Rage (12 page)

Missy stared in mute fury at her soaked bag. Her wallet, her shoes, her change of clothes—all were ruined.

"Sorry you can't come with us," said Jenna, sounding not at all sorry.

"Much better for you to go home and do your laundry," Trudy added.

They'd pissed on her things just to disinvite her from the ice cream hangout. They hadn't even had the courage to tell her to her face.

"Besides," said Jenna, "we wouldn't want you to bleed over all the ice cream."

Laughter, girlish and cruel, filled the locker room.

Missy clenched her fist so hard, it shook.

K
ILL THEM,
War whispered gleefully.
K
ILL THEM ALL.

She could. She could lose herself in the Red and let War out to play. She could brandish her Sword and show them all what power truly was. She could destroy them so easily.

D
O IT.

She could baptize them in blood.

D
O IT!

She could sing to them the gospel of pain.

DO IT!

Yes, she could do it. She
should
do it. With a thought, the Sword would appear in her hand and she would slaughter them all. Their bodies would crumple, lifeless, their blood spatter slick and shining, crimson petals on the locker room floor. She would turn their death into art.

Missy smiled, slowly, letting it bloom poisonously sweet as she looked first at Jenna, then at Trudy. She didn't know what they saw on her face, but Trudy paled and Jenna narrowed her eyes.

"You have something to say?" Jenna demanded.

Missy heard the girl's scorn, felt her anger. Tasted her fear. That made Missy grin wider. Jenna only
thought
she was afraid. She didn't know what terror was, not really.

Missy could teach her.

She could teach her so very much.

KILL THEM ALL!

Just before she could call her Sword and massacre her teammates, she heard a cold voice whisper:
Control.

Clinging to that word—both a command for humanity and a plea for sanity—Missy walked away. The locker room door banged shut behind her, cutting off the sound of nervous, jeering laughter.

W
EAK,
War scolded.
Y
OU'RE WEAK.
D
AMAGED SKIN, AS THE
B
LACK
R
IDER SAID.
N
OTHING MORE.

Snarling, Missy finally drew her Sword. Its weight felt so very good in her gloved hand, so very right. She thought of her steed, and Ares appeared in a burst of red, falling from the sky like a comet.

"I'm supposed to be War," she told the horse. "So let's see some war."

Ares bowed, and Missy vaulted up. Sword in one hand, reins in the other, she howled as Ares took to the sky.

Beneath them, the world trembled.

They cut a path through the sky, the Sword blazing in Missy's hand as the steed's hooves thundered like cannon fire. All who beheld the Red Rider that day thought they glimpsed a falling star, and to a person they thought of shattered glass and windswept debris, of carnage and steel. And when those people came into contact with others that day, they fought, or loved, or played with more passion than they had since they took their first bloody, newborn breaths—which, long ago, had been heralded by a slap.

Life's first lesson: life itself is violent. Happy birthday.

Melissa Miller understood violence intimately. She wanted nothing more than to share that knowledge with everyone she came across. Visions of murder twinkling darkly behind her eyes, she rode, ready to tear the world asunder.

Below, land streaked by in vicious strips of red. From the smallest flyspeck village to the largest industrialized city, emotions dotted the land like fireflies at night. Missy sensed them all and shredded them, leaving tatters of fear and fury to drift in her wake. The sleeping wrestled with nightmares; those awake blinked through red-tinted glass and gave in to their primal urges—food, fun, and fighting, all of it unrestrained. The police and EMTs would be busy well into the next day.

Missy thought it nothing more than her flexing her power. War merely liked to play with her toys.

Ares slowed, and the luminescent reds slowly gave way to solid browns stained with gold, to stubborn mountains splitting the ground in snaggletoothed grins and sun-ravaged earth pounded flat from the desert heat. Speckled through the barren stretch of land were tents—thousands and thousands of them, arranged in clusters, with some areas marked by blue plastic tarp held in place by sticks and stones.

Scattered among the tents were people, easily a quarter million of them, wearing clothing stained by dirt and sweat and sun: adults sitting in groups, squatting over dust and rocks, moving listlessly, tying down tent flaps, waiting in impossibly long lines with pans in their hands and straw hats on their heads; children playing, filled with energy fueled by youth and imagination, chatting, drawing pictures in the sand and on paper; babies on their mother's hip, little more than appendages.

