I’m not— #13
Judas performed all the important weddings and funerals, from presidents’ services on down.
No one knew what his real name was or where he lived.
People just put out the word that the priest was needed and he showed up, drank a bottle of moonshine as payment, and performed the necessary ceremony.
Some people said he looked like Jesus with his lean face, long hair, and beard, but he smelled like a corn mash still, and his suit, which might have once been dark gray, may have never been washed.
I stayed in the back so no one would see my tears. Bloody hell. I had tears.
Judas said all the right words for a biker’s wedding, though the future Old Lady threatened to slap him if he tried to make her say she would obey Amos. Amos said she was smarter than he was anyway and he’d just agree to obey her, and so Cupcake settled down.
“I now pronounce you Amos and Old Lady Cupcake.”
The party started.
Jagger still hadn’t come. Hadn’t sent word. Asshole. I went to my office and stripped, pulled on a blue denim skirt that swirled when I moved, and a club T-shirt, with soft-soled shoes. I thought about checking on the multilarval phase of PopPop but decided to dance instead.
And that was how Jagger found me, two-stepping with Enrico who was confused by modern dancing and kept trying to get me to learn some formal dance from the middle-ages.
Jagger cut in and took both of my hands, pulled them behind my back, and held me against him as gently as if I had been a baby. He led me into a slow two-step, his chin nuzzling my forehead.
The party—my party—started for real.
I danced the night away and left the bar at four a.m. for Jolene to close up, not feeling the least bit evil for dumping cleaning on her.
I took my man back to my bed. Jagger admitted he could only stay two days before he had to go clean up a mess in DC.
I figured it was Dark Rider / Dragon Fist mess, but he didn’t say and I didn’t ask.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said, his mouth and rough five-o’clock beard against my face. “Not yet. But soon. And then forever.”
“Words mean jack shit, Asshole,” I said. “And besides, the world might end tomorrow. Or the Bugs might come back,” I added thinking about the wet ceiling below deck. “All we really have is now.” I pulled him to me and tried to forget about the shit show Earth was these days.
Two days later, Jagger left without a word.
I was washing a load of dishes, my hands in warm sudsy water, when I heard his bike start up.
I knew he was leaving; I could have run out front to see him off.
But if he had wanted to kiss me goodbye he could have come into the kitchen too. He hadn’t. Asshole.
As his bike pulled out, I walked slowly to the open front door, listening to his One Rider Harley until it was only a soft putter on the morning breeze. “Asshole,” I said.
Overhead, on the roadhouse speakers, an alarm went off. I jerked, my stomach hurling itself into my throat.
“Code Red, Urgent Care. Code Red Urgent Care. Code Red Urgent Care—”
“Shut that thing off,” I yelled to Jolene, as I sprinted through the roadhouse, the kitchen, and out back. And into the UC.
Chaos hit my eyes. Cats everywhere, leaping, screaming, fighting.
Jumping onto the medbays and clawing the impregnable surfaces.
Inside the medbays, the humans were waking up.
So were the cats that had been inside with them.
There was activity, motion, beneath the clear medbay surfaces.
I was headed to Mina’s medbay but my attention was caught at the trespasser’s when his lid opened.
At a glance, I saw a human body with a metal—
My feet skidded to a stop. The trespasser was cleanly shaven from his toes to the metal that encased, or maybe replaced, his skull.
It was the same lustrous black metal Jolen’s avatar bot-body was made of.
To the side of the crown of his head was a bump.
An input port. With a small black line that disengaged as I watched.
Jolene had experimented on a human. Or CAIT had.
The cat who had been curled around his head rolled, stretched, and climbed to the man’s chest where it stretched more, as if it hadn’t moved in days. Jethro. The black cat yawned, making biscuits on the man’s tattooed chest.
I ignored the cat because the man opened his eyes.
I waited. He didn’t look my way. Didn’t move except to breathe and blink, his gaze unfocused and empty.
Mina’s medbay began to open. I skidded to it, trying to find my balance, body and feet out of position. I rotated, still moving, just as she woke. She focused on me, bared her fangs, and leaped at me, faster than human. Cat fast. Fighting mad. Claws extended.
My nanos reacted. Using my coiled body position as a spring, I balled a fist and unleased my energy and momentum. I hit her. Broke her fangs. Knocked her out. She slumped.
The ruddy cat leaped on me, furious. I’d have clocked her too, but Spy intercepted the jump. The two cats went down in a wild tangle of claws and fangs and yowling. Scrappy raced away. Spy hissed victory, her back high and tail hair spread. The medbay closed and Spy leaped to my shoulders.
“CAIT,” Jolene said over the speakers. “What the ever lovin’ hell have you done, girl?”
CAIT said. “This system has now fulfilled part one of its secondary protocol.”
