his old bodyguards recede.

  "What the fuck was that?" Nathan finally spoke, turning to face Jude.

  "Nathan, I was so afraid," she began.

  "They're dead! Those were Peters' guys. You killed them... Aren't we all on the same side?"

  "We can't trust anyone anymore, Nathan."

  "Trust?" The car lurched, turning sharply onto an arterial road. "What the hell is going on?"

  "They made their play, now we've made ours," Jude said cryptically.

  "Play? You're killing people over me now?"

  "It's not like that, Nathan."

  "Then what? What is it like?"

  "It's been in the cards for a long time."

  "What has?" Nathan asked. Jude simply turned to watch the city pass by outside the car window. "Fuck! You people are insane!"

  #

  Elder Tull leveled his pistol and fired a single shot.

  The sound of the gun was earsplitting in the confined space of the control room. The black block of electronics fizzled from its wound as the window of the control booth behind it cracked like a spider's web from the bullet's impact.

  The thundering music out in the auditorium died, replaced by the screams of chaos below.

  Elder backed up slowly, keeping the gun leveled at his three captives. "First person through the door gets the same as that," Elder said, pointing with the muzzle of his pistol at the destroyed device.

  They were all most likely still temporarily deaf from the sound of the gunshot, Elder guessed, but he figured his gesture relayed enough of his message.

  Finding the doorknob behind him, Elder let himself out of the control room. He tucked his pistol away in his shoulder holster and trotted off down the corridor.

  The lobby of the Opera House was complete pandemonium. Stems were scratching and biting their way for the exits as puffs of colored smoke escaped through the auditorium doors.

  Elder allowed himself a quick chuckle.

  Eydie sure had style, Elder had to admit. The effect of her attack had been so much more powerful than a real bomb, the terror so much more palpable, and at the cost of no one's life.

  At that moment, watching the result of the attack, Elder was tempted to throw away the plan to flee to Bannock. If this is what Eydie could do with one assault... perhaps they could really strike back against the Stems, set things straight.

  But the moment was fleeting as Elder merged into the crowd, pushing his way towards the exit. He remembered that Eydie had special motivations for this attack. Perhaps she'd terrorized a whole auditorium of upper crust Stems, but her target had really been just one man. The message she'd sent had an audience of one: Steve. Maybe she'd made her peace with him now – maybe now she wouldn't feel so bad leaving him behind.

  After all, Steve had died that night at the pizza kitchen, his body had just not yet lied down.

  Eventually, Elder stumbled out of the building, gasping into the night air. The churn of the scrambling crowd buffeted and bashed him. Out in the open, the panic seemed to subside as groups of well-dressed eventgoers loitered before the Opera House. Fire engines lined the street with their lights flashing. Police cars were parked on the curb. As Elder found a place on a low wall to rest, a well-armed SWAT team charged by, pushing their way through the escaping crowd, back into the auditorium.

  Everyone had to be out, Elder hoped, he had to be the last. It had been his job to bring up the rear and destroy all the incriminating evidence. Elder returned to his feet and scanned the crowd, looking for the others. He hopped up to stand on the low wall for a better perspective, eventually spying Eydie, Sweet and Kevin at the rear of the milling crowd, standing discreetly separated from the main cluster of people, off towards the fountain.

  "Here he comes," Beat said, almost under her breath as Elder pushed his way through the throng towards the others. Beat took a last draw on her cigarette and dropped it onto the grass, snuffing it out with her high heel.

  Kevin shook Elder's hand as he joined the circle.

  "Okay?" Elder nodded to the others.

  "Yeah. You?" Eydie asked, speaking in a low tone.

  "Yeah, we're good. Shot a hole in Prime's dongle. We're good."

  "Good."

  They stood in silence as another SWAT team charged by, heading away from the Opera House, moving to intercept some unseen threat.

  "How long do we have to stand here?" Beat asked, speaking between her teeth.

  "When the Stems start dispersing, we can make a move with them," Eydie said, holding an unlit cigarette in her hand. She made a good show of pretending to smoke it. "We'll make a break for Prime and the Wagoneer. Best to stay in the crowd until then, though. We're almost invisible in the crowd."

  "What if they start checking identifications? Taking statements?" Kevin asked.

  "Of everyone? No, they'll be too busy with the people who actually want to volunteer information."

  "Shit, that was insane!" Elder said a little too loud. Everyone shushed him.

  Then, Eydie cracked up a little, and Beat and Kevin couldn't help but snicker along.

  "Fuck, they all pissed themselves," Kevin chortled. "I mean, if they could still piss."

  "Man, you see Doctor Stem? When the video started rolling? It was like someone took a shot at him." Beat lit a second cigarette.

  "What'd it look like from the control room?" Eydie asked.