Missy saw them all from her perch up on high, and she swallowed thickly, tasting dust and despair. She had envisioned guns and tanks, battles raging to blockbuster movie soundtracks. She had thought longingly of surface-to-air missiles and smart planes and nuclear bombs—long-range weapons, as powerful as they were efficient killing machines. Video game violence, with video game consequences.

She hadn't put faces to war.

T
HEY ARE ALL THE SAME,
War murmured.
T
HEY FLEE WHEN THEY HEAR THE REPORT OF GUNFIRE IN THEIR BACKYARDS, TAKING THEIR FAMILIES AND THE CLOTHING ON THEIR BACKS AS THEY RUN LIKE RATS IN THE NIGHT.

Children,
Missy thought numbly.
Babies.

War barked laughter, the
rat-a-tat
of a machine gun.
E
VEN NINE YEAR OLDS CAN THROW GRENADES.

The red steed whinnied as it spiraled down—a flying horse version of a Fasten Seatbelts sign. Missy, frowning at the desert scene, held tight to reins and Sword, and she told herself that the building nausea in her belly was due to the sudden landing. She sat atop Ares and breathed in the smell of urine and feces; the refuse was in neat piles, covered with dirt, but it wasn't enough to bury the stench. Deeper than the toilet odors were the animal aromas of thousands upon thousands of people penned in the open air, their sweat burned away by the sun's merciless heat.

Lightheaded, Missy closed her eyes. That didn't stop the smells, or the sounds of conversation so low and so widespread that they were little more than the buzzing of words, competing with the actual buzzing of flies that riddled the makeshift campground. She heard stray snatches of children's laughter caught in the hot, hot wind. Beyond that, faintly, the inconsistent popping of gunplay echoed in the mountains.

A child's delighted screech made her open her eyes, and she saw a boy—or maybe a girl—kick a ball with a bare, filthy foot. He might have been three years old, and he toddled over the flat expanse of dirt and rocks as he kicked that ball, and he bubbled laughter.

Missy watched the tiny soccer player and her eyes burned. "What is this?" she whispered.

T
HEIR GOVERNMENT FIGHTS INSURGENT REBELS,
War told her.

"Why are they fighting?"

R
ELIGION.
P
OLITICS.
G
IVE IT THE NAME YOU WISH, BUT IN THE END, IT'S ALL ABOUT CONTROL.
I
T'S ALWAYS ABOUT CONTROL.

Missy thought she heard Death chuckle, but he was nowhere to be seen. "These people aren't fighters," she said, watching the little boy kick the soccer ball.

R
EFUGEES,
War sneered.
D
ISPLACED WHEN THE INSURGENTS FLOODED THEIR VILLAGES AND THEIR GOVERNMENT RETALIATED WITH BOMBS DROPPED FROM PLANES.
T
HE SKIES BELONG TO THEIR LEADERS, BUT THE MOUNTAINS BELONG TO THE REBELS.
A
ND THE GROUND BELONGS TO WHOEVER CAN HOLD IT.
R
EFUGEES MAKE WONDERFUL SHIELDS.

"Stop it," Missy gritted.

S
TOP?
W
HY?
T
HIS IS WHAT PEOPLE DO.
T
HEY FIGHT ONE ANOTHER.
T
HEY DESTROY ONE ANOTHER.
T
HEY WANT WHAT OTHERS HAVE, AND THEY TAKE IT.

Missy thought of Adam, of his casual lies and choreographed betrayal. She felt his hands on her body, heard the cruel glee in his voice as he called her a freak. "That doesn't make it right."

Death's voice, coldly serene:
War is in your nature.

Ares nickered, perhaps to remind Missy that she was War and thus she had a job to do. Or maybe the red horse just wanted her to get off its back.

Missy sheathed the Sword and slid off of the warhorse, landing on shaky legs. Her cleats bit into the ground, and she slowly found her balance.

Balance,
Famine had said to her, smooth as melted chocolate.
And where will you choose to plant your feet, girl?

A shudder worked through Missy, and she shoved her emotions into the glass jar of her heart. Then she took a deep breath.
I wanted this,
she told herself.
I accepted the Sword.
"Where is this place?"

War told her.

"But..." Missy's voice trailed off. She hadn't heard about this particular war, or conflict, or years-long battle, or whatever it was—not in school, not at home, not on television.

M
EDIA BLACKOUT,
War said with a verbal shrug.
R
EPORTERS ARE BANNED FROM THE WARZONES.

