Chapter Sixty-Five – Raining Fried Chicken

Chapter Sixty-Five – Raining Fried Chicken

“Right, I know you’ve got a cool gimmick going on, and it is interesting, but just because you could maybe doesn’t mean you should have… now, where exactly did you want me to slot your head?”

–Recorded discussion between Dial-up and Lag, 2049

***

The… I supposed it wasn’t technically a bomb–started to show its impact maybe a minute after it dropped. Gomorrah moved the Fury around so that we were hovering nearby, overlooking the drop-zone.

The ground below was teeming with antithesis, thousands of them squirming around and doing their thing. I saw plenty of those worm models moving about while others broke into the homes and shops lining the streets and pulled out anything biological that they could use.

The heat kept increasing, but it was a slow process.

The first signs that it was working came from the advertisements on the shops nearest the heat bomb. They fritzed out and failed, colourful screens and hovering holograms shutting off at random.

Then the paint started to peel on the cars abandoned along the road. One of them had its battery burst, and a gush of fire roared out from the bottom of the car, catching a few model threes off guard. Not that it hurt them much.

I continued to watch as the aliens around the bomb started to back away from it. A few collapsed, and one eventually caught fire, but the flames didn’t seem to last long.

The heat continued to grow. Cars started to warp, their plastic bodies melting apart. Posters stuck onto the nearest streetlamp burst into flame. A few wires snapped, and glass exploded apart. A mirage started to appear over that entire part of the city, grey reflections shifting and making it hard to see the asphalt around the bomb turning liquid.

“Damn,” I said as I continued to watch. The bomb just kept going. I could see where the heat had travelled just by following its impact. The centre, nearest the bomb, had the most damage. One of the apartments next to it lit up from within. I imagined that the furniture inside was more flammable than the concrete exterior of the building was.

A clothing store just half a block down turned into a roaring bonfire as everything within it combusted.

The antithesis ran, but they weren’t running fast enough.

The heat was a perfect tool for killing them. Slow acting enough that they didn’t seem to understand they were in danger until their eyes were melting and their flesh catching fire. Those big worms writhed on the ground, sinking into sticky asphalt. Model ones fell out of the air, wings going bright for the few seconds they burned.

And then the first building collapsed. It was right across the street from the epicentre. A big commercial place, store on the ground, offices above, lots of glass and that sort of modern minimalist design that was so popular.

Glass showered down across the city as the heat pushed on. It created an expanding ring of fire. Somehow, though, there was a circle that was following the ring where nothing burned but everything melted. I imagined that had something to do with chemicals or some scientific bullshit that I couldn’t understand.

“This is working out pretty well,” I said.

“I’m enjoying it,” Gomorrah said.

I snorted. Of course she was. The pyromaniac was probably getting off on this.

“Is the heat going to stop before it causes trouble?” I asked.

“It’s already causing plenty of trouble. And I mean that in the sense that this is probably not good for the environment. But yes, we can shut it off before it reaches the gap.”

I nodded. Then that was that. An entirely anti-climatic end to this whole ordeal. At least, it was from up in the air. I grinned as I watched the aliens scramble while melting. It must have been a whole lot different for them.

“We should head ba–” I began.

Then the Fury rocked hard to one side and I swung my arms out to keep standing while the car shifted crazily beneath me.

The car spun, losing altitude even as its engine roared to compensate. The loss didn’t last long, soon we were levelling off and even rising back up a little. I checked the skies, looking for whatever had caused that.

It wasn’t hard to find.

A huge bird was flapping its way higher, a big black thing that was covered in fine scales. A model eleven? “You okay?” I asked Gomorrah as I pulled my bullcat from the small of my back. I wasn’t sure I could nail the bird too easily, but I might be able to annoy it. I deployed my shoulder-mounted rails and let them track the alien through the air.

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“Shit,” Gomorrah said.

I braced. She wouldn’t swear for no reason.

My railguns both fired a split second before the Fury was thrown to the side. I cursed as I felt one foot come loose from the magnet holding it in place. Then I swore some more as I was left hanging perpendicular to the ground while the Fury was on its side.