'We would have made it, too, if it hadn't been for the rain-and that damned moose.
'The damned thing went right through the windshield and crushed Jeremy dead. I sat there, stuck in the shotgun seat, and watched as we spun out of control and smashed into a stand of pine trees.
'The fucking airbags saved my life.'
Lucky closed his eyes and took a moment to collect himself. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thick, stubby fingers until the screams in his head went away.
When Lucky opened his eyes again, the men were still staring at him, waiting for him to continue.
'The package shattered in the crash. All that dust. It got all over everything. Into everything.
'Everything.
'Me.'
Lucky coughed at the memory, and the men around the table all jumped.
'There's a reason most people figured I died on that day. The paramedics that showed up to save my life were killed when the damn car exploded just after they pulled me out it. The kind man who stopped to give me a ride to the nearest hospital, he blew a tire on the way out of the parking lot and died in the resultant crash.
'The hospital itself suffered a gas leak shortly after I was admitted. The blast destroyed an entire wing of the place.'
'How?' the white-haired man said. 'You-with luck like that, you should be dead a dozen times over.'
'Sure enough,' said Lucky, 'and that was just the start of it. It took me a while to twig to just what was going on. I'd taken a number of head injuries, after all. Eventually, though, I figured it out.
'The scientists had gotten it right. They'd turned that single cursed spear into uncountable millions of tiny little curses, and all the ones that hadn't gotten scattered all over the wreck had worked their way into me.
'I'd become-I am-a living curse. I'm kind of the anti-Midas. Everything I touch turns to shit.'
The men stared at the dwarf. The banker actually edged his chair away from the table.
'It's all right,' the gunman said. 'He hasn't touched any of us.'
Lucky reached over and picked up a card, then grinned. 'True enough,' he said. 'But I didn't have to.'
As he held the card up-the Queen of Hearts-the symbols on its face began to morph. Soon, he held the 2 of Spades.
'The nanites,' the white-haired man whispered.
Lucky tossed the card down on the table and rubbed the moving tattoo on his scalp. The inkiness under his skin leaped toward his touch like iron filings to a magnet.
'They get into anything I touch for more than a few seconds. And then they do the same to anything-or anyone-handling that.'
The gunman snatched up his gun again. 'This-this game's over. I'm through playing around with you, stunty.'
'Go ahead and fight it, kid,' the dwarf said. 'Give it your best shot. I've been at it for years, and I can't get it right. I'd love to see someone win.'
'No,' the white-haired man said to the gunman. 'Don't-'
The gunman pulled the trigger. The gun exploded in his hand. He fell to the ground, clutching the raw stump of his wrist for a moment before passing out from the shock.
The banker leaped to his feet, knocking over the tray of chips as he went. He took three steps away from the table before he slipped on one of those chips and went sliding into the plate-glass window that Lucky had been staring out through before. The glass gave way as if the sealants all around it had somehow rotted away, and it and the banker tipped out into the wide-open Chicago night.
The hatchet-faced man snarled like a caged animal. 'I don't believe you,' he said. 'This is all just some more of the usual metahuman propaganda you freaks propagate.'
'I went into hiding right after I became cursed,' Lucky said. 'The sorts of things that happen to the people I come into contact with, they're not pretty. I can barely stand to watch.
'For assholes like you however, I'm happy to make an exception.'
Lucky stepped onto the green felt in front of him, then beckoned the man toward him, taunting him to try to knock the dwarf from his perch. The hatchet-faced man lost his temper and lunged straight for Lucky.
The dwarf swung a meaty fist out and smashed the hatchet-faced man's nose flat. He felt the bones inside shatter and go straight back into the man's brain. The man fell to the floor with a sickening thud.
'Wouldn't your curse have taken care of him?' the white-haired man said.
'Eventually,' said Lucky. 'But who wants to wait for something like that when handling it yourself is so satisfying?'
'What about me?' the white-haired man said.
'You're already history. You were dead the moment I came into the room. Just like all the security guards you've been waiting on to show up since then.'
The white-haired man clutched as his chest as he broke out into a sick sweat. 'My heart.'
'Imagine that,' Lucky said. 'What are the chances?'
'But.' The white-haired man gasped. 'What about you? Why doesn't the curse kill you too?'
'Because,' Lucky said as the man collapsed on the table, 'that would be letting me off too easy.'
The dwarf got down from the table and strolled toward the door. As he reached it, he looked back over his shoulder at the four dead men. They'd engineered the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of metahumans. They'd have killed Lucky on the spot if they'd had an honest chance-not that he'd given them one.
They'd deserved to die, and he felt good about their deaths.
And more than a little jealous. He'd hoped one of them might have finally been able to release him from his curse. But no such luck.
He spat one last thing back at them as he left the place.
'Lucky bastards.' Expectations By Kevin Killiany
Kevin Killiany has been the husband of Valerie for three decades and the father of Alethea, Anson, and Daya for various shorter periods of time. He has written for Star Trek and Doctor Who in addition to several game universes, most notably BattleTech and Mechwarrior. When not writing Kevin has been an exceptional children's teacher, drill rig operator, high-risk intervention counselor, warehouse grunt, ESL instructor, photographer, mental health case manager and paperboy. Currently Kevin is in family preservation services, is an associate pastor of the Soul Saving Station, and is managing to fit short stories in while working on his third novel. Kevin and Valerie live in Wilmington, North Carolina.
I rolled my left hand against the sidewalk, pushing off with the edge and heel before momentum broke my fingers. Hunching my shoulder, I tucked my chin to my chest and did my best to turn the headlong dive into a semi-controlled tumble. The plascrete pavement rolled up my elbow and across my shoulders as I pulled my Colt Manhunter free.
Ice seared my knee. I saw a flash shot image of slashed slacks and a mist of blood as it swung past my face. Flechette round. Dumb luck or my suit had kept the razor slivers from shredding anything more vital than dermis and capillaries.
I ended my roll flat on my stomach in two fingers of water. Dog kept to his feet, daintily avoiding puddles, as I wrapped both hands around my Manhunter and lined up on-
Nothing.
Or more precisely, a ten-meter-high wall of absolute blackness; flat and unreflecting in the orange glow of the sodium lights.
From the layout of the buildings, the black nothing was covering-or filling-an alley. But it could have been a straight shot to the bowels of the Deep Lacuna for all my eyes could tell me.
Then the scent of the spell reached me and everything became clear. • • •
Sight is the easiest sense to fool. Folks notice smells, twitch their ears when the sound's not right, scratch where it itches, and spit out what tastes suspicious, but when it comes to sight, they pretty much run on autopilot.
Which kinda makes you wonder why Fun City spent so much time and effort making their little piece of security look like it was stuck one hundred and twenty years in the past. Don't get me wrong. I'm as fond of pink stucco as the next guy, and riding in the replica of an antique car with no roof and decorative fins was-in the argot of the illusionary period-neato.
