Gods in the Machine by Jeremy Thomas Fuller

Author:Jeremy Thomas Fuller [Fuller, Jeremy Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Starmist Entertainment
Published: 2018-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

“Out of the way,” a female voice ordered, and the man with the knife was suddenly swept aside. He was replaced by a woman dressed all in red leather with long, red hair, carrying a bow and a quiver full of arrows. She looked at me with flashing blue eyes, beautiful lips quirked in a frown.

She reminded me of that girl I’d liked in college.

That was when I realized just how stupid I looked, standing there with sunglasses and an iron pan.

“Dad!” Missy shouted over the radio. “The train is almost there! We have to do something!”

“Little bit busy,” I said, gritting my teeth. This strange red woman was really super hot, but it looked like she really super wanted to kill me.

Apparently there was a line for this sort of thing.

“Hi,” I said to her, brandishing my cast iron pan. I’m sure it was very threatening, what with my muscles and all.

Please stop laughing. You’re distracting from the story.

“Who are you, exactly?” I asked. Might as well get the pleasantries handled first.

“Tara,” the woman in red said. “You seem to be in the way.”

“In the way of what?” I held the pan higher.

“The harvest of New York City.”

Realization dawned. “The bomb. You think it’s a harvest?” I remembered something, then. Something April had said in the bedroom a year ago. She’d been talking to thin air, talking to someone named Ra. I recognized that name—it was an ancient Egyptian god.

Ra was probably a Deus.

She’d made mention of harvesting, back then. I hadn’t really remembered it, but hearing it from Tara’s lips made it all come back.

Tara was staring at me. And she was really incredibly hot. “You have no idea how the world works,” she said to me, drawing an arrow and fitting it to her bow. “You think everything is powered by electricity, or nuclear energy, or coal. You think you understand what’s inside your machines.”

“Honestly, I don’t,” I said. “I’m not a scientist. I don’t even know how computers work.”

Tara sneered, pulling her bowstring back. “There are gods inside your machines, Bitteric,” she said, her tone snide. “And when those gods die, so does life as you know it.”

She released the arrow.

And it hit me in the face.

I’m just kidding. Actually, I managed to do the impossible: I moved the cast iron pan just fast enough to block the thing. It clattered off the iron, falling to the floor of the speeding subway train.

“Nice try,” I said, but she already had another arrow on her bow.

That one did hit me. In the leg.

“Ow,” I said, understating it a bit. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

Also, why had she aimed for my leg?

“You’re in the way, Bitteric. Now kindly step aside, or the next arrow will hit something that counts.”

I tried to step aside. The only problem was, I had an arrow in my leg. So it didn’t exactly do as I intended it to do—instead it collapsed, and I fell to the floor of the train.

Rats swarmed all over me as I did.

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