Zero's Return (26 page)

“So you’re gay.”

Slade heaved an
enormous sigh and turned to face his lackey.  “I haven’t hit on you yet, have
I?” Slade demanded.

Tyson seemed to
consider that.  “I’m actually not sure.”

Ugh. 
Inebriates.  Slade walked over to the shelf marked Underground Houses and
started perusing the offerings.

“
Have
you
hit on me?” Tyson asked.

Slade groaned
inwardly and threw a couple books into his bag.  “No.”

“Damn,” Tyson
said.

Slade paused,
mid-perusal, and gave his Second a raised eyebrow.  “Why?  You wanted to give
me a bullet between the eyes for the offense?”

Tyson grunted
and gave a dismissive shrug of his massive shoulders.  “You’re kinda my type.”

Slade slapped
the book shut, delighted.  “You’re
gay
?”

Tyson gave him a
flat look.  “You got a problem with that?”

“No.”  Slade
went to the agricultural section. 
He
wouldn’t be reading them, but the
more he thought about it, the more Tyson’s words made sense.  A
mathematically-challenged hick with agricultural prowess might be more useful
to him than a smart, sexy platinum blonde.  He must have said it out loud,
because Tyson frowned.

“Farmers can be
smart.”

Yeah, right. 
Slade threw a few books into the bag.  If his soulmate didn’t show, he was sure
that they would be useful to some mindless peon when the time came to make
themselves a sustainable food source.  Farming was, without a doubt, one of the
few subjects of the world that Slade did
not
find interesting.  He
simply couldn’t figure out what people liked about rooting through dirt and
manure to do something as basic as raise food.  Then he frowned and swiveled
back on Tyson.  “And what do you mean, I’m kinda your type,” Slade demanded,
concerned, now.  “What kind of type is that?”

Tyson cocked his
head at him, considering.  “Smart, but not much common sense.”

Slade narrowed
his eyes.  “I have
plenty
of common sense.  I just choose not to
exercise it, because that’s boring.”

“Uh-huh.”  Tyson
clearly didn’t believe him.  “We done here?”  To the man’s credit, his sack was
getting rather full.

Slade glanced
around him at the vast stores of knowledge that would be lost in a matter of
months or years—however long it took for the roof to cave in and the books to
succumb to the elements—and felt a horrible pang of regret.  He knew a lot, but
he hadn’t had a chance, or the inclination, to sift through
all
the
knowledge of Humanity.  He could piece things together if he didn’t have some
manual explaining it, but it would take at least two of him to rebuild what
Humankind had managed to discover in its two hundred thousand years.

Yes, she was
definitely going to be brilliant.  Slade hoped she liked agriculture and
genetics, because, after Slade’s botched experiment into self-experimentation,
he found genetics as distasteful as farming.

“We should
probably get back to the main camp, if you’re just gonna stand there staring at
the wall,” Tyson said.  “Re-assert your leadership and all that.”

Ah, dominance
struggles.  Slade sighed.  “My leadership is undebatable.” 

“Yeah, well,”
Tyson said, “I heard some guys talkin’ like they were gonna challenge.”

“And you didn’t
stand up for me?!” Slade cried.

“I figured you’d
have some kinda ace up your sleeve,” Tyson said, with another massive shrug.

Slade, who
didn’t have an ace up his sleeve, sighed.  His formidable mental gears started
turning as he gave the room of books one last, woeful look.  What he
wanted
to do was make permanent camp here, then re-create his glorious new
civilization from the ashes of a Barnes & Noble.  It was going to be so
annoying
to lose everything.

Still, his claim
to leadership, despite utterly annihilating an alien the size of a double semi,
was tenuous.  He had to assure the imbeciles that he really was in control of
the situation.  Sheeple and poddites liked that.

“We found some
extra guns in that sporting goods store,” Tyson said.  “Maybe you should start
carrying one around.”

Slade scoffed at
the very idea.  He was just as likely to blow off a toe as to actually draw it
in time to shoot somebody.  “I defend myself with my brain, not a crude
projectile.  Who was it who was talking about challenging?”

“Couple guys,”
Tyson said.

“You got names?”
Slade asked.  He, of course, in furthering his cause of having dirt on every
single prisoner at New Basil Harmonious, had bribed the prison shrink into
letting him look at the files once a week during his ‘phobia therapy.’  And
Slade, with his photographic memory and short attention span, usually finished
in half the allotted time and spent the rest napping on the shrink’s comfy
leather couch. 

