Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

by David Wong, Christy Romano (Read by)

Overview

A Winner of the 2016 Alex Awards

Nightmarish villains with superhuman enhancements.

An all-seeing social network that tracks your every move.

Mysterious, smooth-talking power players who lurk behind the scenes.

A young woman from the trailer park.

And her very smelly cat.

Together, they will decide the future of mankind.

Get ready for a world in which anyone can have the powers of a god or the fame of a pop star, in which human achievement soars to new heights while its depravity plunges to the blackest depths. A world in which at least one cat smells like a seafood shop's dumpster on a hot summer day.

This is the world in which Zoey Ashe finds herself, navigating a futuristic city in which one can find elements of the fantastic, nightmarish and ridiculous on any street corner. Her only trusted advisor is the aforementioned cat, but even in the future, cats cannot give advice. At least not any that you'd want to follow.

Will Zoey figure it all out in time? Or maybe the better question is, will you? After all, the future is coming sooner than you think.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781522649250
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	10/04/2016
Series:	Zoey Ashe Series , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

David Wong is the pseudonym of Jason Pargin, New York Times bestselling author and executive editor of the hugely popular comedy site Cracked.com. His first book, John Dies at the End, lives forever as a cult classic movie directed by Don Coscarelli and his second, This Book Is Full of Spiders, scares people on a daily basis.

Read an Excerpt

Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits

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By David Wong

St. Martin's Press

Copyright © 2015 David Wong
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-3543-6

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CHAPTER 1

For eight hours, Zoey's pursuer had been staking out the trailer where the twenty-two-year-old lived with her mother, waiting for the most dramatic moment to make his appearance. Catching Zoey in bed or the shower would be optimal, but he got the sense that this particular young woman had no rigid schedule for doing either of those things. All day he had been watching her through a dirty bay window that put their trailer's whole, sad living room on display. Zoey had begun her day promptly at one PM by waking up on the sofa and initiating a "morning" routine that involved going to the bathroom, returning to the sofa, and then staring blankly at the ceiling for an hour. Then she read for a bit, ate a bowl of cereal, and did something with her hair that involved wrapping part of it in tinfoil while a nature documentary about pack hunters played on the TV behind her. Now the sun had gone down and Zoey, still in her pajamas, was standing in her yard and yelling up at a cat that had jumped onto the roof. Her stalker had intended to send the news media a video of his entire pursuit of the girl, but he knew that this part would have to be edited way down.

He was out of patience. He resolved to move in for the kill and even switched on the tiny camera he kept pinned to his lapel, so his fans could watch it live. But then, at the last moment, he had second thoughts. Mainly about branding.

The man had called himself "The Jackal" for most of his short but prolific career, but had decided to switch to "The Hyena" after watching a pack of them tear apart a moose during the documentary that had played on Zoey's television earlier. He thought it was more fitting — hyenas were wild, unpredictable predators and had the most powerful jaws in the animal kingdom (that last part was what had really sold him on it). But then again, the documentary seemed to show them only hunting in groups (where he was definitely a loner) and, unless he misunderstood, the female hyenas had penises, and even gave birth through them. That was a problem — when he became famous and the press started speculating on why he chose that moniker, he didn't want pundits throwing around a bunch of wild theories about his genitals. But if he amended his manifesto to address the issue, or included photographic evidence that he had a normal penis, then that would just make him seem like the weirdo for bringing it up. Maybe "The Wolf" was a better name. Or "The Shark."

As he sat in his rental car and wrestled with this decision, Zoey went inside the trailer, then returned dragging a kitchen chair through the door. She tried to use it as a step stool to reach the cat on the roof, at which point she immediately overbalanced and fell off, landing hard in the snow. She gathered herself, brushed snow off her butt, mounted the chair again, and searched in vain for a cat that, unbeknownst to her, had already jumped down the other side of the trailer. This went on for a very long time, before Zoey finally noticed the cat was not on the roof, but rather lying in the snow under the very chair she was standing on. Exasperated, the girl trudged back inside cradling the cat with one arm and dragging the chair with the other. The Shark ("The Piranha"?) decided he would wait for her to get settled again, then make his move.

Instead, Zoey reappeared at the door and headed for the old and busted Toyota Furia in her driveway. Her stalker wasn't worried about losing her if she left — the advantage of self-driving cars for a man in The Piranha's line of work was that their navigation systems were very easy to latch on to. He could just set his own to follow the same route and the car would do the tailing for him — he could literally stalk the girl while relaxing and playing a game on his phone. He watched as Zoey scraped frost from the Toyota's windshield with what appeared to be a spatula, and then pulled out of her driveway, leaving behind a dark rectangle in the snow as if the car had forgotten to take its shadow with it. The Piranha gave her a ten-second head start, and then told his rental car to follow. He tried to picture the headlines that would tick along the bottom of the news feeds next week, like, "The Piranha Claims His Sixth Victim." Hmmm, maybe "The Leopard" would be better. It needed to be some kind of biting animal, otherwise the surgery would have been a waste.

