Bernie spits to the ground. “Go to hell.”
“Been there, done that.” Jude drags his knife over the man’s dirty shirt before finishing its course over his dick. I know that move, too. “Bernie, there’s no need to make this more unpleasant than it needs to be. I just want to know who your new dictator is and where Marika is. It’s nothing worth losing your life over.”
“And then what? You gut me like a pig?”
“No. I won’t kill you, I promise,” Jude says.
Half-truth, and we all know it. But our friend Bernie doesn’t have much of a choice. Not as he’s shackled to theFirefly.
He sighs. “Maeve is our new master. She’s a mutant that came from the east. She’s powerful.”
“How powerful?”
“She’s strong. Really strong.”
“Okay. Very useful, Bernie,” says Jude. “What about Marika?”
“She lives in the north-west tower, like a queen. She’s the one who manages the electronic repairs around the dam. Maeve wants it to produce electricity once again and build a great city around it. We’ve been gathering supplies for a month.”
“As if that ever works…” Jude grumbles, looking up at me.
I close my eyes to refrain from punching him. My underground city might have thrived if not for Helios and his devil’s intervention.
“Let me go now,” says Bernie. “I answered your questions. For the love we shared for your parents, let me go.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Jude slowly rises and turns to me.
“Do you mind?” he asks me.
“It would be my pleasure,” I say.
Bernie pulls on his chains, the acrid smell of his fear overpowering the air surrounding us. I grab him by the throat and unleash a strong electric charge. His muscles lock up, and his eyes roll in their orbits before outright melting. The Litchenberg figures spread over his arms and face, smoking, then catching fire. And only then do I let go. He’s not coming back from that.
I expect Jude to throw up. Most people do the first time they witness the way I kill when I’m angry. When I ended his brother Malcolm, I just shocked him enough to stop his heart. But this… this is something else. I’ve been told that the smell is the worst part. Humans smell good when cooked. Like pork. And it’s knowledge most people prefer to live without. Especially with the rumors of cannibalism in the wastelands.
At least, I expect Jude to back away from me. But he doesn’t. There’s a satisfied smile on his face as he says to the dead man, “That’s for the love we shared for my parents. My love might have been ungrateful, but yours was weak.”
We throw Bernie’s still-smoking corpse into the Colorado. It’ll be taken down the river, and no one will be wiser.
We fly back to the Hoover Dam and once again hide theFireflyin the canyon. We wait for the early hours before sunrise to walk to the dam. There are no guards on the road. No patrols around the massive structure. The mutant—Maeve—isn’t expecting enemies to sneak in. Or she might be overconfident that no one poses a real threat to her and her new empire. We do meet two men on the first west tower, on their way back to bed. We take them by surprise and drop their bodies in the river, too. Jude has no mercy for theHighwaymen. I don’t blame him.
We reach the north-west tower fairly easily. The door isn’t even locked. But as we enter quietly, we find a small woman sitting on the bed with a gun aimed at us.
“Chill out, Marika. It’s me,” says Jude.
“Jude? What the fuck?”
She lowers her gun and reaches for a solar lamp. The yellow glow lights up the room, revealing the small Asian woman on the bed. Marika is over fifty, judging by her graying hair cut in a short bob.
She stares at Jude, then at me. Her eyes grow wide as she surveys me.
“You…” she says.
“Him?” Jude asks. “You know him?”
She shakes her head. “Not personally. But I’ve seen pictures and videos… You’re a mutant. The one from the Sierra Nevada.”
I knew videos of me and what I can do have been traveling through the wastelands. It only makes sense that theHighwaymenhacker knows about me.
