Lifel1k3 (Lifelike #1)(59)

“Rest easy, boy. I’ll take you to the botdoc. Might take a while, but he’ll fix you up.”

Preacher looked around the subway station. The smashed concrete, the shattered brick. The passengers had all vaporized when they saw him walk back down from the deck, saw the look in his eyes. He nudged an empty shell casing with his boot, toed the slick of blood from where he’d dropped that prettyboy with three in his chest. Stooping, he ran gloved fingers through the red, smudging it between thumb and forefinger.

“Mmmf,” he said.

Jojo whined again. Preacher spat onto the concrete, gathered the blitzhund in his arms. He scruffed the cyborg behind the ears, took one last look around the chaos.

Little scrub had hurt his dog… .

“Personal now.” He nodded.

Spurs clinking, he turned and stepped up the stairs to Armada above.

The platform gleamed in the glow of an incoming train.

Light refracting on broken glass.

Bullets and bloodstains.

Ka-chunka-chunk.

Ka-chunka-chunk.





1.19


HOPELESS

They rode on, choking exhaust in their throats. Lemon bounced in the seat every time the cabbie hit a bump, which seemed to be roughly forty-six times every thirty seconds. A few minutes into the trip, her butt was prepared to wave the white flag. Her head was swimming, her body soaked with sweat. The driver spun them through the jungle of forecastles and causeways, stacks and sea ’tainers. Every junction was marked with a rusted post sporting a dozen different cryptic signs.

TUG TOWN

THE GULLS

WHEELHOUSE

BONEYARD

Dimples was right—this city was a damn maze. Some of the ships were almost unrecognizable from up here, crusted with new structures like growths of metal fungus. They rode across the sloping decks of another tanker, through a tangle of shanties, down a shuddering ramp to a smaller ship maybe a couple of hundred meters long. A cluster of spotlights sat at the prow, the vessel’s name daubed on a scab of iron oxide.

GIBSON.

The cab squeaked to a halt outside a corroded bulwark that might have been part of the original superstructure. A chunk had been cut away, fixed with two large wooden doors salvaged from another building entirely. A crude bell tower stood beside a flickering sign that read GIBSON STREET MINISTRY. A cross was outlined in scarlet neon beneath.

“I guess this is it?” Eve said.

The cabbie nodded, lighting a smoke. “Y’all have a pleasant evening now.”

Lemon took her credstik from the driver, bundled out onto the deck. Eve was struggling with Ezekiel, and Lem stepped in to help drag the lifelike out of the cab. The heat off the metal set the night air rippling, the reek of methane exhaust making her queasy. Lemon propped Cricket on her shoulders, dragging her jagged bangs from her eyes as she surveyed the doors in front of them.

The place didn’t look much like sanctuary, true cert.

“So who runs this joint, Dimples?” she asked.

“F-friend,” the lifelike wheezed. He coughed red, the holes in his chest glistening.

“Come on,” Eve said. “We should get him inside.”

Picturing that bounty hunter’s deadman stare as he pointed his pistol at her face, Lemon couldn’t help but agree. She slung Dimples’ arm over her shoulder, and with Evie struggling to carry Kaiser, the five managed to drag themselves across to the double doors. Looking around, Lemon saw knots of people in the shadows. A few watching with unfriendly eyes. But as far as cybernetic killers went? Not a peep.

The doors were big, weatherworn, ironshod. Lemon pounded on the wood with her boot, cursing as she almost lost her grip on Dimples. She heard slow footsteps, heavy bolts being drawn back. A gaunt woman’s face appeared in the crack, white hair, crusty as they came. Lem couldn’t remember seeing anyone so old. Not even Grandpa.

“Help us,” Eve pleaded.

The woman’s eyes widened at the sight of Ezekiel, and without a word, she opened the door and hustled them inside. The girls staggered in, eased the lifelike down to a sitting position against the wall. Pressing a wizened finger to her wrinkled lips, the old woman motioned for them to stay put, then quickly hobbled off.

Lemon squinted around them in the dim light. They were in a wide, hollow space lined with rusting columns. She could see upper levels swathed in shadow, a bulkhead sealing off a forward section. Dim tungsten bulbs burned on the walls, and she slowly realized the floor was covered with old metal cots. On each was a sleeping figure wrapped in a threadbare blanket. They were all thin. Tiny.

“They’re kids,” Lemon whispered.

“I don’t like this,” Cricket said.

Eve was kneeling next to Ezekiel. The lifelike was still coughing, but at least he didn’t seem to be bringing up blood anymore. Eve pulled open the front of his bloody flight suit, her hands hovering helplessly over the bullet wounds. Good news was, the holes were definitely smaller. Lem caught sight of the strange coin slot that had been riveted into the lifelike’s chest. Glancing at his missing arm, she was sharply reminded of how utterly inhuman Ezekiel was, despite the killer abs and murder-your-mother-for smile.

She wondered what the hells his story was.

Why Riotgrrl seemed to have warmed up to him so quick …

“Eve … l-listen,” Ezekiel wheezed.

“Shhh, don’t talk.”