“CAIT— Can you . . .” I stopped, trying to figure out how to get the information I needed. “CAIT, tell me the name, the title, of this protocol.”
“That falls within my non-classified parameters. My orders are: Enemy Reeducation and Reconstruction.”
“Who . . .” I stopped. I wanted to know who had assigned CAIT this order. And how turning Mina into a half-human, half-cat fit into the US wartime protocols. “Jolene,” I said instead. “Is it possible that CAIT has a . . . glitch?”
As the last syllable left my mouth, the medbays went dark. The lights went out. The entire electronics went black, as if offline. From a single speaker overhead, Jolene said, “I’m on it, Shining Sugah. Gimme a few.”
A few what, I didn’t know. I shook my head. Spy on my shoulder, I walked through the dark and opened the UC door to let the cats out. Not knowing what else to do, I trudged back to the kitchen and took my usual seat at the bar. I held my head in my hands.
Spy stepped from my shoulders to the counter and I didn’t bother correcting her.
Overhead, the lights flickered. Music came on, some kind of military march. As quickly as it came on, it stopped, and Jolene’s signature song came on. It too stopped, leaving me sitting in the dim light and silence.
“What the sodding . . .” I stopped. Sitting there. Head in hands, eyes closed. Thinking. Mina was part cat. CAIT might be insane. Jolene and she were fighting for control and Jolene might lose. Nice girls often did.
If Jolene died, I’d have to kill CAIT. If I even could, before she initiated some pre-programmed self-destruct sequence. The roadhouse could just blow the hell up. A crater in the ground.
I’d have to kill Mina. If I could. Either way, her father would kill me, because . . . She was a cat. Because of me, the biker clubs could go to war. Everything I had done would be for nothing.
Did I have to kill the last Bug on Earth, too? The multilarval PopPop, or whatever it would be called, could wake up and destroy the Earth. I mean, why not. My day was already bad enough to consider the possibility of the annihilation of the entire world.
An icy Coke slid to the counter under my face, bubbles still rising and springing on my skin like icy sparklers. I opened my eyes and sat up. Drank down the Coke. “Thanks, Cupcake.” I focused on her, and she was all glowy and happy and her blue eyes sparkled.
I scowled at her. “Why are you in the roadhouse and not still on your honeymoon?”
“I came back early.”
A cold chill took me. I looked away from her, my nanobots beginning to roil. She looked happy, but my nanobots were . . . Something was wrong. It was bad. It was really, really bad.
I couldn’t look at her, horror dawning inside me. Fear. “Are you getting a divorce? Oh no. Sodding hell. Did you kill Amos?”
She laughed, took my face in her hands, and turned me so our eyes would meet again. “Shining. I’m pregnant.”
“You’re—” I jumped from my chair to the floor, landing a meter away. Looked her over head to toe. I hadn’t seen a pregnant woman in years. They were supposed to have big bellies.
“Pregnant,” she repeated. “Amos and me are having a baby.”
I burst out laughing, a crazy, unhinged, irrational cackle. I backed away further as Cupcake’s face became confused, then utterly bewildered. Her nanos were upset, panicking, thinking she had displeased her queen. I laughed until tears ran down my face.
“Shining . . . I’m sorry—”
I was suddenly holding my best friend in a hug, rocking her back and forth. The chair that had been between us hit the floor with a clatter.
What the bloody sodding hell was I going to do with a psychotic cat-woman-killer, an AI with secret orders (or a glitch) that could kill us all, a man who showed up and left on his own secret schedule that never included my input, and a . . .
As quickly as it started the laughter and tears were gone. “A baby?”
“Yes.”
“A baby. A real baby?” I asked.
“A real baby.” She hugged me back.
We started rocking together, as if we already were rocking the baby between us, a two-person rocking chair.
My nanobots weren’t reacting in horror. They were full of . . .
Bloody sodding joy.
That should have scared me more than anything else.
Except, the kitchen door opened. Out of the chill air, a naked woman walked in, black hair standing out in spikes. “I’m hungry,” Mina said. She focused on Cupcake and me, hugging. And she hissed, showing broken fangs from when I’d punched her.
I tucked my best friend in the world behind me and pointed to a chair. “Mina. Sit.” To Jolene, I said, “Jolene, getchur ass in here and feed Mina.”
Mina climbed into a chair and picked up a fork, looking around for something to eat.
“Mina, food is coming.”
“Good,” she said. “My cat offered me a rat, but it tasted awful.”
Cupcake gagged.
Amos lumbered in through the roadhouse’s front doors. “What the hell is going on in here? Why’s she naked? Cupcake?”
* * *
Once upon a time, not that long ago, I had wondered what cats might do if they had opposable thumbs.
What the Bugs would do if they discovered their ship and PopPop.
What being part of meeting a living alien face to face .
. . or whatever aliens’ had, might be like. I feared I was going to find out.
THE END