Even if this particular war were televised for one's dinner entertainment, Missy thought bitterly as she watched the toddler chase after the ball, she wouldn't have known about it. She wasn't exactly concerned with the events of the world. Missy didn't sign up to save the rainforests, or volunteer to clean up the park, or work in a soup kitchen. She was a sixteen-year-old high school junior, overscheduled and underappreciated and barely able to tread water without feeling like she was about to drown.

She thought of razors and bloody towels, and her breath hitched in her throat.

A group of children rushed past Missy, either playing tag or just running for the simple joy of feeling their bodies move. The adults nearest Missy were talking in hushed voices, in a language she didn't know and yet understood completely. They were speaking of the dwindling supplies.

M
ORE REFUGEES COME EVERY DAY,
War commented idly.
T
WO HUNDRED OF THEM, EVERY DAY

Missy watched the children play. "What happens when the supplies run out?"

T
HAT IS NOT MY CONCERN.
L
ET
F
AMINE HAVE THEM.

A crack ran along the side of the glass jar. "Don't you care?"

W
HY SHOULD
I? T
HE
B
LACK
R
IDER GETS THEM ANYWAY,
said War.
O
R POSSIBLY THE
W
HITE.
I
T'S ALL THE SAME TO ME.

The glass jar shattered, and Missy sank to the rocky ground, dizzy and heartsick and disgusted. Near her, a group of children began to argue over who got to sleep on their one mattress that night. Another child stole the toddler's soccer ball, leaving the little boy to wail.

"You'll let them all suffer," she cried, "even the babies—and for what? What possible reason could you have to hurt them so much?"

I
DO NOTHING LESS THAN EXPECTED,
War said.
A
ND YOU PEOPLE EXPECT SO VERY MUCH FROM YOUR PAIN.
Y
OU DEMAND SALVATION EVEN AS YOU STEAL FROM THE COLLECTION PLATE.

Tears gleamed in Missy's eyes. "No."

Y
OU SEND FOOD AND SUPPLIES TO THE REFUGEES, AND THEN YOU DON'T ALLOW THE DELIVERY TRUCKS THROUGH THE WARZONES.
T
HE FOOD WILL SPOIL, THE SUPPLIES WILL BE SOLD BY THE VICTORS.
T
HE CIVILIANS WILL STARVE, AND SICKEN, AND EVENTUALLY DIE.

War's proclamation settled in to Missy's bones. "That's not true," she insisted, hugging herself tightly and rocking on the desert floor.

I
T IS THE WAY OF THINGS.
T
HEY WILL ALL DIE, WHETHER FROM THE BRUTAL SAVAGERY THAT IS UNIQUE TO
M
AN OR FROM THE ABUNDANCE OF DISEASE OR FROM THE SCARCITY OF SUSTENANCE.
War's voice was the murmur of sweet nothings, the heated promise of true love.
T
HEY WILL ALL DIE.
A
T LEAST MY WAY, THEY DIE WITH A PURPOSE.

Missy saw the destruction of the world in neon flashes, burning the backs of her eyes—the end of everything by fire and by ice, by human hand and by nature, by degrees and by one cataclysmic instant that brought the universe itself to its knees. She shook her head as each vision seared her, denying what she saw. "Stop it," she said, her throat raw.

T
HEY DIE, AND THEN THEY GO TO THE
P
ALE
R
IDER.
A thoughtful pause, and then War said,
A
S DO WE ALL, IN THE END.

Missy shouted, "Stop it!"

D
EATH'S ARMS WILL BE THE LAST ONES WE FEEL AROUND US,
HOLDING US CLOSE.
H
IS KISS WILL BE THE LAST UPON OUR LIPS.
O
UR BREATH WILL BECOME HIS AS WE GIVE OURSELVES TO HIM.

Missy clutched her hands to her ears and screamed, "STOP IT!"

W
AR IS THE HERALD OF
D
EATH.
H
E IS OUR GOD.
A
ND YOU ARE HIS HANDMAIDEN,
M
ELISSA
M
ILLER.

Missy climbed to her feet and unsheathed the Sword, a snarl stretching her lips in a parody of a grin. With a defiant cry, she hurled the weapon as far as she could. It arced high in the air, spinning merrily and winking in the desert sun before it disappeared in the mountains. Next to her, Ares snorted, but whether that was due to surprise, amusement, or the dusty air was impossible to know.