Tyson had been
one of the few that didn’t have dirt.  A completely dirt-free background, aside
from his minor killing spree.  Now that Slade thought about it, that
definitely
should have tipped him off that something was up about the gun-toting Fabio,
but one of Slade’s well-documented flaws was that he was lazy.  The government
shrinks even went so far as to suggest he was on average only using a quarter
of his criminal capacity due to ‘toxic excess, extravagance, sloth, and general
lethargy.’  So yeah, perhaps he’d been a little too enthusiastic with those
naps…

“Three names,”
Tyson said.  “Dude named Stone and that little weasel Queso and his friend Big
Phil.”

Slade grinned at
his good luck.  Big Phil had been an accountant—and a bad one.  He’d been put
into New Basil Harmonious for eighteen years for attempting to defraud Boeing
out of a few thousand credits to extend his yearly trip to Hawaii.  As soon as
he hit prison, however, Big Phil—who had lifted weights in his spare time due
to his low self-esteem from childhood trauma—had acted tough and allowed
everyone else in the prison to think he was in there for murder.

Stone, a.k.a.
Richard Douglass, was a former cowboy from Texas who lost his job running
cattle and found work in running people, instead.  His background was dubious,
at best, and aside from the disappearances out in rural Texas near the ranches
he worked, several illegal immigrant women had gone missing on his watch.  Of
course, the Border Patrol and the Feds hadn’t looked into that, and they’d been
happy to charge him with dozens of counts of human trafficking, which had given
him a grand total of six years in prison.  Slade, however, had the man’s psych
profile, his history, and his session records, which had alluded to—but of
course not confirmed—his homicidal tendencies.

Queso, on the
other hand, was just an all-around backbiting vaghi who followed the swing of
the pendulum.  He had, however, attempted to get his sister into the country
four years ago and, instead of arriving in San Antonio as expected, she had
never been heard from again.  It hadn’t been Stone, of course, because Stone
had been in prison, but it was definitely a happy coincidence.

Slade guessed
that Stone was the ringleader, as neither Big Phil nor Queso showed any
leadership tendencies whatsoever, and Stone was a mass-murdering psychopath
that hadn’t gotten caught, which meant he was smart.  Relatively speaking.

“All right,”
Slade said.  “Let’s head back to camp.  But first, I’m going to want to stop by
the sporting goods store and the grocery.  I’m going to need goggles, a squirt
gun, a bottle of Pepsi, white vinegar, a dozen boxes of baking soda, plastic
utensils, a gaming joystick, and a skimmer.”

For a long
moment, Tyson said nothing.  Then, reluctantly, he said, “You want a skimmer.”

“Yeah,” Slade
said.  “I’m gonna take it apart and turn it into a table.”

Tyson gave him a
long look, and it was obvious that the monkey was trying to piece together his
plan in his tiny primate head.  “Why the baking soda?” Tyson eventually asked.

“Because,” Slade
said, sighing hugely, “I want to solidify my position as supreme leader.”

“Of a prison
gang,” Tyson added.

Slade deflated
somewhat at his companion’s dry tone.  “Well, yes.  It’s a prison gang
now
. 
But that’s beside the point.  Eventually, we will be rebuilding society from
the ground up.”  As they left the bookstore, he raised an eyebrow at Tyson. 
“What do
you
want in your perfect society, Tyson?”

“Free food, lots
of sex, no laws, no crime.”

“No…crime?” 
Slade grimaced.  “But…you’re a criminal.”

“No money,
either,” Tyson said.  He hefted the sack of books over his shoulder.  “Root of
all evil and all that shit.”

“No…money?”  Now
Slade was getting worried.  If there was no money, it would be hard for him to
steal it.  “How can we be rich if there’s no money?”

“Rich?”  Tyson
snorted.  “What’s the point in being rich?”

“What’s the
point in…” Slade babbled, flustered.  He blinked at his lackey.  “You’ve
obviously never been rich.”

Tyson glanced
down at him sideways.  “Second richest family in Alabama.”