  "Sweet. Fucking sweet," Elder answered. "Nice editing, by the way."

  Kevin and
Eydie both said thanks.

  "Yeah, you guys missed your calling," Beat said sardonically. "Why the fuck are you wasting your time in terrorism?"

  They all smiled, falling back into silence. They tried to watch the movements of the authorities without looking like they were watching their movements.

  They waited.

  "Fuck, I'm getting hungry." Elder said, kicking at the grass under his shoes.

  Eydie shushed him.

  It was beginning to get cold as they stood in the night air. Kevin removed his jacket and put it around Beat's shoulders. Elder moved to do the same for Eydie, but remembered the shoulder holster his jacket was hiding. Instead, he gave her a weak grin.

  "Thanks anyway," Eydie offered.

  They waited some more.

  The crowd didn't seem to be dispersing. Every few minutes a group of policemen would run by, frantically talking into radios. But no one bothered to look in their direction. As Eydie had guessed, they were invisible in the crowd.

  Elder Tull's mind began to wander. He tried to think of a better one-liner he could have used in the control room. He was trying variations on 'Boom'...

  "Is that a bomb?" the stage manager had said.

  "No, it's a Boom box," Elder replied in his head.

  No, that wasn't quite right...

  "This? The Box? That goes Boom?" No, that was worse. And the moment had passed, anyway. He'd said what he'd said and he'd just have to live with it.

  Elder was coming to terms with this realization when he made his mistake.

  Perhaps if he'd not been daydreaming, Elder could have choked back the burp before it erupted. But his mind was elsewhere and he let loose with a soft belch before he fully realized what he was doing.

  It wasn't much of a burp, nothing that could have possibly have been heard farther away than Elder's immediate company. But burp Elder did, and the sound instantly snapped Eydie, Beat and Kevin rigidly to attention. They fixed Elder with wide-eyed, horrified stares.

  "Excuse me," Elder said automatically. He tried to swallow the words as he said them, but they had already left his mouth. Eydie frowned at him.

  "Shut up, ass wipe," Beat said through her clenched teeth.

  Elder didn't move – he was afraid to move, lest he upset any more gas.

  "Just try to look... casual..." Eydie said, her words trailing off. She'd spied something behind Elder, something alarming.

  Elder was afraid to turn around.

  Sweet Beat and Kevin had seen it, too. They were stepping back, putting space between themselves and Elder. Elder stood frozen to the spot, somehow hoping ignorance might keep him safe from whatever lay behind him.

  Inevitably, Elder had to turn.

  He turned to face a wall of enraged, murderous humanity.

  Chapter 23

  For a moment, Elder was standing outside his body watching himself. Every face in the crowd, milling in front of the Opera House, had turned towards him.

  Every face. Every single one. All four thousand.

  His small noise, as innocuous as it had seemed a moment before, had somehow grabbed the attention of every Stem within a thousand yards. Elder could only watch himself in disbelief, shaking his head in silent disgust. "You are one fucked dude," he told himself before snapping back to a single personality.

  They all surged forward at once.

  Suddenly, hands were attempting to rip Elder Tull limb from limb. The crowd closed in on him like a fist, crushing him under the weight of bodies. Well-manicured fingers were tearing at his throat, at his mouth, at his eyes. Elder toppled over onto the grass as body after body piled on top of him. They attacked with no concern for their own safety, equally crushing themselves as they crushed Elder. A mass of thin, toned bodies was smothering the life out of Elder.

  The first salvo of bullets cut into the mob, forcing the Stems on top of Elder to reel in pain. It bought Elder precious seconds to scramble from under the crushing bodies. Eydie, Beat and Kevin fired again, cutting into the wall of bodies with shot after shot. Elder scurried between their legs, finding his feet and drawing his own gun. The mob rushed forward, oblivious to the toll the guns were taking.

  The mob charged, treading on its own dead – an insane, bloodthirsty mass of humanity.

  The instant before they could be overwhelmed, the firing line of pistols turned tail and ran, sprinting across the clear, open grass of the Seattle Center, towards the fountain at its center. Behind them, the enraged crowd of Stems screamed like animals and gave chase.

  Elder paused a moment longer than the others before fleeing, firing off a few random shots, dropping a pair of well-dressed pursuers. The crowd didn't flinch, surging on, flailing in a blood frenzy as it tried to grab Elder. Eventually, Elder was forced to turn and run as well, sprinting to catch up with Eydie, Beat and Kevin.

  "What the fuck is happening?" Elder screamed out. No one answered, they were too busy running for their lives. At the edge of the fountain, they all leapt into the basin, sprinting down into its depths. At its base, Elder stole a glance back, up at the mob that was pursuing. The rabble had paused at the edge of the fountain. "They're not following." Elder slacked his speed The words made the others turn and look up at the line of dark silhouettes.

