After the Revolution, page 36
An equal number of Fuckians wore no armor at all. Some of them were dressed in their normal flowing lounge garments. The weapons they wore were the only signs that they had plans beyond debauchery. Others were naked, or mostly so. He saw one man wearing the helmet of a Greek hoplite and carrying two Viking axes on his back. He saw a woman with a Dragunov rifle on her back, an old German Stahlhelm on her head, and Ottoman mirror armor on her chest. She waved at them, excited. It took Manny a second to recognize Topaz’s face under the helmet.
“They’re here! They’re–”
She stopped. Tule had stopped too. She cast her face down. Manny could see the shimmer of tears on her cheeks. A crowd gathered around them. In a few seconds, they were encircled by dozens of heavily armed post-humans in a dizzying array of war costumes. Skullfucker Mike, a good head taller than anyone else in the crowd, pushed his way to the front and ran up to embrace Tule. Manny was surprised when she started to sob. The big man held her tight but looked to Roland.
“What happened?”
Roland gave him a look that said, “You know damn well what happened.” But then he spoke anyway.
“Your friend didn’t make it.”
Skullfucker Mike’s jaw went tight. His eyes bulged and he held onto Tule a little tighter. Manny thought back to the night they’d spent in Brainbreakers, and the things he’d said about Marigold. Manny hadn’t really known the woman at all, but he could tell Mike had cared deeply for her. He looked around at the crowd closing in on them, the dozens of half-human god-monsters with helpless rage carved onto their faces.
“What. Happened.” Mike demanded.
Roland opened his mouth to speak, closed it, and ran a hand over his bald head. He opened his mouth again, managed to squeeze out an “I…” before he slumped his shoulders and hung his head.
“I wasn’t fast enough,” he said, finally. “They had better gear, newer suits than I’d expected.”
Skullfucker Mike stared at him. Behind him, Topaz slid down to the ground and buried her head in her knees. Murmurs swept the crowd. And then Sasha spoke up.
“Your friend saved my life.”
Mike looked over and seemed to notice her for the first time.
“And who are you?” His voice was not unfriendly. It wasn’t exactly warm, either.
“My name is Sasha,” she said, her voice clearly on the edge of a sob. She looked from Mike, to Tule, to Topaz, to the crowd, and then back to Manny. He saw panic in her eyes, barely held in check by a cage of steely resolve.
“I…made a mistake. I left my home for the Kingdom. I thought it was the right thing to do. I met Marigold while I was there and she helped me see how wrong I’d been.” She pointed to Roland. “I tried to help him free your people. We all tried. But they were ready for us. They shot him,” she gestured to Roland, “…they shot him a lot. They had us all dead to rights. And then Marigold, I don’t know how, but she got a gun. She shot two of them. And then they shot her. She died saving us.”
The silence that followed was louder than any artillery barrage Manny had ever sat through. Finally, Skullfucker Mike nodded at her. There were tears in his eyes and, Manny soon realized, tears on every face in the crowd. Some people fell to their knees. Others embraced and held their friends. One voice, hoarse and heavy with pain, howled out in anguish. It was met by another voice, and then another and then another as Fuckian after Fuckian tilted their head back and roared their grief out to the empty blue of the Texas sky.
Rolling Fuck preferred to mourn through activity. The wailing and gnashing of teeth over Marigold didn’t stop the city’s medics from taking Rick and Tule to whatever building served as their equivalent of a clinic. Topaz stayed behind with the gathering crowd of mourners while Skullfucker Mike gathered up Manny, Sasha, and Roland.
“There’ll be time to process later,” he’d said as much to himself as to them. “There’s a war council soon, and they’ll be wanting to debrief you.”
“Fine,” Roland said, “but I’m stopping at the bar first. I need some opium and some goddamn tequila.”
Manny expected Skullfucker Mike to be angered by that, given the circumstances. But the other chromed man just nodded and said, “I could use a drink or nine myself.”