Alabama wasn’t
exactly known for its wealth, but Slade supposed that, as a man with accounts
worth the GDP of some planets, he had disproportionate standards.  He grunted. 
“Okay, so then you know the miracle of Armani, Dalmore, Glenfiddich, and
Ferrari.”  He kept his brands in the low range, so as not to make Tyson feel
left out.

“Don’t really
like Scotch,” Tyson said, with another muscular shrug.  “I’m a Miller man,
myself.”

Slade shuddered
at the very idea.  “That’s…quaint.”  Swallowing down bile, Slade tried not to
think of the aforementioned piss-water and busied his labyrinthine mind with
how not to die in the next 24 hours, instead.  That would be fun…

#

Tyson lifted the
table-cloth to look under the disassembled skimmer at him in confusion.  “I
still don’t see what the hell all the baking soda was all about.”

“You don’t see a
lot of things,” Slade said, as he spliced another wire and wrapped it in
electrical tape.  “I’ve made an effort not to let that bother me.”  Hunched
under the ‘table,’ which was essentially a dismantled, upside-down one-person
skimmer to which Slade had hastily attached legs, Slade held his wiring job up,
giving it a critical glance, then went back to work on the upended guts
dangling around him.  His Pepsi bottle—now half drained of Liquid Life—sat
beside his knee.  The Super-Soaker, now filled with distilled white vinegar,
sat beside it. 

Slade had
claimed the head of the massive table that they’d shoved together from all the
restaurant seating as his own personal dominion.  The one nearest it—the one
where Stone and his duo were most likely to sit in their bid for
leadership—Slade had replaced with a jury-rigged, overturned skimmer, now
draped in fancy white tablecloth.  He and Tyson had ordered everyone out until
dinner, which their panicked kidnapees were in the process of preparing. 
Through the open door to the hallway outside, Slade could hear the rabble
waiting with growing agitation for food.

“Only five
minutes ‘til they’re allowed in,” Tyson commented.  “You gonna be done in
time?”

“Yep,” Slade
said.  “Do you have any metal pins or replacement parts?”

“Uh,” Tyson
said, tearing his attention from the door outside, “yeah, quite a few,
actually.  Hip, leg, arm, shoulder, skull…”

Slade raised his
brow at that, not really expecting as much from a rich Alabama kid.  “What’d
you do to need replacement parts—piss off a Jreet?”

Tyson’s expression
became guarded.  “Just not that great at watchin’ where I’m going, I guess.” 
He gave a much-too-casual shrug.

Slade looked his
lackey over, realized Tyson was hiding something, and then decided he could
mull over that later.  Grunting, he said, “Then you’re going to need to stand
at least eight and a half feet away from this table.”  Slade gestured out at
the wall behind the head table.  “Over there.  You’ll look more thuggish
against the wall.  Try to cross your arms.  That would be impressive.”

“You mean I’m
not having dinner?” Tyson growled.  “After you promised me steak?”

“I’ll feed you
later,” Slade said.  “We’ve gotta secure our leadership first.”

“Why the plastic
forks and spoons?” Tyson asked, glancing down the table.  “There’s
lots
of silverware in the back.”

“Because,” Slade
said, around two chunks of wire in the corner of his mouth, “I don’t want
pointy, hundred-mile-per-hour
projectiles
coming at my head while we’re
dabbling in the wonders of electromagnetic fields.  Make sense?”

“Uh.”  Tyson
scratched his head and looked again at the plasticware laid out on the row of
tables.  “Not really, no.”

“And that is why
you were only the
second
most wealthy family in Alabama,” Slade said,
slapping the last bit of electrical tape into place and climbing out from under
the ‘table’.  Dusting himself off, he said, “Okay, before we start, do you have
any other questions?”

Tyson frowned at
him.  “You mean other than what the fuck you’re doing using a skimmer for a
table?”

“That’s
self-evident,” Slade said, waving him off distractedly.  “I meant
important
questions, like what you should do in the case they start actually shooting.”

“Shoot…
you
?”
Tyson offered. 

Slade stopped
brushing off his hands and paused to frown at his underling.  “You know, as my
second-in-command, we’re going to have to work on your critical thinking.”

The big man
crossed his impressive arms over his impressive chest.  “Our first real meal
since getting sprung and you’re making me stand by and watch as you eat it with
a plastic fork?”  Tyson raised an eyebrow.  “I think that’s a shoot-worthy
offense.”