She snorted once, pulled her head out of sight. Then, a second before her foot came down, Palermo knew what she was going to do, and he leaped backward out of the way.
Her right leg crashed through the basement ceiling, and she toppled down into the far side of the room, one leg very nearly touching the basement floor, the other caught on the opposite side of a steel support beam. Her bulk tilted to one side and she fell onto her back, cracking the concrete floor, sending up chunks of it to either side of her.
Palermo and Kendul knew that the moment she got to her feet, they’d be dead – knew that this was their one and only shot. There was nowhere left to go.
They opened fire.
At this range, most of the shot found its mark. Palermo concentrated on the right leg joint; Kendul fired on the right arm joint. Adelina wailed in pain. They fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded as fast as their shaking fingers would allow.
The first limb to come off was the right arm. It dropped to the basement floor with a thud, blood and some other fluid leaking out. Kendul moved on to the left arm.
The right leg was next to go. Then both men were firing into the joint of her left arm.
Adelina thrashed around on her back, reaching her remaining hand out, madly waving it back and forth blindly. Kendul was standing too close, and one of her fingers caught his right leg, shattered the bone there. He dropped, kept firing.
The left arm finally came free, more blood pumping out. Thick and dark.
With three limbs separated from her body, Adelina went from bellowing to moaning, then whimpering. Then silence.
Kendul was leaning on his right side on the ground, shaking shells free from another box of ammo, when Palermo put a hand on his shoulder, said, “It’s done, James. No more.”
Kendul blinked, closed his eyes tight against the pain in his leg. He nodded, rolled onto his back, dropped the shotgun, breathing heavily.
Palermo stood back up, looked at the remains of what used to be his daughter.
Arms and legs the width of telephone poles.
Torso the size of a small car.
Head the size of a truck engine, tilted to one side, eyes dead.
Nothing on the body moved.
* * *
Later, when they dug out the basement and buried her there, as far as he knew, only Kendul felt the ever so faint thrum of machinery in his bones.
He didn’t know what to make of it at the time, but the feeling had stayed with him through the years. Subconscious at first, the feeling grew until it become unquestionable knowledge:
Adelina Palermo was still alive.
And the same part of him that had insisted Adelina not be stopped moments before she’d killed Sandra Beiko tore into the forefront of his mind, telling him to keep this quiet. Some diseased part of his soul that revered this abomination as a god.
N I N E T E E N
Marcton and Kendul stood on rubble in the basement where Adelina was buried. Kendul had brought a large duffle bag along, but hadn’t opened it when they’d arrived, and hadn’t told Marcton what was inside.
“She’s here?” Marcton said. “Beneath us?”
Kendul nodded, thought: And there’s that faint thrumming in my bones again, but even stronger than I remember. He still couldn’t understand how Edward hadn’t been able to feel it.
The house itself was mostly destroyed on the inside, but – quite miraculously – had stayed up the past three years. As amazing as that was, neither Marcton nor Kendul wanted to test their luck, so were fairly edgy, reacting to every creak and groan. From the outside it looked somewhat alright, but one wall had entirely come down, making it clear to any passerby that no one lived there, and likely hadn’t for years.
“So,” Marcton said. “We just start digging, do we? Then put her back together like fucking Humpty Dumpty?”
Kendul grimaced. “Something like that, yeah.”
Kendul turned, picked up one of the shovels they’d brought, stuck it into the earth, started heaving dirt and small chunks of concrete over his shoulder. Marcton followed suit. Before long, they’d uncovered an arm and part of Adelina’s torso.
“Fuck me running,” Marcton said, stopped digging, leaned on his shovel handle. “She is here.”
“Why would I lie, Marcton? What point would that have served?”
“I know, I know, it’s just… Christ. I somehow didn’t expect it to be true.”
“Let’s get some more hands in to get her out.”
“Yeah,” Marcton said, still dazed by confirmation of the discovery. “I’ll make the call.”
* * *
Three hours later, six sweating men – Kendul, Marcton, Cleve, Bill, and two random Runners – stood in a semi-circle around the two arms, one leg, and one torso-leg combination of what now constituted Adelina Palermo’s body.
“Jesus,” one of the randoms said.
“Crazy,” said the other, looked over at Kendul and Marcton. “What is this again? Some kinda robot?”
It’s you, Kendul thought. This is you. All of you. What you’d become in your purest state. He shuddered, said, “Yeah. Some kinda robot.”