Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year Book 1) (23 page)

And so he did.

The Dead Rabbit sat astride him, hands around his neck, eyes glittering in the dark. Cavalo curled his fingers down and swung his arm up in a wide arc. The heel of his hand collided with the side of the Dead Rabbit’s head, against the ear. Bone struck bone, and the Dead Rabbit exhaled heavily, a dazed look coming over his face. He slipped slightly to the left, his grip on Cavalo’s neck loosening. Cavalo brought both arms up and drove his elbows into the crooks of the Dead Rabbit’s arms. The hands fell away. He bucked up his chest and stomach, ignoring the pull of the gunshot wound. The Dead Rabbit fell to the side, arms rising. The momentum carried him off Cavalo, who rolled in the opposite direction. Cavalo was up and on his feet even before Lucas had righted himself. The Dead Rabbit panted slightly, hanging his head toward the floor.

“Too fucking easy,” Cavalo spat at him. He stormed at the Dead Rabbit, meaning to kick him upside the head. Once the Dead Rabbit went down, he’d finish this the way it should have been the moment he’d first laid eyes on the monster. He brought his foot back and swung it forward.

It met empty air. He wavered in his balance and stepped down hard. The Dead Rabbit had rolled away quicker than Cavalo’s eyes could follow. He moved up into a crouch and smiled that terrible smile, showing too many teeth. He cocked his head like a bird.

Cavalo pulled himself upright, ignoring what felt like the strained muscle in his overextended leg. He’d faced worse. He’d seen worse. He’d survived worse. This was just a kid. A boy. Even monsters were capable of dying. The Dead Rabbit might be a psycho fucking bulldog, but Cavalo was beginning to understand that he too was a little bit psychotic. It was strange the relief he felt at the realization.

“Come on, then,” Cavalo said. “If we’re gonna do this, let’s do this.”

If he’d had time, Cavalo might have admired the swiftness with which the Dead Rabbit moved. One moment he was still crouched, and the next he was again flying at Cavalo, a silent snarl twisting his face. Cavalo sidestepped, reaching out and grabbing one of Psycho’s outstretched arms. Using his momentum against him, Cavalo whipped him around, spinning Psycho until his back was at Cavalo’s front. He wrapped his arms around Psycho, holding him tightly against his body. If Psycho hadn’t been so tense, it would have almost been a perfect fit.

Cavalo didn’t have time to ponder this. The Dead Rabbit snapped his head back, meaning to smash in Cavalo’s nose. Cavalo whipped his head to the side, and the back of the Dead Rabbit’s head bounced off his cheekbone. The pain was a glassy thing, sharp and bright. Psycho wriggled out of his grasp and spun into a crouch, swinging his leg out at the back of Cavalo’s legs.

He’s good
, the bees said as Cavalo found himself on his back again. Psycho stood above him and raised his foot over Cavalo’s face. Cavalo thought to close his eyes, but if this was it, if this was the end, he wasn’t going to show any fear. He wasn’t going to show any weakness. He wasn’t going to—

The Dead Rabbit hesitated. Cavalo saw it. It was just a flash behind his dark eyes, but it was there. His foot hung in the air. A split second. It wouldn’t take much more.

Cavalo snapped his arms up and grabbed Psycho’s suspended foot. He pushed up with all his might. Psycho fell back, his head bashing into the metal bars of the jail cell. Cavalo was on his feet even before the Dead Rabbit could right himself. He kicked Psycho’s feet apart and put pounds of pressure against Psycho’s crotch with his knee. Cavalo’s forearm went under Psycho’s chin, forcing his head back. Psycho struggled only briefly, latching his hands onto Cavalo’s arms.

Face to face, they stood. Eyes locked. Breathing heavily. Even the bees were silent this close. Cavalo couldn’t remember the last time that’d happened. Certainly it was before Jamie disappeared in a flash of light. Was that when they had come? He couldn’t remember, though it seemed likely. They had swarmed when he’d woken after shooting himself in the head, like that split in his skin, that crack in his skull was wide enough to let them fly in and nest in his head while he was unconscious.

“I will kill you,” Cavalo said.

The Dead Rabbit grinned at him. It was crazy. His fingernails dug into Cavalo’s arm, enough to dent the flesh.