They headed for the lift underneath the Main Roller. Manny started to prepare himself for the meeting with this “war council,” whatever that term meant in a place like this. Whatever happens, it’s bound to be weird. They reached the lift. Skullfucker Mike opened the door and gestured for everyone to enter.
And so, less than an hour after arriving back in the City of Wheels, Manny, Sasha, and Roland found themselves seated around the same redwood table where Manny and Reggie had first met Nana Yazzie and Donald Farris. The room was more crowded this time around, with two new people he didn’t recognize. One was a shirtless man with writhing snake tattoos across his chest and a pair of chaps that did nothing at all to cover up his junk. It didn’t help that the man’s legs were spread as wide as possible. He seemed to be deliberately showing off.
Manny looked away and found himself staring at a very tall, very muscular young-seeming woman with a mohawk made from thick chrome spikes. She had light brown skin, and her cheeks were covered in several long, thick, diagonal scars. The woman’s eyes had no pupils. They looked gray at first, until Manny realized that they were actually just filled with static. When Manny finally pulled his gaze away from her, he was met with the biggest surprise of the day.
DeShawn Clark was seated two chairs down from Nana Yazzie.
“Major Clark!”
“Manny,” the Major’s lips cracked open into a wide-mouthed grin. The left side of his face was still covered in hemostatic gauze, and the edges of the skin around the gauze looked black and burnt. His right hand was a smooth, angry pink color, a sure sign it had been severed and regrown in the recent past. Major Clark was bloodied, but unbowed.
“It’s damn good to see you, Manny. I can’t tell you how proud I was to hear you’d volunteered for this mission.”
“Mr. Peron…” Manny started to say, but Major Clark put up his hand.
“I know,” he said.
Donald Farris “ahem’d,” which Manny took as a gentle reminder that now was not the time for personal business. The old Brit gestured first to the man with the writhing snake tattoos.
“This is Jim Shannon,” he said. “He heads up a small mercenary outfit.”
“I’m the guy who roped Roland into helping,” Jim said with a wink.
“And this cheery lass,” Donald pointed to the woman with the chromehawk, “is Kishori. She’s been the city’s elected War Leader for the last three years.”
“And who might this young lady be?” Nana Yazzie asked, nodding at Sasha. The old woman stood and stepped forward to greet Sasha with a hug. Sasha tensed up. She looked scared to return the embrace. So Nana Yazzie backed off and favored the girl with a warm smile.
“I’m sorry, child. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I’m just happy you’re here with us.”
Sasha relaxed at that, but she still didn’t step forward.
“Her name’s Sasha,” said Roland. “She used to be with the Kingdom. Now she’s not.” He paused a second, considered his words and added, “She beat one of them to death with a helmet.”
“Oh my. Oh dear…” Nana Yazzie tsked and shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Sasha. That must have been a terrible experience for you.”
“She enjoyed it!” Jim said with a harsh bark of a laugh. “I’m sure Roland smells it too. Isn’t that right, hon? You loved killing whoever-the-fuck you killed, and you feel shitty about that. Well, let me s–”
“You’ll stop right now or you’ll leave this room.”
Nana Yazzie’s voice was firm, but devoid of any anger or heat. To Manny’s shock, Jim stopped. The post-human nodded and said, “I apologize, Sasha. That was a real dick move.” And then he lowered his eyes, just a little, in contrition.
Nana Yazzie offered Sasha a seat and then busied herself in the corner making Sasha a cup of tea. Once that was done, and they were all settled in, Nana sat back down and looked to Manny.
“What happened?” is all she asked.
Manny started talking. He told her, and by extension the whole table, everything that had happened since he and Roland left Rolling Fuck. He told them about their trouble with the checkpoints on the way into town. He walked them through the intake process, his and Roland’s few days as Martyrs-in-training and what he’d seen in the few sections of Plano he’d been allowed to haunt during his time there. The woman with the chromehawk was particularly interested in what he and Roland had to say about the Kingdom’s preferred assault tactics.
