Zero's Return (62 page)

Nervously clearing his
throat again, Mike continued, “I guess I lead this bunch.  We’ve got clothes
and other supplies.  Figured we could…”  There was a slight hesitation in the
man’s voice as he glanced almost imperceptibly to the side, “…help out.”

What a load of flake
,
Joe thought, looking him straight in the eyes.  He hadn’t spent seventy-four
turns in the Ground Corps listening to grounders’ excuses not to be able to
tell a lie when he heard one.  He wanted their food, plain and simple.

“We don’t need help.”

“Uh…yeah.”  Mike
hesitated, eyes on Nine-G as the gigantic man carried a fallen tree over to
where Alice and the others were, then dropped it with a ground-shuddering
thud.  “But they’re…not wearing anything,” he managed, when he tore his eyes
away.

“They like what their
ancestors gave them,” Joe said.  “Not the clothes-wearing sort.”

Mike swallowed, yet
refused to take the hint to leave.  Behind him, his group—numbering at least
thirty, just as Twelve-A had predicted—waited in a hungry silence.  Lingering
much longer than necessary, Mike finally said, “Setting up camp for a while?” 
The stiffness in his voice betrayed his nerves—and the fact that he was
probably about to give his followers the signal to attack.

Joe was utterly calm when
he replied, “A while.”  He started calculating how many he could kill before
they organized themselves.  Probably a lot.  They were mostly bones, their
exhaustion showing in their haggard, desperate faces.  If they put up much of a
fight once their companions’ heads started to explode, he would be surprised.

The man gave Jane another
nervous glance.  “You mind if we join you?”

Joe said, “You’re damn
right I burning mind.  Last thing I’m gonna do is share perfectly good food
with a bunch of diseased vaghi scavengers.  Get the hell gone, and don’t let me
see your oily hides again or I’ll start shooting.  And believe me.  I
won’t
miss.”

What actually came out of
his mouth was, “Sure, join us.  We’ve got food.”

For a long moment, Joe
just stood there as flies buzzed around his open mouth, utterly unable to
believe what he had said.  Very slowly, he turned to face Twelve-A.  The minder
grinned at him from under his ridiculous straw hat, in which Alice had cut
holes for his pointy ears.  As Joe watched, Twelve-A tipped the floppy brim at
him, blue eyes dancing in amusement.

Joe narrowed his eyes
before turning back to the newcomers.  “Apparently, you’re invited to dinner.”

The bearded man’s eyes
widened, and Joe felt another tingle of alarm at the confusion in the man’s
face.  As if he had
known
that they had some mysterious food source, but
hadn’t expected them to share.  Which meant he had expected to
take
it
from them.

I don’t like this,
Joe warned.

Relax, furg,
Twelve-A retorted. 
They’re just hungry.

And that, Joe knew, was
the problem.  He carefully scanned the dozens of sun-baked, starving faces and
he saw stark, bitter envy as they gazed upon the relatively fat, happy People. 
Bitter envy…and calculation.

They’re going to take
Eleven-C from us,
Joe thought, on a wave of dread.

No,
Twelve-A
argued. 
They’re just starving and they need our help. 

Nobody needs our help
but us,
Joe snapped back. 
Once we get the People safe,
then
you
can start a crusade running around helping people to your heart’s content. 
Until then, we need to watch out for our own people.

Have you ever
starved
,
furg? 

Of course I have.  I’m
a hundred-and-fucking-three Earth years old and I’ve been in enough shit that I
know what starving people
do
,
Joe retorted.
  Have you ever
starved?

Yes,
Twelve-A
replied.
  It’s horrible.  We can help.  We are
going
to help.

Joe narrowed his eyes at
Mike. 
You are making a mistake.

I’ve got this under
control,
Twelve-A said. 
Invite them over to the fire.  We’ll feed them
for a few days, until they feel better, then we’ll part ways and go find that
place in the mountains you want to take us to.

At Twelve-A’s words, a
whole new feeling of dread gnawed at Joe’s insides.  “That’s
naïve
,” he
growled.  “Totally burning
naïve
, you pointy-eared sooter freak.”

Mike frowned at him, that
razor-edge of caution coming back.  “What’s naïve?”

Joe frustratedly waved
the man’s question off with an overly cheerful grin.  “Nothing.  Please.  Come
sit by the fire and set up camp.  We’ll be
happy
to feed you as long as
you want.  Fill yourselves up so you can sleep soundly tonight. 
Real
soundly.  We’ve got plenty of food to share. 
Plenty
of food.  We
love
to eat.”

As expected, Joe’s
180-degree attitude change made Mike take an anxious step backwards.

“Where are you going?!”
Joe cried, taking a step towards him.  “You’re not hungry?  You
must
be
hungry. 
Everybody
gets hungry.”

Twelve-A’s disapproval
was like a frying-pan to the head. 
You’re intentionally making him nervous.

“I’m merely offering him
a place at our fire,” Joe said back, smiling his most psychotic smile at Mike
and his friends.  “Somewhere he and all his friends can sleep
soundly.
”

“You’re fucking
cannibals,” Mike managed, his voice a high-pitched tremor.  He was backing away
quickly, now, a big, shaking fist hovering over his gun.

