Alice and Bourke simultaneously envisioned their own funerals.
“Let me tell you something,” Christopher said. “There’s nothing in this world you can’t buy with a little power and influence. You supply a hacker or the chief of police with enough money and enough drugs, and they’ll do whatever it is you ask of them.”
This was all too much for Bourke to handle. He’d seen enough. It was time to escape this vision of hell.
He sprung from the floor and made a perilous, half-blind dash for the door.
The xombies in the room prepared to pounce the instant their boss gave the order. But Christopher said nothing. He simply smiled and watched as Bourke made his desperate bid for freedom.
“Let him go,” he told his xombies.
Bourke sprinted faster than he ever thought possible. He made it to within two feet of the exit.
Christopher calmly raised the OBL-IV and fired.
A rope of electrical current was shot out from the gun and struck Bourke’s spinal column, just below his ribcage.
The burst of concentrated energy expanded and tore Bourke’s body open from the inside out. He was ripped apart into five large chunks of human flesh.
Alice fell back to the floor, dumbfounded. The power emitted from this one device, roughly the size of a paperback novel, was mind-boggling.
“I know, it’s a bit messy, isn’t it?” Christopher said with an apologetic shrug. “But it’s effective. And it’s fun. I’m not going to lie about that.”
Christopher reached for the mask behind his desk. He sucked in another deep lungful of nitrous oxide. He was having too much fun, and he needed a moment to come down from the excitement.
He tossed the mask aside, then picked up the gun and turned to Alice.
“You should take solace in the fact that it was all over very quickly for him, which was much more than he deserved. Of the many ways I could have chosen to kill you both, this is the most humane.”
Christopher pressed a button on the OBL-IV. The soft humming noise resumed.
“Three down, two more to go.”
He pointed the gun at Alice. The digital crosshairs locked in on her head.
“Once you and Morgan are out of the way, the money will be all mine.”
The gun made a ping sound to indicate that it had powered up and was ready to be fired again. Christopher moved his finger over the trigger.
Alice squeezed her eyes closed. This was it for her.
And then something happened.
A warm kind of peace descended upon her. Her moment of death had arrived – and she was okay with it. There were certainly worse ways to go. She probably wouldn’t even feel anything. The gun would discharge, and a microsecond later she would cease to exist.
She hadn’t realized she was doing it, but a faint smile had appeared on her face.
But before Christopher could finish her off, a high-pitched noise sounded from the other side of the room.
BEEP ... BEEP ... BEEP ...
Christopher paused. He lowered the weapon.
He looked across, searching for the source of the interruption. “What is that?” he said.
Alice opened her eyes.
The beeping grew louder and faster.
Christopher’s eyes scoured the room. They landed on one of the xombies in the corner.
It was Needlemouse – or the young woman who had earlier posed as Needlemouse. She scratched furiously at her neck.
“Whatever that noise is, could you please shut it off?” Christopher snapped.
Needlemouse suddenly doubled over in pain. She let out an excruciating, nails-down-the-blackboard howl that sent a shiver rippling through Alice’s body.
She was in a state of pure agony, but no sympathy was forthcoming from Christopher. This unscheduled disturbance had angered him greatly.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he shouted at her.
Needlemouse collapsed to the floor. Her moans grew louder and more harrowing.
The beeping rose again in volume. The frequency increased.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
Christopher leaped from one side of the room to the other, something he achieved in only three steps. His robotic legs allowed him to bound vast distances like a galloping gazelle.
He grabbed Needlemouse by the scruff of the neck and yanked her to her feet.
“Pull yourself together, woman! What in god’s name has gotten into you?”
Needlemouse didn’t respond. She screamed and clawed away at her neck, her dirty fingernails digging deep into her yellow skin. Christopher slapped her hands away to see what she was scratching at.
That was when he discovered the source of her pain: a small matchbox-sized implant, inserted just beneath her skin.
It flashed bright red.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP
Christopher realized, too late, just what was happening here.
Needlemouse’s number had come up.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP
The device activated, and Needlemouse exploded.
The blast rocked the entire room, the sudden force throwing everyone to the floor.
A short time later, the thirteen members of the Consortium were informed that Danielle Coxon – aka contestant number two hundred and thirty-one – had been the latest unlucky player in their monthly Russian roulette competition.
Mae Foster-Morris, the Swiss banking executive and world’s fourth-richest person, was the only member to have selected this contestant for the round. For this, she was awarded a prize of $196 million.
Chapter 31
The smoke slowly cleared from the room. With a great deal of effort, Alice forced herself to sit upright.
She didn’t know how long she’d been out for when she finally came to. It couldn’t have been long; half a minute, maybe.
Her body ached more than ever after she landed hard on her back. A high-pitch whine rang in both ears, and her head throbbed with severe spasms of pain. She struggled to hold on to consciousness. It felt like she’d been hit by a car.