“They’re not gonna be kicking in doors and fighting house-to-house,” Roland explained. “They’ll just start shelling at the first sign of resistance. They don’t care about civilian casualties.”
When Manny explained what the Kingdom had been doing at the old Tesla factory, almost everyone looked horrified. Donald Farris spat at the ground. Most of the others cursed, or at least shook their heads. Nana Yazzie teared up. Jim, though, seemed almost enthusiastic about the revelation.
“Fascinating,” he muttered just loud enough for Manny to hear.
Once everyone was caught up, the table fired off a few questions at him and more toward Roland. They seemed mostly curious as to what they’d been able to glean about the number of recruits in the Heavenly Kingdom. Manny didn’t have much useful there. So he shut up, leaned back and let Roland give the answers. An awkward silence descended on the table after a few minutes.
“Well,” Donald Farris said, finally, “I suppose we were fools to hope for much more than what you got. As it stands we’re left grappling to try and account for the sheer number of men the Kingdom has deployed to assault Austin.”
“Twenty thousand martyrs,” Jim spoke up. “Give or take a grand.”
Manny’s blood went cold. The SDF, at its height, hadn’t been more than six thousand fighters. And those were spread out across the serried battlegrounds of North Texas. The whole Free City of Austin didn’t have more than five thousand people in its full-time Defense Corps. Twenty thousand men was…
“Impossible,” he said. “That’s fucking impossible.”
“I’d be inclined to agree with you, kid,” said Jim, “if my own men hadn’t double-confirmed the count for us. The Kingdom has already marshaled half of that force on the outskirts of DFW, near Lancaster. They’ll be in Waco tomorrow if no one stops them. Hell, they could be pounding Austin with artillery by dark.”
Donald Farris nodded. “Mr. Shannon here,” gesturing to Jim, “has agreed to lend a hand, along with several dozen of his mercenaries. Add that to the warriors of Rolling Fuck, and we’ve got seven-hundredish post-humans. It’s large enough force to hold Waco. And badly bloody their nose.”
“But,” Kishori spoke for the first time. She had a deep, gravelly voice that sounded like she’d been eating cigarettes for the last ten years. “Rolling Fuck is not in the business of volunteering for our own Vietnams. My people aren’t signing up for a war.”
“I can guarantee our presence on the battlefield for up to forty-eight hours. Enough time for vengeance,” she continued. “After that, you’re herding cats.”
“Is that a problem?” Manny asked. “I mean, I saw Roland lay waste to half a city. Six-hundred of him…”
“There’s only one of him,” Kishori said.
Jim nodded in agreement and fixed Manny with his uncomfortable gray eyes. “See kid,” he said, “me or any one of Rolling Fuck’s warriors is good for a few dozen normal troops in a straight fight. More if we’re talking half-trained partisans. But nobody’s like Roland.”
Manny looked over to Roland. The big man seemed distinctly uncomfortable with all the attention. He stared down at his hands, which seemed to be occupied with tearing up a paper drink coaster.
“The Martyrs have a lot of half-trained partisans, but they’ve also got tanks, artillery, suits… The resources of a nation state. Or close enough. Rolling Fuck can hold that off for a while, but without Roland the best they can do is delay the inevitable.
“Now WITH Roland,” Jim continued, “this is a two-hour fight, tops. We set up our troops in some little chunk of the city and start dropping mortars and rockets on their vanguard. They pull up, encircle us, and start deploying their artillery to bomb us to Kingdom Come. Then, when they’re good and packed together, we drop Roland on their asses.”
Kishori nodded. “Yes,” she said, “he’ll hit them and disrupt their whole order of battle while our cavalry rolls around to their flanks and charges. That should be enough to make them panic. Then we chase them down until they lose cohesion.”
Roland’s head stayed down. He didn’t speak. Manny looked from him, to Jim, to Nana Yazzie and Donald Farris.