“Mark my words,” Cavalo said, pressing against Psycho even harder. His balls had to be hurting, his air getting cut off. “I have done worse. I am capable of worse. I can make it last. I can make you suffer. And I will. You have never before experienced the pain I will bring you.”

Psycho lifted his head up higher, exposing the scar across his neck. He looked back at Cavalo, eyes dancing dangerously.
Oh?
he seemed to say, that raspy voice already familiar in Cavalo’s head.
You think you can make it worse than this?
He squeezed Cavalo’s arms. His fingernails pierced flesh. Cavalo felt blood run down his arms.

He did not react.

“I know I can,” Cavalo said. “That will be nothing compared to what I will do to you.”

Psycho snapped his teeth toward Cavalo.

Cavalo did not flinch.

Psycho cocked his head again.
You’re bluffing.

“Think so?”

His eyes narrowed.
I know so.
He cut into Cavalo’s arms again. The flesh parted in little divots. The pain was negligible.

“Try me. See what happens.”

The Dead Rabbit struggled again. Cavalo applied more pressure. Psycho stopped and tried to suck in air. He could barely get any in. His grip lessened.

His expression grew murderous again.
I’ll kill you
.

“You can try. It will be the last thing you do.”

You talk too much.

Cavalo laughed bitterly. “How do you do it?”

The Dead Rabbit shook his head once.
What?

“Keep the bees away.”

Psycho’s eyes narrowed. He breathed heavily through his nose. For a moment Cavalo thought nothing would happen (and why would it? the clever monster didn’t know about
bees
) when Psycho let his arm go. Blood dripped down his hand. Cavalo did nothing to stop it as it approached his face.

Psycho raised a finger and pressed it against the side of his head. He tapped three times. Cavalo felt his own blood trickle down to his ear. His eyes never left the Dead Rabbit’s.
Here?
Psycho asked.

Cavalo didn’t answer.

Psycho pursed his lips and blew out. The rasp sounded insectile. He tapped the side of Cavalo’s head again.
Here? Bees?

“Yes. Bees. Rubber bands. They break.”
Stop
, he told himself.
Stop now.

Psycho pulled his red hand back and tapped the side of his own head. He made the insect noise again. Tapped his head. Once. Twice. Three times.

I have bees
.
Like you.

“Oh?” Cavalo said. It was the only thing he could think of to say. He wondered if the rubber bands were breaking now and he wasn’t aware of them. Or if they had all finally broken and he was sliding into the dark. That would be the only explanation for why he talked to this monster. This cannibal.

Yes.
The Dead Rabbit gripped the side of his own head with his hand, smearing Cavalo’s blood in his hair. He grimaced briefly, then scowled.
They hurt. I hate them.

The same
, Cavalo thought.
Oh dear God. The same.

No.
Not
the same. Cavalo didn’t take life unless he was forced to. He didn’t ransack towns and murder the people. He didn’t drag the weakest kicking and screaming into the forest to face horrors that no one could possibly imagine.

“I’m not like you,” Cavalo ground out.

The Dead Rabbit stopped gripping his head. Cavalo could feel him tense beneath his arms and legs. And just
when
had their faces gotten so close? Just
when
had they gotten so close he could feel the Dead Rabbit’s breath on his skin? When
exactly
had that happened?

“You may have bees,” Cavalo told the boy in a low voice, “and I might be as fucking crazy as you are, but I am
nothing
like you.”

A metallic voice came from behind him. “Cavalo!”

A low animalistic snarl followed.

Cavalo turned his head briefly, no more than an inch. But it was enough. The Dead Rabbit lashed out, his fingers slick with Cavalo’s blood. They went for his eyes. To gouge them out. To make him hurt. He was an animal. If Cavalo hadn’t known it before, he knew it now.
So close
, he thought, but to what, he didn’t know.
So close.

He pushed back, feeling those bloody fingertips scratching at his face. He lifted up his arms to protect his eyes, when he was knocked to the side by a hard metal push. He fell back to the floor, sliding along the cement until his back slammed up against the wall.

Bad Dog crowded against him, sniffing up and down his face and neck.
Bleeding!
he said, sounding slightly hysterical.
Blood! Bleeding! I smell it! I taste it! Are you dying?
Are you dying
!

“No,” Cavalo said, pushing the dog away. “Just some scratches.”

But it’s so
bloody
! What if your arms fall off! How will we survive? I don’t have thumbs!