He rubbed the itchy line of stitches that ran from one temple to the other, looping under his jawbone like a chin strap. He'd had his entire lower jaw and upper teeth augmented with a motorized black market implant consisting of a graphene lattice frame and titanium chompers that could bite through metal. As soon as he had gotten home from the surgery, he had turned on his camera and announced his new powers to the world by biting through a hunk of copper pipe. He thought it made for an ominous demonstration of his new abilities, even if he'd had to quickly turn off the camera at that point because he had cut up his tongue pretty badly. No matter — the jaws worked, and his next test would be on Zoey Ashe's fingers. Then he'd just chew his way up from there.

This, he thought, was what he had always been missing: a gimmick.

She made a left turn, then another. Circling the block. Did she suspect she was being followed? The Leopard would have to be careful — prey animals were weak, but alert and wary. The girl surely could sense the malevolent predator that lurked behind her in the darkness.

CHAPTER 2

Zoey Ashe had forgotten to tell the Toyota's navigation to stop for food, so she had already missed the turn by the time she was able to convince it to deviate from its route by screaming repeatedly at the windshield. The car reluctantly circled the block and pulled into a food-distribution center that people in the future call "the Wendy's drive-thru." Her Toyota's heater had stopped working weeks ago, which was bad news in a Colorado winter, so she needed something hot inside her. Zoey pulled up to the window and ordered a small container of a semisolid, protein-rich foodstuff that the people in her time call "chili," hoping it would warm her up a couple of degrees (at least before the heat left her body a few minutes later in the form of several dozen hot farts). She then urged the lethargic compact car back onto the deserted streets, where the autopilot took over once more. The Toyota whined its way through the darkness, heading directly toward the Zombie Quarantine Zone, which was the name of the topless bar where Zoey's mother worked.

The radio had stopped working years ago, and so Zoey made up for it by singing a hit pop song from her time called "Butt Show (and I Don't Charge Admission)" while she plugged in the strand of Christmas lights she had tacked around the top of the car's interior. She peeled the lid off her chili, watched steam waft into the frigid air, and decided that things really could be worse. Zoey always tried to appreciate the little things in life, like the fact that just a generation ago you couldn't devote both hands to eating a bowl of fast-food chili while the car drove itself (how did people use to eat car chili? With a straw?). She had also recently upgraded her phone to one that displayed a little holographic image of the caller, but so far she had found this feature was only useful for terrifying her holophobic cat, which hardly justified the cost of the upgrade. However, a moment later that feature did allow her to see that the call that saved her life came from a man who was fond of wearing fancy suits.

When her phone rang, Zoey was only a few blocks away from the trashy, zombie-themed bar where she was supposed to pick up her mother at the end of her shift (that is, the point in the evening when the younger girls were rotated in for the lucrative nighttime crowd). When the phone's hologram blinked to life it startled the crap out of her, as she had forgotten the phone was in her lap and for one terrified moment thought a tiny ghost had emerged from her crotch. Zoey flinched, cursed, and splattered chili everywhere before she figured out that she was not in fact going to have to undergo an incredibly awkward and invasive exorcism. She groaned and tried to scoop hot chili off her pajama pants with her fingers, and panicked when she saw she had also gotten it all over her new phone. She licked chili off the screen and, in the process, accidentally swiped the "Answer" slider with her tongue.

The little hologram man floating above the phone looked puzzled and said,

"Hello? Is this Zoey Ashe?"

"Hold on. I got chili all over my car."

"I — Are you there? What's that sound?"

"It's the sound of me eating chili off my phone. Who's this?"

"Zoey, my name is Will Blackwater. You are the — I'm sorry, are you still there?"

"Yes, I'm listening. Are you actually wearing that suit or do you just have your phone set to display you wearing it?"

"Please pay attention. You are the daughter of Arthur Livingston, correct?"

"No. I mean, yeah he is my biological father, but we have nothing to do with each other. Is he in jail again? Are you his lawyer? Is that why you're all dressed up?"

"No. Listen to me, Zoey. A man is coming to abduct you. Right now. His car is one block behind you."

"Wait. What? Who is this again?"

"I'm going to take control of your car. Don't touch the wheel or the pedals, or do anything else to disengage the self-drive. Do you understand?"

"No, I don't understand. How can you —"

"Please buckle your seat belt."

Headlights loomed in her rearview mirror. Zoey, her hands shaking, tried to latch the seat belt as the Toyota abruptly lurched to the left, jumped the curb, flattened a row of shrubs, and plowed across a lawn.

"HEY! JESUS CHRIST!"

Zoey grabbed the dash and held on for dear life as her car smashed through two fences and a child's swing set before it thumped over another curb and turned left onto a residential street.

The hologram man on her phone, Will, said, "I apologize for that, I'm not driving the car. My associate, Andre, has the controls and I'm afraid he's had several drinks."

From somewhere in the background she heard another voice in the phone say, "Hey, I drive better when I got a few in me."

Zoey was thrown against the door as the Toyota went power sliding around a turn. She twisted around in her seat and saw the headlights of her pursuer streak through the yard they had just left, sweeping onto the road behind them. Zoey's Toyota abruptly turned into a too-narrow alley, missing a brick wall and a Dumpster by half an inch on either side. Her side-view mirror exploded when the car clipped the corner on the way out.

