Page 5 - The Daily Builder - Day 11

i don’t drink anyMorE

reaper’s scythe to knock the other His eyes went wide as he whispered from above: a shard of there. Krüger was like a child The super-soldier puffed out
monkey’s feet out from under, realized: Amanda had the khanjar earth tumbled and shattered. The catching snowflakes. He laughed. his chest, snapping the metal bar
letting go as she completed the knife with its camel bone handle bodies of the robot soldiers lay Then: a tap-shuffle-slide over holding him in place. The cyborg
By Chuck move so they both bowled into against Kebir’s manhood. Kebir half-buried. to his wall of super-soldiers. Nine screamed, a metallic wail—
Wendig one another. They crashed into sighs. The whole place was coming of them. Each a Frankenstein Amanda put a bullet in his eye.
She stands outside the the corner of the courtyard, “…Delacroix is beneath down. All the trip-wires and stitching of flesh, plastic, and The cyborg fell like a stack of
brownstone under sodium light. knocking over a terracotta pot of Benhaddou.” trigger stones. Leading to this. metal. Krüger grabbed the jaw teacups.
The bruises have begun to fade. reedy Cyperus papyrus. The pair * * * But she wasn’t going to think of one, yanking it downward. He Krüger looked crushed.
The cuts – on her lips and chin, of gangly primates clambered “It looks… old,” Jack says. He about that now. squeezed the eyedropper’s bulb “Sorry,” she told him, then kicked
across her brow, on her hands atop one another, hissing, and in doesn’t take the case. Her arms “Who?” she asked. “Who.” and dropped a liquid dot in his him in the face.
– have long-crusted over. She’s the deep of their throats she saw tremble. “Krüger! I sold it to Krüger.” mouth. * * *
going to have the limp for a while, the winking red light. “It’s not just old. It’s rare.” She He wept. It gave her pause, this Slowly, the cyborg’s eyes “I don’t drink anymore,” Jack
but oh well. “What is it you want?” Kebir smiles. “Rarest of the rare. Like grown man crying so. It was all opened and focused. The super- says, retreating a step.
The case in her hands is heavy. said, stroking the fennec fox that you. Like us.” he needed. His pudgy hand shot soldier shifted in his bonds. “No, wait,” she says, laughing
But worth it. Because it’s her way stood on his bony left shoulder * * * out, grabbing a fistful of sand and Krüger sashayed to the next in because this suddenly seems so
back in. the way an angel might perch on a She had Delacroix by his wife- throwing it in her eyes. Amanda line, whistling. absurd. “This is Shackleton’s
Jack answers the door. Is he pin. The gun in his hand pointed beater, her knee in his pumpkin toppled from his prodigious body, But he didn’t make it. The butt Scotch. Lost. Preserved in the
happy to see her? Or just puzzled? at her heart. gut, his blubbering head held over her vision watery, blinking away of a rifle cracked him in the back Antarctic ice for 100 years.
“Amanda,” he says. “I want Delacroix,” she said. a yawning chasm. Beneath him, the stinging sand-born tears, and of the head. Nobody else is going to taste this.
“I know you love Scotch,” is Kebir crossed the space giant stone gears boomed and by the time she could again see, He looked up from the ground. Nobody but you and me.” She
the first thing to come out of her between them. He pressed the growled as they turned. Stones Delacroix was ducking down a Amanda eased the mouth of the feels her heart sink. “You love
mouth even though she hasn’t gun between her breasts. from beneath him tumbled into hidden side-passage, the wall .30-30 against his thrust. Scotch.”
seen him for years, and she “But you don’t know where he the abyss, swiftly pulverized by closing fast behind him. “You look like hell,” Krüger The door opens behind him.
thrusts the case up and hopes he’ll is.” the hungry cogs. It didn’t matter. She had a said. A little girl no older than three
take it. “This isn’t just Scotch, “I know he’s here. In Tangiers.” “You know what I want!” she name. And it explained so much. She did. Split lip. Blood from runs out—all pigtails and footy
though, this is the real deal, a, Kebir smiled. His gums were yelled over the din. The monkeys. The robots. a forehead gash. Worse, she pajamas and freckle-cheeks—
a, a really rare…” She’s nervous. puckered and pulled away from “I don’t have it! I told you! * * * still had the limp from escaping and hugs his leg. “Daddy, Daddy,
She shouldn’t be nervous. Given the teeth. “If only I would tell you Please.” He wasn’t taking it. She didn’t the collapsing tomb beneath story-time!”
everything. But she imagines where.” Behind them, streams of sand understand. Aït Benhaddou. Krüger’s tower “It really has been a long time,”
the kiss—their first in a long “It’s really been a long time,” defenses were top-notch. he says again, and she’s not sure if
time, the first since everything he says. He looks then over his “I’m taking Shackleton’s it’s an apology or an explanation
happened.“I went through a lot to shoulder. What is he looking for? Scotch,” she said. or what. But then he retreats
get it for you.” She imagines making love to him “Without it, how will I fuel my another step, and another, and he
* * * again. How sweet it will be. beautiful babies?” and the little girl go back inside
The spider monkey screamed * * * She shrugged. “You won’t. I and the door closes with a gentle,
and kicked her in the face, Krüger danced around the room need it for someone.” hesitant click.
sending up a spray of sweat. with the eyedropper, pirouetting “Do I see love in your eye?” “I love you,” Amanda says to
Another leapt onto her back, this way, waltzing that way. He That old romantic. “You do.” the door. She leaves the case on
hooting and shrieking. tilted his handsome head back, “Then you may have it.” He the steps.
Amanda grabbed the one extending his tongue, and then laughed, but then suddenly
from behind, used him like a
placed a drop of amber liquid yelled: “Kill her!”

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