Like a sonic boom,
Twelve-A gave a mental sigh.  Immediately, like someone had stepped into the
control center that was Joe’s brain and had wrenched him away from the console,
he heard himself laughing.  “Gotcha!” he cried.  Then he let out a girly giggle
and danced up to Mike, grinning like a fool.  Slapping Mike on the shoulder, he
said, “My name’s Joe.”  He took Mike’s reluctant hand.  “I’m a Congie, but not
a bad one, see?  A good Congie.”

Mike was staring at him,
not returning his exuberant handshake.  Nonetheless, Joe felt himself keep
shaking.  “Look, I love playing jokes.  I’m a real joker, see?  People don’t
like me much and I’m too dumb to see why.  Of course we’ve got food.  Eleven-C
makes it.  All she’s gotta do is put her hand to the ground and concentrate and
boom
, food, right?  The Keepers made her that way and it’s easy.  Want
some food?  I know you want some food—”

Get out of my head,
you psychotic chimp!
Joe shrieked.

You gonna play nice?
Twelve-A demanded.  In the background, Joe continued to bow and scrape like a
moron.

Burn you, furgling
flake!
Joe screamed. 

Better decide soon,
Twelve-A said. 
He’s about to pull his gun and shoot you.

Seeing that, indeed, Mike
was about to shoot him, Joe decided to be the better man. 
When I find you
in the afterlife,
he promised,
I’m going to tear off your ears and mount
them to a Dhasha’s ass.

Sounds uncomfortable,
Twelve-A said distractedly. 
You really should hurry.

Fine!
Joe
screamed. 
Fine, you ever-loving janja fart, fine.

Immediately, he had full
control of himself again.  With a yell, he yanked himself away from Mike,
wrenched his hand free, and glared.

There was a sense of
amusement underlying the bastard’s caution, now.  “I take it the Ground Force
was…rough…on you,” Mike commented.

Flushing until his face
felt covered in Ueshi fire-balm, Joe bared his teeth.  “You are invited to
dinner.”

Mike continued to give
him an analyzing look.  “That you or the friend in your head talking?”

“
Definitely
the
friend in my head,” Joe growled.  “If
I
had the choice, I’d shoot you,
take your gear, and dump your bodies over the—Hahahaha just kidding.  I
wouldn’t do anything like that.  Come on, we have food—”

I’m warning you,
Joe growled.

And I’m warning you,
Twelve-A said stubbornly. 
Stop trying to scare him.  He’s a good guy.

Fine.  It’s your damn
formation. 
Joe mentally threw up his hands and settled for a glare at the
newcomers.

“Soooo,” Mike said,
clearing his throat and pointedly looking past Joe.  “Is anyone
else
in
charge around here?”

“Me!” Alice cried,
running up with Joe’s axe in her hand.  Panting, she enthusiastically said,
“Twelve-A says I should come do the talking because Joe is making you nervous.”

“That he is, sweetie,”
Mike agreed.  Then, with a hasty glance at Joe, “No offense, man.  I’m sure it
was rough.  Not many guys got the cojones to make it through like Zero, ya
know?  And hell, only thing special ‘bout him was his golden asshole.”

Joe narrowed his eyes. 
You’re
going to pay.

He heard something that actually
sounded like a derisive snort coming from the minder’s direction…and nothing
else.  When he looked, the minder was reclining against a rock, sloppy straw
hat-brim covering his face.

“You know what?” Joe
demanded, irritation rising.  “Fine.  I’m just gonna go hang out over here and
let you guys work things out.”  He turned on heel, marched over to where
Twelve-A was reclining, yanked his absurd hat off his head, and stooped so that
he and the minder were eye-to-eye.  “This is a mistake,” he warned, low enough
so that only Twelve-A could hear it.  Then, slamming the hat back in place
perhaps a little too hard, he stood and stalked off to find wood for the fire.

Chapter 22 – The Magnanimous Mike Carter

Joe sat on a boulder near
the edge of camp, ostentatiously whittling with the massive Jreet ovi that had
been given to him by Prime Sentinel Raavor ga Aez, watching the newcomers dig
food out of the pit he had painstakingly hidden with twigs, leaves, and other
debris only a few hours before.  Once Mike and his crew had realized that the
People really didn’t care if they ate their food, things had gone pretty much
as Twelve-A had predicted; they had gorged themselves until the pits started to
run dry.  As
Joe
had predicted, however, as soon as food started to
become scarce again, they had then started to scuffle amongst themselves over
who got to keep the leftovers.  Even now, each family had staked out private
‘territories’ of camp, with small groups of their ragged number keeping watch
over whatever they had managed to scavenge from the bottom of the pit, eying
the People and their own kind alike with hard-faced suspicion.

All the while, the
People, who were already well-fed and ready for bed, watched the newcomers
hoard their food with mild curiosity.  As they gathered to fall asleep in their
usual dogpile, giggling as they crawled under each other for the best position,
their visitors continued to stay awake with distrustful stares and hard,
humorless faces, obviously prepared to endure a long night.  No one was feeding
the fire.  No one was
moving
from their tiny familial zone.  So far, no
one had let it slip that it was the curvaceous brunette sitting beside the guy
with the sloppy straw hat that had made it all out of dirt, but Joe knew that
the moment someone
did
, things were going to get ugly.

