John Ridley: What Fire Cannot Burn

Raddatz oozed from Carlin. Puddled on the floor. His body was like that now. Hardly better than liquid. Hardly more sturdy than gelatin.

Eddi: "Fucker!"

Gone.

Before Eddi could pull the trigger of Soledad's gun Carlin jumped himself up through the roof of the house.

Up through the roof.

A rain of wood and shingles. The crumble of brick.

He was as much freak as he was normal. More. Quiet. Quiet.

Especially from Raddatz's body. Twisted up. No sound, motion. No breathing Eddi could hear.

Eddi looked up, looked at the hole in the roof. Light filling the darkness constricted her pupils. Her pupil. She held a hand against the sun. Saw nothing. Listened.

Just the quiet.

Nothing above her. No footsteps, not the creak and moan of motion.

Eddi eased for Raddatz. Newly acquired 2-D vision made her put effort into calculating proximity.

"Raddatz," she whispered, hand stretched for him. "Raddatz!" No response.

Pointless. She'd seen what Carlin had done to him. Carlin could kill freaks. Carlin had taken out an invulnerable. Snapping Raddatz, burning Raddatz amounted to clipping a nail.

"Raddatz!"

Eddi kept up a constant sweep of the place with her inherited gun. The muzzle hole a surrogate eye that was doing duty where Eddi needed the slack picked up. Part of her wanted to do some tough-talking. Wanted to go MTac macho. Faux testosterone wanted to taunt the unseen: C'mon, motherfucker! I'm right here!

But the hard-guy part of Eddi usually had a trio of MTacs backing her up. Something like a game plan to go with them. Now she was fifty percent blind. All alone.

Up the block she could hear someone praying in Spanish. She could whiff mother's milk being suckled by a newborn. And every beat of a hummingbird's wings was clear to her.

A hypersense of the world. She'd read about that in Soledad's journal. She called it a sense of death. Simpler just to call it fear.

Queer.

It was weird to Eddi. First time in a long time she could recall feeling fear and it was hunting a normal instead of a full-blown freak.

Hissing. Eddi heard hissing. Carlin's freak-faking suit? Ruptured pipes? A gas leak? Figure it out later, get out of the house befo-"

Not gas. A breath. Raddatz was breathing. Poorly, slowly. Shallow, but he was…

"Radda-"

The chaos this time delivered a hail of glass, brick and wood. Carlin busting back into the house through a wall, the frame of the structure screaming as it took the wound.

Eddi brought her gun around. Tried to. Carlin was already on her, had her. Threw her. Just a flick of his wrist. Didn't feel like hardly more than that. Geared up, it was all that was needed to manipulate Eddi's 128 pounds. Eddi took air, punched through the glass of a window. The transit pass a three-inch gash slashed into Eddi's thigh. The ground outside no more benign to her fall than the floor had been. It caught, her without kindness, with hard dirt, rocks slugging at her back and shoulders. Eddi rolled, still half blind. Now weaponless.

The earth shook. Carlin taking a leap from the house for Eddi.

Eddi clawed frantic.

The gun!

Her hand ripped at the ground, got ripped by the junk that booby-trapped the yard. The gun!

Eddi's leg got grabbed. Shin snapped. Busted tibia tore through her flesh.

She screamed. Her own body getting turned against her.

Carlin was reeling her in. She could feel the pleasure in the measure of his motions. He was going to get her. He was going to hug her. He was going to break her. He was going to kill her.

The gun…

Reality. She wouldn't find it before death was delivered.

Carlin's grip was tightening. Jasmine. Laughter. Tears. Death was coming.

A stay of execution carne leaping at Carlin. His dog. Whippings, beatings, burnings. Electrocutions for the sake of shocking something. The beast was looking for payback. The beast was serving it up with snapping jaws and tearing canines. Carlin wasn't its master anymore. There was a slave revolt. It was Juneteenth. The tortured was giving it to its tormentor.

The snarling was nearly hideous. The animal sounds… which was the dog, which was Carlin?

Eddi pulled herself, pulled her busted ankle along the ground. The gun…

The crack of electricity. The stink of burned meat. A pathetic yelp.

Carlin tossed the animal away. A toy grown tiresome to a belligerent child.

Carlin had another toy to fill his interest. Eddi. His curiosity: how to break her.

His hands on her. Back on her. digging into her. Hardly a beat skipped after killing the dog and Carlin returned to pulling Eddi for him.

Eddi wildly padding down the ground.

The gun…

Her hands-her left, fractured, but still doing work- whipping around frantic for the gun.

Technology to fight technology. If she had any chance at all of living, Eddi had to resurrect Soledad and put a bullet…

The gun?

Not the gun. Anything but the gun. She was suiciding herself by even trying for it.

Eddi's hand felt metal. A pipe. It held warmth from the sun of the day. Hot to Eddi's touch.

Heavy in her hand. It was just enough to do damage. Eddi swung it with purpose. She twisted in Carlin's grip. Her ankle gave her another injection of pain. She batted, batted at his midsection. Slugged at his ribs. Pointless. Carlin had sanctuary under his exoskeleton and Kevlar.

Eddi kept pounding. Two, three times. A fourth. The force of the hit running hand to shoulder. A major leaguer on GHB, Eddi was swinging for the fences.

Carlin's head took the strikes, recoiled. He slowed none. Under his hood, a helmet? He wasn't wearing the hood for nothing. He wouldn't be stupid enough to go after freaks naked upstairs.

He couldn't all be armored. Achilles had his heel. Carlin had some weak spot.

A blow to the shoulder, the chest, the gut, the neck, the-

A grunt from Carlin. He staggered.

The hum of batteries. He was charging up to juice Eddi.

Now. Eddi told herself: Now's the time to get macho.

"Let's go, motherfucker! C'mon, bitch! Do me like you did Soledad! Try and fucking ki-aaaah!"

Eddi's right wrist caught, then snapped twig-style. The pipe tumbled to the ground. Her brain had the natural reaction to the hurt, wanted to shut down.

Carlin pulling her close. An augmented hand on her neck. The squeeze was slow and steady. The flow of blood to Eddi's brain was dammed. For a moment she floated. Started to. Then her head throbbed like her brain was beating against the sides of the skull that was, second by second, becoming its casket.

… this is what I wanted…

Her thoughts going gray. Gray to black.

I wanted… I wanted him to kill me? I wanted…

Gray to black. Black. Just black.

I wa… wanted him to pull me close. I wanted…

A flop, a flop of her hand. A grab with her left hand. Wrist fractured, the grab would be weak. Decrepit. It had better be good 'cause it was the only one Eddi would get.

Hand to her belt. Hilt in her hand.

Deep in the black, one word slipped past her lips: "Daddy."

She brought the knife, the Hibben Bowie, out of its sheath. Drew it, thrust it in an upward arch taking aim as best her one eye, her fading vision would allow for Carlin's vulnerable throat. She felt the blade catch, jam against bone. Eddi let her body fall forward, drive her arm upward. It was all about the follow-through. Like a golf swing. Like a tennis backhand. Like a deathblow. She pushed. Eddi pushed. The blade doing battle with Carlin's cervical vertebra. The knife lost the fight. Snapped off. Remained lodged. Then again, looking at it mat way, having a piece of metal in his throat: Really, it was Carlin who was the loser.

He lost the battle.

He was losing Ms life.

He was losing it in a mist of blood that hissed from his carotid artery in a seemingly ceaseless spray.