“So what’s the problem?” Manny asked. “If Roland and Rolling Fuck are all-in, this should be a walk in the park.”
“Roland,” Nana Yazzie said, “prefers not to fight.”
“But I just saw him…”
“You just saw me break a long streak of not killing people.” Roland’s voice sounded odd, hollow and dry, and utterly without any of the mirth or mischief Manny had come to expect from the chromed man.
“I did that to get my memories back, Manny,” he shrugged. “And I did it for you, because you’re my buddy. But I got no stake in Austin.”
“But you know what the Heavenly Kingdom will do if they take the city!” Manny protested. “You’ve seen what they did to Plano. They’ll do that to millions of decent people if they can. You have the power to stop that. You’re telling me you won’t?”
Roland met his eyes and just said, “Yes.”
“You son of a bitch,” Manny felt the anger well up inside him. It merged with his grief over Major Peron’s death, Oscar’s death, and his rage at the Heavenly Kingdom, the Martyrs, and every other group of assholes who’d helped turn his young life into a parade of nightmares.
“You absolute son of a bitch. You fucking coward!”
Manny didn’t think. Couldn’t think. He pulled back his fist and swung as hard as he could for Roland’s face. The chromed man didn’t move, didn’t even blink. Manny hit him right on the nose. He was softer than Manny would have guessed. It didn’t feel any different from punching a normal human. Manny swung again and again, until he felt something crack in his knuckles. He cried out from the pain and pulled back to nurse his wounded hand.
For a few seconds Manny forgot about the rest of the room. He closed his eyes and let his thoughts dissolve into an ocean of physical pain. The agony of his broken hand was almost soothing. It was better than thinking about Mr. Peron. It was better than thinking about Alejandro, or Oscar. It was better than thinking about his soon-to-be-shattered home.
Manny felt a hand on his shoulder. The sensation pulled him out of his spiraling thoughts. He looked up and saw Nana Yazzie. She smiled her sad smile and said, “Manny, everyone here understands your pain.”
“Not me,” said Jim, “I’ve never been a big fan of Austin. Too damn–”
Roland threw his empty pint glass at the other post-human’s face. It shattered on impact, embedding shards deep into Jim’s cheeks and forehead. His head snapped back, and he blinked in shock a few times.
“Sorry,” he said, “I deserved that.”
“And I deserved that,” Roland said to Manny. “No hard feelings. I get why you’re pissed. But kid, you’ve got to understand something. Austin is home to you. To me it’s just another city, held by just another side. Half my remaining memories are of one cause or another asking me to go murder in their name. I’m fuckin’ done with it.”
Manny looked to Major Clark. The SDF officer’s eyes were lit by a familiar cold fire. He spoke in a tone of barely controlled anger.
“That is your right, of course. You can choose to leave, just as I will choose to fight and die. I wonder, what will Manny choose?”
Manny hadn’t really settled on that himself. Before he could stumble through his response, Sasha spoke.
“I’ll fight,” she said. “I don’t know much about guns. But I’ll do my best.”
Roland slumped back in his chair and tossed his arms up in a dramatic show of frustration.
“Et tu, Jesus Girl?”
“I’ll fight,” Manny said to Major Clark, doing his best to talk over Roland. “I’ll choose to fight too.”
“This isn’t going to work, you know,” Roland said. “I’m not going to be shamed into fighting again. It’s just not going to fucking happen.”
Jim leaned in. He fixed Roland with a look that seemed almost hungry.
“I think it will happen. I think the peculiar arc of your moral compass won’t let you leave these kids to die.” He seemed surprised by the revelation. “Huh! Fascinating.”
“Enough of that,” Donald Farris sounded angry. “I won’t stand to see this man badgered and pressured into fighting against his will. We might as well dissolve the council for now and reconvene without Roland.”
“Good!” Roland stood up and stomped over to the exit. “If that’s all you people need from me, I’m going to get good and pissed and start my walk back to Arizona.” He flipped his middle finger out at the room and slammed the door behind him as he left.
