Kill Switch: Chapter 37

The Good Stuff

After we go over the plan, Orson eases over to a vinyl player, slips on a record, and the sound of horns fills the cabin.

“Miles Davis, baby,” he says, shaking his hips. “This is the good stuff.”

I sit on the couch, tapping my foot to the beat. Yide is beside me, her skeletal leg rubbing against mine. Orson pours some kind of clear liquid into four plastic cups. He hands each of us a cup.

“To new beginnings,” he says, raising his cup in the air.

We clink plastic.

I glance inside the cup. “What is it?”

“Vodka,” Orson says. “It’s what people used to drink before xTonic monopolized the alcohol market.”

xTonic. I haven’t had xTonic for at least a week. Don’t mind if I do.

The first drink stings the back of my throat. I cough.

Yide laughs, slapping me on the back.

“Not quite as smooth as xTonic,” Orson says, “ but I think you’ll like the result.”

He fills my cup again and makes a gesture with his hand.

“Drink up,” he says. “For tomorrow, we die.”

Bunnfield straightens his back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Orson grins, shaking his hips again. “Oh, it’s just an expression. After all, these are uncertain times, no?”

As if on cue, a bomb thunders in the distance, shaking the window.

“Come, come,” Orson says. “Let’s dance. I haven’t had a dance party in a long, long time.” He offers his hand to Yide, who takes it.

Orson swings her around the room. I laugh. The way Yide moves, so smooth and graceful, fills me with a joy that I’ve never known before, and I realize that I prefer the way she looks without an avatar; in fact, I prefer everything about her when she’s unGlassed: her voice, her smile, her eyes.

Bunnfield stands and starts shaking his hips, moving around the cluttered room, and I do the same, letting the syncopated music move my body. I drink some more vodka. The liquid warms me, and by the time the second tune hits, I’m in desperate need of a toilet.

I step outside. At this height, above all the smog, the stars shine bright. The crescent moon is silver. I walk through the wet grass, weaving in and out of the scattered generators, but before I can even make it to the outhouse, I have to unzip my fly and let it all spray out on a concrete slab. It’s disconcerting, how clear my urine is. I’m used to a yellowish-brown hue. I wonder if something is wrong with me. I zip up and start back to the cabin. Then I hear something, a swishing in the grass, and my stomach drops. I crouch behind a generator. Who is it? A bot? A soldier? A ferocious animal? My heart beats wildly against my chest. My vision spins.

A voice says my name.

My nerves settle.

It’s Yide.

I straighten up. She’s walking toward me, about four generators away.

“Is it normal,” I ask, “to have clear urine? Because I just…”

She’s moving quickly, with purpose, and she reaches me in a few seconds.

“Shut up, Vonn,” she says, grabbing my face.

Her tongue, the real one, slips into my mouth, and it’s a sensation that’s at once strange and familiar. A jolt of electricity surges through my bones. There’s an immediacy, an intimacy, that I’ve never felt before, and we pull each other to the ground and roll into a tall swath of grass.

Her fingers grasp at the buttons on my robe. She works her way down, one by one, and then I do the same to her, and our robes drop to the ground. We stand there for a moment, unsure what to do next.

She looks away. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“They’re not, you know, as big as a sex suit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t make me say it. I’m already embarrassed.”

“Well,” I say, looking down, “if you’re worried about size, I can’t say I have much to offer in that arena. Oh, and for the record, mine doesn’t vibrate either.”

Yide laughs, nestling her face into my neck. “You’re perfect,” she says.

And we sink into each other as the stars blink above our heads, and the earth and the wind and the salt of her skin mixes into a fragrance that smells like nothing Juicy Perfumes has ever produced, and I wish I could bottle it all up, this entire moment, and give it away for free.

We break apart, fall back into the wet grass, exhausted, our hearts beating and our chests heaving, and for once in my life, everything feels right.

“I love it here,” Yide says. “Let’s stay forever.”

I hold her hand. “We’ll build our own cabin. We’ll have real babies. We’ll live like the olden times, with real cows and goats and, like, plants and shit, and every night we’ll come outside and make love. What do you think?”

“The real thing is way better.”

“Yes.”

“Vonn, I’m glad we came.”

“Me too,” I say.

She squeezes my hand, rolls over, kisses me on the cheek.

And that’s when I hear it, the crunching of boots on the hill.

I sit up, crook my neck.

And that’s when the bullets start flying.