  "What are they doing?" Kevin asked.

  "Who gives a fuck! Let's get out of here!" Beat said, starting up the far side of the fountain.

  Kevin and Eydie fell in behind her. It was only Elder Tull that really saw it happen: two Stems, waiting at the rim, leapt into the air and sailed the hundred yards through the cold night to land on the far edge of the fountain. Elder gasped in surprise. There was little else that he could do. Two more silhouettes sprang into the air and dropped effortlessly down in front of the fleeing Pukes.

  Beat recoiled in surprise as she cleared the edge of the fountain. She hadn't expected anyone there waiting. There was a tussle, and a series of shots. Elder sprinted up the side of the fountain after taking potshots at the sky as another Stem came leaping through the air.

  "Fuck me!" Kevin screamed as a Stem came down almost completely on top of him. They crashed to the ground, wrestling. The Stem was a small woman, no more than a hundred pounds, but she quickly had Kevin pinned. Kevin struggled, but the woman had him dead-to-rights. She picked him up and lifted him clear over her head. She might have thrown him back down into the basin of the fountain had Elder not shot her through the chest. She buckled, dropping Kevin, who quickly returned to his feet, running.

  "Prime, Prime! Where are you?!" Eydie was speaking into her ear bud. The crowd had dispersed some, and now they were coming at the Pukes in ones and twos. Kevin and Beat were cutting them down as each charged in turn.

  "At the rendezvous, why?" Prime voice came lazily back over the phone line.

  "Get around to the front of the Arena!" Eydie screamed.

  "What? Why?"

  "Just fucking do it!" A Stem dropped out of the sky in front of Eydie. She clocked it in the forehead with a shot before it could pull itself to its feet.

  "What the fuck is going on!" Elder said again. Eydie was leading, the other following, scanning the shadows for targets. Eydie paused, suddenly unsure of which direction to move. She started in one direction, stopped, then started in another.

  Behind them, the crowd was reforming.

  A new wall of Stems was sprinting over the open space between the fountain and the Arena. Eydie spied it and panicked, running down the steps towards the stadium.

  "No, no!" Beat yelled after her. "They'll pin us in down there! This way!" Beat started up another flight of stairs.

  Elder was watching the mob approach. One Stem, a man in light gray suit, was outpacing the rest. He was pulling away from the wall of bodies, zeroing in on Elder. Elder saw his face clearly in the moonlight and the look of hatred and murder upon it. He would rip Elder apart with his bare hands if he caught him, Elder had no doubt. Elder raised his pistol and aimed, firing off a shot at the runner's center of
mass.

  The explosion sent Elder tumbling back and down the stairs of the Arena. The runner in the gray suit had just... exploded. The force of the blast picked up a large chunk of the pursuing mob and tossed it several yards in every direction. The runner had just... exploded. Elder pulled himself back to his feet and sprinted after the others, up the flight of stairs. He'd shot the runner with a normal bullet, and the runner had... blown up.

  "Elder, come on!" Eydie's voice called out. The others were already halfway around the Arena. Elder caught up as they circled fully around the stadium. "What happened back there? What was that noise?" she asked after she'd looked up and down the road for any sign of Prime's Wagoneer.

  "I-I-" Elder tried to find words. "Boom," he finally said.

  "What? Boom?" Eydie said back.

  "Yeah. Boom," Elder shrugged.

  Prime's Wagoneer approached at great speed, turning a corner from the north, its rear fishtailing as Prime wrestled with the wheel to keep the truck on the road. He came skidding to a halt at the curb in front of the Arena where Eydie, Kevin, Elder and Beat were waiting.

  "What-what? What the fuck?" Prime said as everyone piled into the car. The mob of Stems had regained its momentum after the explosion and had also circled around the stadium. It was sprinting towards the parked Wagoneer.

  "Just drive!" Eydie screamed, crumpled up in the backseat on top of Beat and underneath Kevin. Prime floored the accelerator, peeling out from the curb. Something heavy hit the hood of the truck. Prime gasped in surprise to see a well-groomed young man hanging there. He had dropped out of the sky.

  Elder, who'd taken the passenger seat beside Prime, raised his pistol and fired through the windshield. The Stem fell away, crashing to the blacktop.

  "Fuck!" Prime exclaimed, swerving to avoid another body that leapt out in front of his speeding vehicle. He was too late and the truck ran the body over with its left tires. Prime took a hard right and accelerated directly away from the Center. A small group of figures ware blocking the street. Prime honked, but they stood fast. Prime had no choice but to plow right through the center of them.

  Moments later, the Wagoneer was in traffic, merging onto a major thoroughfare. Prime dialed back the speed, joining the other cars heading east towards the freeway.