Christopher was also on the floor, lying on his back like a turtle stuck on its shell. His arms flayed about and his robot legs twitched in mid-air, as he vainly tried to push himself back up. It took several attempts before he finally managed to roll onto his side.
Alice inhaled a sharp intake of breath upon witnessing the horror before her.
A large gap now existed where Christopher’s right arm used to be.
The explosion had blown Christopher’s arm clean off. All that remained were pieces of bone, ligament and loose skin hanging from the shoulder socket.
But if Christopher was upset about the loss of another limb, it didn’t show.
“Well how about that,” he said, a slight inebriated wooziness coming into his voice. “I was debating whether or not to get mechanical arms to replace the ones my creator burdened me with.”
Despite experiencing what must have been excruciating pain, Christopher seemed delighted at the prospect of becoming more robotic. He was positively beaming.
“I guess the decision has been made for me.”
He slowly dragged himself across the floor, inching his way towards the giant pill-filled display case in the center of the room. A trail of blood streaked the floor behind him.
With his one remaining hand, he pressed on the remote control around his neck over and over. Hundreds of little yellow pills were deposited into the receptacle, before it overflowed and they spilled out onto the floor.
He scooped up a handful and shoved them into his mouth like a child left alone in a candy store.
Christopher maintained a strict rule about not getting high on his own supply, but these were extraordinary circumstances. He needed something to dull the pain and prevent his body from going into shock, and he needed it now.
Dozens of surplus lemon drops rolled across the floor. Most of the xombies were still dazed by the explosion. The few who remained con
scious fought among themselves for the leftover drugs.
Christopher laid on his back for a moment and stared up at the ceiling. All this activity, not to mention the significant blood loss, had drained the energy right out of him.
“Those limbs aren’t cheap, though,” he said, his breathing even more labored than usual. “So I’m gonna need to get my hand on that hundred million as soon as possible.”
He lifted his head and looked across the room. His eyes locked with Alice’s.
The fear pummeled into her like a wounded bull. She knew exactly what was coming.
“I want the girl dead!” Christopher shouted to his xombie army. “Five hundred lemon drops to the one who brings me her head!”
Alice scrambled to her feet. She’d heard of xombies beating people half to death for their loose change. What they’d be willing to do for five hundred pills didn’t bear thinking about.
She looked desperately for a way out – a fire escape, an air vent, anything. But she was cornered. There was only the one exit, and more than two dozen xombies stood between her and it. At present, most of the xombies were either scrambling over the excess pills on the floor, or were temporarily deafened and stunned from the blast. But they wouldn’t stay that way for much longer.
They would be coming for her.
Alice spied the OBL-IV lying on the floor a few feet away and made a desperate lunge for it.
Christopher saw this and let out a caustic laugh.
“I’m afraid that won’t be much use to you, honey,” he taunted.
She pointed the gun at Christopher and pulled the trigger, hoping for a miracle.
Nothing happened, as she expected. The OBL-IV was assigned to Christopher, and it wouldn’t work without his palm print. In her hands it was nothing more than a useless lump of plastic and fiberglass.
But in Christopher’s hands ...
She looked to the corner of the room.
The pile of bones and internal organs and body parts.
The majority of it was the remains of the recently departed Needlemouse, who was now spread across the floor, walls and ceiling like a human Jackson Pollock artwork.
But sticking out among all of that was part of a large forearm and a meaty hand.
She swooped in on the hand. It definitely belonged to Christopher. It was the size of a baseball mitt. The fingers were fat and sausage-like.
But only three of those fingers were still attached to the hand.
She placed the palm over the gun’s handle. She pressed down and hoped for the best.
Nothing.
She still only had sixty percent of a hand. For the gun to work, she would require the full quota of digits.
She looked over to the xombies. A few more were up on their feet now. Time was against her. The pills would soon be gobbled up, and the xombies would be on the hunt for more.
She dived into the pile of remains and sifted through for any unattached fingers. She found lumps of skin and flesh and bone that vaguely resembled fingers, but she was unable to verify exactly what they were.
She played a frantic game of mix and match with the various body parts, trying to fit the right pieces of anatomy into the right slots, like she was assembling an Ikea Frankenstein.
She located what looked like Christopher’s detached thumb and slotted it into the correct position.
If she stopped for a moment to think about how revolting this whole process was, she would never have been able to go through with it. But time to think was a luxury she simply did not have. A murderous glint had appeared in the eyes of the xombies. They would be coming for her any moment now.
Her hand landed on something hard. Something metallic. She picked it up and wiped the blood away.
It was a skull ring – the one she had last seen around Christopher’s little finger.
She pressed the finger that was attached to the skull ring into the gun’s hand grip. The OBL-IV hummed, then lit up neon green.
Just as the xombies were beginning to close in.
Alice thrust the OBL-IV, with Christopher’s severed hand wrapped around it, out in front of her. The encroaching xombies stopped in their tracks.
“What are you waiting for?” Christopher barked angrily at his charges. “There’s thirty of you and only one of her! She can’t shoot you all!”
