Shards and Ashes

on him.

He stepped right over Pannizer’s body and said, to no one in particular, “See that his family is compensated according to the policy, and take care of the cleanup.” People scrambled to see who could do his bidding first.

Not Virtue, though. She stayed right where she was, on her knees, looking up at him. Clark nodded to her. She nodded back, smiling a real and lovely smile through her tears. “We did it, sir,” she said. “Zay did it.”

“Thank you, Virtue,” he said. He still sounded calm and kind. “You’ve performed amazingly well. You have my sincere admiration for your skill, dedication, and resourcefulness. But you realize that the same qualities that made you so valuable on my way up make you a real liability now that I’m in power. Nothing personal. It’s just business.”

He nodded, and the dogsbody standing at his elbow pulled out a gun, aimed, and shot her once, in the head. She didn’t have a shield on; she’d given me hers, and I’d spent it. The noise blotted out everything for a second, and then Virtue was down, a sprawled weight across my chest. I held on to her, the way I’d wanted to before, and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. What had just happened? Virtue—Virtue was dead.

For succeeding.

“Him too,” Clark said, and the dogsbody focused his aim on me now. Oddly enough, Clark still looked kind and sad and a little regretful. “You really gave exceptional service today, Zay,” he said. “Thank you. I wish things could be different.”

“Why?” My voice sounded thin, but surprisingly normal, all things considered. “Why kill her?”

“Because she was brilliant,” he said. “And persistent. And sooner or later, she’d have realized that there were flaws in my story. I couldn’t leave someone as deadly as Virtue Hardcastle at my back.”

“So you lied,” I said. I felt distant, only partly there, but some spark kept me going despite all the blood I’d lost, all the punishment. “It was you behind the Cup Train all along. Should have shot you when I first saw you,” I said.

“Yes, you probably should have. But I cultivated Virtue, and you trusted her,” he told me. “Not your fault. You’ve served well, Zay. Both of you have. Thank you. I promise you, I’m going to do a complete ground-up reorganization in this place. You’ve made it possible for me to make things better.”

I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. Blood on my lips, Virtue dead in my arms, and I was laughing.

“Mr. Clark!” one of the Admins said urgently, and showed him a handheld. “Sir, something’s—something’s wrong.”

Clark waved the handheld away impatiently. “Fix it. That’s your job.”

“Sir, I can’t. Some kind of Company-wide blackout. Critical systems are failing, one after another. . . .” The Admin was on the verge of panic. It was real damn funny. “Sir, we’ve just lost missiles. And half the defense grid!”

They forgot about me, even Clark, and for a while there was a lot of suppressed panic, people running, shouting . . . chaos.

Virtue would have been so proud.

Something hit me across the face and startled me awake. I hadn’t even realized I’d been resting until the pain came back. The world looked watery and thin, and I knew I didn’t have very long now.

Clark was glaring at me. He looked years older now, and no longer sad or resigned. He looked enraged. “What the hell did you do? The systems are down, all of them are down! Tell me what you did!”

“Not me. Virtue. She built a fail-safe. You shot her, and you triggered the program.” I had to pause for breath, and coughed out a mouthful of salty blood. “Was supposed to be her revenge on Pannizer if he killed her to get to you. She never expected you to betray her.” I watched his face and saw the shock sinking in. “So if you’d let her live, you wouldn’t be CEO of a dying Company.” I was short of breath now, bubbling blood in my ruined lung, but I laughed anyway and spit up red, right in his face. “For a first executive decision, it sucks.”

He shot me, of course. Several times, which should have hurt but really didn’t, as if my body had just given up on transmitting the messages. I felt the choke collar engage again, but distantly. And as I slipped off into a comforting, warm darkness, the last thing I heard was him shouting for people to do something. Fix things.

But they’d already been fixed, but good.

The last thing I felt was Virtue’s body warm in my arms.

The last thought was, This is the best day I’ve ever had on the job.

Retirement came fast, but it came clean.

And that last sound, faint and sweet, was the sound of a CEO, screaming in pain, as the dogsbodies won.

Pale Rider by Nancy Holder

SHARDS, ASHES, AND a freaking carton of batteries. Inside the dusty box, there were dozens of double-A six-packs.

Dana whooped, victorious. Lowering herself to a squat on the balls of her feet, she pushed back her dreads and caressed the treasure with her flashlight beam. Then she set the flashlight on its end so that the light bounced off the ceiling, picked up one of the packs, and wiped off the dust. She turned it over, examining it for an expiration date. The printing was too faded. She grabbed the flashlight and was just about to unscrew the head so she could test a sample battery when she heard the creak of a floorboard. She wasn’t alone.

“Shit,” she whispered. As quietly as she could, she clicked off her flashlight and stuck it into the pocket of her hoodie. Then she grabbed the heavy carton and stood, listening. Her heart pounded.

Nothing. Maybe she had imagined it. Or the poor old house was settling some more.

She quietly shuffled out of the room. This was the third time in two weeks that she’d found batteries in places she and her roommates had already searched. She had just known to go inside the ramshackle house and step through the filth and the trash to what appeared to be a home office. Even though she and Jordan had been there before and had carted off anything usable. But this time, she could see the floorboards in her mind, and she’d pried them up.

In the disintegrating world, change was not usually your friend, but life had made an exception.

There was another creak, and then a growl, and something charged at her. She screamed and tore out of the room with her carton. Whatever it was, it followed her into the hall, kicking up years of dust and trash while she banged into the walls from side to side with the huge box. She kept yelling, barreling around a fallen door into pitch-black darkness.

My gun is in my other pocket, she thought.

She whirled around and tried to throw the carton at her attacker—where she thought it might be—but the box was too heavy and it just tumbled through the darkness to the floor. Stumbling backward, seeing nothing, she got the gun out of her other pocket and fired. The thing howled. Dog. Coyote. She fired a couple more shots and ran out of the house. The wooden porch gave way and she crashed downward through the rotted boards to her waist.

Bathed in amber moonlight, a mangy dog leaped out of the shadows. Dana was trapped. She let out a bellow as it launched itself at her.

It howled; then its limp body smacked against her right arm and it crumpled in a heap beside her. It didn’t move. Panting with fear, she planted her palms on either side of her body, fingertips brushing the dog’s dirty, matted fur. She pushed up and out of the hole, propelling herself to freedom as she flopped onto her front then threaded her legs free.

The dog was twitching and panting. Oh, God, rabies. Had it bitten her? With a shaking hand, she felt around for her gun, unsure when and where she’d lost it.