Dead Set by Richard Kadrey

everything had passed me by. There was all this new software I didn’t know and there were these kids who were so damned good at it. I didn’t know how to get back in the game.” She puffed the cigarette, made a face, and crushed it with the others in the saucer. She shook her head. “That’s a lie. I choked. Simple as that. Once I stopped, I was too scared to fight my way back in.”
    â€œBut you wanted to?”
    â€œHell, yeah,” she said. “It’s funny, you asking about this. Before he died, your dad and I were talking about it. He could get me discounts on some digital graphics classes through his company. What made you ask about this now?”
    â€œNo reason. I just wondered,” Zoe said. She took a long breath and let it out. “I’m going to my room now, okay?” Her mother nodded.
    Zoe got up and started for her bedroom. Halfway there, she turned around and came back. From the chair, her mother looked up at her. When Zoe leaned down, her mother looked unsure and flinched a little. Zoe kissed her on the cheek.
    â€œI promised someone I’d do that.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œI promised I wouldn’t tell.”
    â€œSet your alarm a little early,” said her mother. “I rented a car. I’m driving you to school in the morning and picking you up after school until you’re caught up on your work.”
    Damn. “Yeah, okay. ’Night.”
    â€œ ’Night.”
    Z oe was still shaky, but she was also exhausted. She felt like a deflated balloon, limp and shapeless. She tried to push the fight with her mother out of her head, and she lay down without taking her clothes off. It’s just for a minute, she told herself. Just until I catch my breath. She snapped the rubber band twice.
    A couple of minutes later, she was fast asleep.
    In her dream she was near the tree that held the fort, but this was one of those rare nights where she didn’t materialize in the fort itself. Looking out across the field, she knew why this time was different. The normally empty field tonight was full of carnival rides. Zoe instantly recognized the carousel and Ferris wheel that she and her father had ridden in Iphigene. She called up to Valentine to come down and go on the rides with her. She started toward the spinning carousel, then stopped. A black dog sat on the edge of the platform. A woman-shaped shadow, darker this time, rode one of the carousel horses, a fierce black war-horse in shining armor. Zoe took a step back and her foot came down on something soft. It hissed. A snake.
    The field was covered in a black, writhing river of glistening fangs and dead green eyes. Zoe froze, one hand on the ladder that led up to the fort and the other up defensively by her throat. Her mouth remained closed, but somewhere in the back of her brain she was screaming. She knew that all she had to do was step up onto the ladder and climb the few feet and she’d be out of danger, but she couldn’t move. Her eternal, primal fear of snakes paralyzed her, froze her in place. The snakes seethed around her feet, their bodies sighing through the short grass until it sounded to her like a crack in the earth letting out the world’s last wheezing breath before it died.
    Something fastened around Zoe’s wrist. She started to scream, but her throat closed up and she couldn’t make a sound. She felt herself being pulled upward. Zoe looked up to see Valentine reaching down from the top of the ladder, trying to haul her up. Seeing him above her snapped her out of her frozen fear and she began to climb. When she got to the top, Valentine pulled her up the last few feet into the fort. She fell back against the railing, out of breath. Valentine was panting, too.
    â€œThanks,” she wheezed, then coughed drily.
    â€œBreathe,” said Valentine between his own deep breaths. “In through your nose and out through your mouth.”
    Zoe nodded,