Eventually, Mike left his
tiny fiefdom to come climb up on the boulder beside Joe, lowering his lumpy
backpack to the stone beside his ankle.  “They’re not very bright, are they?” 
He frowned at the group of naked experiments even then laughing and playing in
their tangle.

“Pretty brain-dead,” Joe
agreed.  He kept whittling.

“So what’s wrong with
them?” Mike demanded.  “It’s like they’re all…kids.  But dumber.”

“Fried a few brain cells
in Judgement, I would guess,” Joe said.

“I notice they all got
barcodes on the backs of their necks,” Mike pressed.  “They the leftovers from
one of those criminal brainwashing facilities?”

“Your guess is as good as
mine,” Joe said, shrugging.  What he
wanted
to do was punch the guy in
the face for asking questions, but he refrained.

“Poor guys,” Mike said,
sounding genuinely sorry for them.  “That why they all have those weird numbers
for names?”

“Ayup.”  Joe increased
the violence of his carving, but Mike didn’t take the hint.

Mike gave him a long
look.  “So why’s a guy like
you
hanging out with the likes of
them
?”

The pointed way the man
said it made Joe stiffen.  Resuming his carving, he said, “Nothing special
about me.”

“Yeah, bullshit,” Mike
said.  He gestured to the Prime Sentinel’s ovi.  “You’re Zero.”  Then, at Joe’s
sudden scowl, he faltered.  “…aren’t you?”

“No,” Joe said.  “Not
anything like that ashbag.”  Irritated, he went back to carving.

“What is that, then?”
Mike demanded, gesturing to the intricate crystalline blade, translucent blue
except for the black Jreet’s head carved into the handle.

“Replica,” Joe gritted.

“Badass replica,” Mike
said, sounding unconvinced.  “It’s cutting through that tree like butter.”

“You really think a
Jreet
has hands this small, you flake-sniffing jenfurgling?”  Joe held up the
forearm-length knife.  A Jreet’s ovi was actually given to him by the Black
Jreet upon his acceptance as a warrior, and was tailor-made to his or her hand
at the time—which was usually only slightly bigger than Joe’s own—but only
those chronically privileged with the dubious pleasure of Jreet friends
actually knew that.  While Prime Sentinel Raavor ga Aez had been approximately
the size of a Congressional freighter when he died, his ovi had remained the
small, ceremonial object of death it was intended to be.

Mike frowned at him a
moment, then shook himself.  “Yeah, I guess you don’t really look like him
much, after all.  Chin’s too narrow.  Not tall enough.  Paler.”

For once, Joe appreciated
the exaggerated propaganda posters.  “Yeah, I get that a lot.”  He went back to
‘carving,’ though all he was really doing at this point was hacking chunks of
wood out of a bigger chunk of wood, too frustrated to try and make a shape out
of it.

After a minute of awkward
silence, Mike finally broached the question they both knew was coming.  “So,
uh…” the man coughed, glancing down from their perch at his own family unit,
which had collected a fist-sized hunk of beef roast, a bruised peach, and a
squished half of a banana.  Two boys and a girl no more than eleven years old
stood guard over it with guns, as hard-faced as the rest of them.  Returning
his eyes to Joe, Mike said, “Where’d you guys find all that food?”

“Some farmer’s stash,”
Joe said.  “He’d buried it in his root cellar out back right before a kreenit
got him.”  He kept whittling.

“Oh.”  There was obvious
disappointment in Mike’s face.  “It’s all gone, then?”

“No, I’m just lying
again.  Eleven-C can make it.”

Joe’s mouth fell open and
he stared at the razor tip of his ovi.  His gut was telling him that now would
be a
very
good time to drive it through his visitor’s skull, before the
hungry furg could piece it all together.  Instead, he
thunked
the knife
into the boulder he was sitting on, turned around to clasp his hands around his
knee and tilt his body in the most homosexual manner possible, and huskily
said, “What
else
are you interested in?”

Are you
trying
to get her taken?!
Joe mentally screamed, as his body cooed and purred
around him.

They’re not going to
take her,
Twelve-A said. 
They’re grateful for the food.

It doesn’t
work
that way!
Joe shrieked. 

How do you know? 
Maybe nobody’s ever been nice to them,
Twelve-A retorted.

Look at what they’re
doing
,
Joe snapped. 
They’re guarding their food from their own kind like
backbiting hatchlings.  They’re not
sharing
, furg.  They’re not
like
you.

Twelve-A hesitated to
consider that, and Joe thought maybe he’d finally gotten through to the
airheaded jenfurgling.

We’ll just have to
give them more food,
Twelve-A finally said.  

Joe’s eyes widened,
realizing Twelve-A’s intent. 
No way.  Don’t you dare.

On the other side of the
camp, Eleven-C frowned and put down the flower bracelet she was weaving.

Don’t do it!
Joe
snapped. 
They’ll take her!