The dreadlocked xombie took a couple of bold steps toward Alice. She swung the OBL-IV around, and the digital crosshairs locked in on the target. He quickly retreated.
A game of chicken played out between Alice and the xombies. They all knew Alice could only get off one shot; the OBL-IV would take about thirty seconds to recharge before it was ready to be fired again. But no one wanted to be the one to get shot. They all saw what had happened to Bourke only a few minutes ago.
“One thousand pills!” Christopher shouted impatiently. “One thousand pills to whoever kills the bitch! Five hundred for anyone that helps!”
Sweat dripped from Alice’s face like a wet sponge. Her hands quaked. She knew from personal experience there was little a xombie wouldn’t risk for such a huge volume of drugs.
“Do it!” Christopher screamed. “Do it now!”
Alice’s mind performed mental gymnastics as she tried to figure a way out of this. There had to be a way, she told herself.
But she only had one shot, and she had to make it count.
She could turn the gun on Christopher. But that would do nothing to ward off the xombies. It would probably enrage them even more, given that she’d killed the person who supplied them with the one thing they loved above all else.
The OBL-IV was powerful. Maybe she could attempt to blast a hole in the wall, or in the floor. Try making her escape that way. But where to from there? For all she knew, blowing a hole in the wall would only lead to another dead end.
If all else failed, she could use it on herself. It would be a more preferable way of dying than being torn limb from limb, and at least it would be on her own terms.
And then, from out of nowhere, the most obvious solution of all drifted into her head.
The display case in the center of the room.
The one filled with millions of lemon drops.
Alice swung the gun around. The gun’s digital crosshairs zeroed in on the center of the display case.
She pressed Christopher’s detached finger against the trigger, and the OBL-IV discharged.
The blast obliterated the walls of the case, and the thick glass casing was crystallized into a fine powder. A yellow avalanche descended on the room as the pills spilled out onto the floor.
In an instant, every single xombie forgot all about Alice and dived into the tidal wave of narcotics. They shoved as many as they could into their pockets and mouths, like starving pigeons swooping in on a split bag of grain.
“No!” Christopher screamed. “You need to kill the girl first! Kill her and I’ll make you all millionaires!”
But it was no use. Christopher could only watch on helplessly as his entire drug supply was devoured by thirty ravenous xombies.
Chapter 32
Alice was mute as Morgan drove her back to her place, her hands, face and clothes drenched in blood. She stared straight ahead without uttering a single word. Morgan made one or two gentle attempts at finding out what had happened, but she was in no condition to talk. She could only manage a few words before her emotions got the better of her.
They rode the elevator up to her apartment.
Another brown envelope had been slipped underneath her front door. Morgan quickly scooped it up and hid it from Alice before she could see it. He figured she didn’t need to know about Harrison and Melissa’s elimination just yet, and what this meant for their own situation.
Alice left Morgan in the lounge and hurried off to clean herself up. She locked the bathroom door behind her, then emptied her pockets.
She took a moment to stare at the hundreds of lemon drops laid out on the counter before her.
When the rush o
f counterfeit Xylox spilled out from the display case and onto Christopher’s floor, Alice disregarded all her instincts for self-preservation and did what any other addict would have done when confronted with a near-infinite supply of free drugs – she lost her mind. She dived head-first into the spillage, along with every other xombie in the room, and scooped up as many as she could manage like a contestant on a game show. It was as if every one of her birthdays and Christmases had come at once.
It was a sign of how warped Alice’s priorities had become that she chose to scramble after all the loose lemon drops when the chaos unfolded, but forgot all about the piles of cash Christopher had stacked up on his desk.
Midway through, she paused for a split-second to take in her surroundings and observe just what she was doing. Only then did it occur to her that it might be in her best interests to get out while she had the chance. She was grateful that at least a small part of her sensible old self still remained, and that maybe she hadn’t completely transformed into a brainless drug fiend just yet.
She necked five pills before Morgan found her, but these were yet to produce any discernible effect. Xylox usually took thirty to forty minutes to kick in after swallowing, which equated to about six weeks in relative xombie time.
She crushed three pills into a fine powder. She knew that ingesting eight lemon drops within the space of an hour was pushing the envelope, but her tolerance level by now was so much higher than that of a regular person. The past few months had seen her develop the constitution of a rhinoceros.
One line went up her nose, along with six months’ worth of dust and grime from her dirty bathroom sink.
A minute later, Alice’s tense muscles finally began to relax. Her brain expressed its gratitude by unleashing a flood of serotonin on her nervous system. The chronic thump at the back of her head faded to a gentle pulse.
She snorted the second line, and her pain and melancholic disposition melted further away. She sat down on the linoleum floor and closed her eyes. Peace was finally upon her. It felt like her bones were dissolving inside her body.
Morgan paced back and forth in Alice’s lounge room. This day was just getting crazier and crazier. He still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened tonight, or who was behind it all. Every answer he received only threw up further questions.