Ice Cream and Venom by Kevin Long Read Free Book Online Page A

truth here, but they don't realize it. Hivemind looks at me in annoyance.
    "Get that helmet off him," he says. It won't come off, though they try of course. Presently Demiurge hits on the idea of having the others torture me until I take it off. They break my hands, a finger at a time, poke holes in me with their own steel-like fingers. I hold out as long as I can, but of course I give in. Probably I only lasted for a few minutes, but it felt like it went on forever.
    Hivemind squints at me as he reads my mind. "Mars is still attached to Earth?" He says, incredulously.
    * * *
    "Mars is still attached to Earth?" I say, incredulously.
    "Yeah. Wherever they put it, there's still a physical connection via the hyperspace bridge. One end of it is on Marsdome One, the other end is at the NASA center in Atlanta," Blacknight explains.
    "But the city's destroyed, there's no power," I say.
    "The bridge facility was underground and blast proof, the power comes from the Martian end. Oh, God, I hurt," he says. He's dying.
    "So it should still be working?" I ask.
    "I haven't got much time left here," he says, "Please try to be a little smarter. Your purpose..."
    "...Is to distract them in to thinking I'm going to the CDC while the refugees make it through the MARTA tunnels to the old NASA facility."
    "Yes," he whispers, then looks around himself, "Is this a psychiatrists office?"
    "Yeah," I say. He laughs.
    "Oh, God, that's funny." He winces, his eyes are cloudy.
    "I'm scared all the time," he says.
    "I'm here," I say, and take his shattered hand in mine gently.
    "I'm scared all the time, but this is much worse," he says.
    "I'm here, I'm not leaving," I say.
    "I wasn't going to go to Mars with you," he says, wheezing.
    "I know," I lie. It's news to me.
    "No room for heroes in the new world, just plain folk."
    "For the best, I agree, but David," I say, "You're plain folk," I say, "You're not like them."
    He smiles at this. He tries to say something, but I can't make it out. I put my ear right up against his lips, and even then it's like he's whispering in another room.
    "Thanks. You're. Not. So. Bad. Yourself. For. A. Breeder."
    He kisses me gently on the earlobe, and then he's gone.
    I clean up the body as best I can, and leave.
    * * *
    "Mars is still attached to Earth?" Hivemind says again, less incredulously, and more angrily. I'm too weak and beaten up to move. As if on cue there's an explosion in the distance, and a building down town starts belching smoke and flame. Real flame, not that sickly Eldritch crap. I quickly feel him walking through my memories. I notice, awkwardly, that I've got a raging erection, no doubt from the overabundance of pheromones wafting around in the present of ten or twenty superheroes around me.
    "He gave them explosives, and told them how to set them to go off after the Bridge had sent them to Mars. These will have destroyed our end of the bridge. The planet is now completely cut off to us. We cannot get there, and the explosions mean they must have gotten away."
    "You lose," I say. They're furious, they're stomping around.  The ones with laser vision are blasting things on the horizon, while the fire-based ones are bursting into and out of flame. Hot Chick—now looking a bit saggy and old, truth be told—screams and flies like a comet in to the next building, knocking it down.
    "It is of no matter," Superjunge says, "They can survive there, but they can't breed. They're still doomed."
    "Not my problem," I say, "My people, and any surviving scientists still on Mars, might be able to work around that. Maybe they'll figure a solution, maybe they'll invent artificial gravity, maybe they'll find another place to live, or maybe they'll invent some crazy Flash Gordon technology and come back here and kill all your asses but good. I don't give a damn." My voice is slurred, they'd pulled out my remaining teeth during the torture, "The point is that they're free, they'll survive for a little while longer in peace,