“Hush,” Cavalo said gently. He looked beyond the dog.

There was enough glow from the emergency lights along the floor for Cavalo to see. It was enough to make his breath catch in his throat.

Sentient Integrated Response System stood at full height, his orange eyes blazing with a furious light that Cavalo had never seen before.
He’s a robot
, he told himself.
Just a robot. He can’t
know
anger.
But that felt like a lie, because SIRS was no ordinary robot. Ordinary robots didn’t lose their sanity.

The robot had one arm stretched out, the spidery metal fingers wrapped around the Dead Rabbit’s neck, holding him three feet off the floor. The Dead Rabbit didn’t flail, didn’t kick. He held on to the robot’s arms, keeping himself steady. He seemed to know as well as Cavalo did that SIRS’s grip was unforgiving, and he would just as soon end up snapping his neck than breaking free.

There seemed a time when no one moved and all held their breaths for what was to happen next.

It was the robot who spoke first.

SIRS said, “Hundreds of millions of years of evolution led to the existence of humans as they have been for the last thousand years. You are at the top of your own food chain, even if you destroy yourselves in the process. You are, by all accounts, a wondrous miracle of nature. A mixture of molecules and stardust that by its very definition should not exist. And yet… you are so soft. So fragile.” He pulled the Dead Rabbit until their faces were inches apart and the Dead Rabbit’s face was bathed in the glow from SIRS’s eyes. “There are eight bones in the human neck,” the robot said. “Seven are vertebrae. The eighth is your hyoid bone. All it would take for me to crush them into a fine powder is putting the barest amount of pressure around your neck. You would be alive as the bones began to break. You would feel everything as the nerves and synapses misfired and severed. It may only be seconds but it would feel like
years
. Your throat would be crushed, and I can’t guarantee that your head wouldn’t pop off just like a tick that fleabag gets during the summer.” He shook the Dead Rabbit violently, and Cavalo waited for the telltale
crack
.

It never came.

“So I suggest,” SIRS continued, “that if you
ever
think of putting your hands on Cavalo again, that you remember this: you are a
human
. You are
soft.
You are so easily
broken
, and I will not hesitate to break every single bone in your body, and I will make sure you are kept alive and awake while I do it. You may be made of stars, but even stars die.”

And then I will eat what remains
, Bad Dog growled loudly.
I will then throw it up and contemplate eating it again.

“Yes,” SIRS agreed, “whatever the shit machine just said too. So. The way I see it, we have two choices. You can either act like a reasonably civil human being and we see what we see, or I start breaking your bones now.”

For a moment the Dead Rabbit only glared at the robot, though he also looked curious. Then he raised his hands to his head again. Pursed his lips. Blew out. Grabbed the side of his head. He pointed at Cavalo. Back at himself.

“I am sure I don’t have the foggiest idea of what you’re saying,” SIRS said. He beeped and whirred, and his arm shook, tightening his grip around the Dead Rabbit’s neck. The robot’s head rocked back, and his voice blared into the cellblock: “EDWARD LORENZ SAID CHAOS THEORY IS WHEN THE PRESENT DETERMINES THE FUTURE BUT THE APPROXIMATE PRESENT DOES NOT APPROXIMATELY DETERMINE THE FUTURE.” SIRS clicked. Beeped. Gears ground together. “I…,” he said as he looked back toward the Dead Rabbit. “I am….” He beeped again in a lower register. His eyes burned a fire orange. “Processing. The square root divided by… the infinity that is God. Processing. Processing.”

The Dead Rabbit’s face looked animalistic in the orange glow.

The robot paused. “Here,” he finally said. “I don’t think you understand. Maybe a demonstration is in order. A hairline fracture in the sixth vertebrae should be enough to show how serious I am. You won’t die, but it’ll hurt like the dickens.”

“SIRS,” Cavalo said. “Don’t.”

“Siding with him!” the robot cried. “Is that how this goes?” He clicked again. His eyes flashed. “We are friends! You said it yourself!”

“We are.”

“And friends protect each other.”

“Yes.”

“Then I shall hurt him. To protect you.”

“No.”

SIRS beeped but said nothing.

The Dead Rabbit reached up again. Touched the side of his head. Buzzed through his lips. He then reached out with the same hand and touched the side of the robot’s head. Buzzed through his lips.
I have bees. You have bees too.