The man on the phone said, "I'm terribly sorry to tell you this, but your father was killed. It happened last week."

"So? I didn't even know him! I assumed he died years ago. Who are these people?!?"

"Hold on."

The Toyota jumped off the road again and plunged into a grove of pine trees, branches raking the doors with a noise like frantic predators clawing to get in.

Over the phone, Zoey faintly heard Will say, "Cut the lights."

The headlights blinked out, along with all of the dashboard lights and the navigation overlay on the windshield. Zoey was now hurtling through the darkness of the trees, completely blind.

She screamed.

The little hologram man on her phone, which was now located somewhere on the back floorboard, told her to calm down. The car emerged from the trees onto a lawn, fishtailed in the snow-covered grass, then shattered somebody's solar panel array with an explosion of sparks. Another hard left turn, and they were on a paved street once more. Exactly four seconds later, the tailing sedan was behind them again.

Will said, "Don't let this question alarm you, but do you have any weapons in the vehicle?"

"No! Why would I — Wait, I have a spatula ..."

"Well, we have no indication your pursuer is a pancake, so we'll abandon that angle for the moment. Now I will need you to stay calm. We can't outrun him in this vehicle. I'm going to have you get out."

"How is that possibly going to help?"

"We need to pick a spot where he'll be forced to follow on foot. Otherwise he could simply run you over with his car, obviously."

"Obviously. Who is he again?"

"It's a hired thug. You don't know him."

"Hired by who? What does he want?"

"I can explain later. I can assure you that knowing the fine details won't enhance your survivability and it certainly will do nothing to ease your panic. Let me just say that this particular thug took the contract for a reason, which is that he likes when the targets are women. And he likes to take his time. He's calling himself The Hyena, according to his feed."

"Does he give birth through his penis?"

"What? Zoey, listen to me — our map shows a pond about two hundred yards ahead, but does not show us if it's frozen over. Is that a safe bet this time of year, where you are?"

"It ... I don't know! I don't go ice skating! I know the kiddie pool our neighbors left out in their yard is frozen, but —"

Zoey was thrown against the door again. Another hard right was taking her off the road once more, this time through a pasture. The car swerved to miss a single cow that was lazily grazing in its path. It mooed at her, probably telling Zoey she should turn her headlights on.

Will said, "It's our only option. Hang on."

"What's our only option? What are you going to —"

Zoey was thrown forward against her seat belt as the Toyota slammed on its brakes, skidding across the rough carpet of frozen grass.

Will said, "Go! Get out onto the ice! It will support you but not his car, if he wants to follow he'll have to get out on foot."

"But then wha —"

"GO! NOW!"

Zoey grabbed the phone, threw open the door, and ran toward the frozen pond. Before her was a moonlit sheet of snow that Zoey thought was like the thin frosting on a cake made of filthy water and dead fish, the bitter wind having frozen the part of her brain that thought up metaphors. She didn't even know she had made it to the ice until her sneakers slipped and sent her down to her knees, the surface below her crackling and popping a warning in response. As Zoey climbed to her feet, her shadow suddenly stretched across the ice — headlights looming behind her. She tried to move quickly but gingerly, but after three steps, she slipped again and this time fell hard on her butt.

She heard a car door close behind her. She risked a look back and saw only a silhouette backlit by the twin bluish shafts of headlights. Zoey pushed herself up, her hands swiping aside fresh snow to reveal black ice underneath, her stumbling path across the pond leaving a row of haphazard streaks like Chinese calligraphy. Two more steps — now the ice was making wheezing complaints like a squeaky door hinge each time she lowered her foot. She thought she could hear liquid water sloshing up ahead — she had no idea how thick the ice beneath her was, but knew that not far up, that thickness became "zero."

She had stuffed her phone into her coat pocket at some point and, from inside, she heard Will say, "Are you still there?"

Zoey dug out the phone with numb fingers and whispered, "He's coming. He's coming and I can't go any farther. What do I do?"

"Let me do all the talking. Just hold out your phone."

Through the wind, Zoey could barely hear her pursuer say, "I've reached the edge of the pond." Then after a dramatic pause, he declared, "She has nowhere left to run."

Zoey asked Will, "Who is he talking to?"

"He's streaming this live, he has a Blink camera pinned to his jacket. You don't want to know how many people are watching. Let me talk to him."

Zoey held her phone out toward the menacing shadow in the headlights. The foot-tall holographic ghost of Will Blackwater said, "Stay on the shore, Lawrence, the ice isn't thick enough to support the weight of both of you. You're a beefy guy and you'll notice Zoey here is not what one would call 'willowy.'"

The shadow took a few strides onto the pond and said, "Come back off the ice, sweetie. You're going to come with me one way or the other, and you won't like 'the other.'"

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong. Copyright © 2015 David Wong. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

★ 08/03/2015
Cracked.com executive editor Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders) unabashedly trolls everyone and lampoons everything in this beautifully outrageous science fiction adventure. In a near-future U.S. that’s even more narcissistic and technology-obsessed than the present, Zoey Ashe is a typical down-and-out young woman with an absentee father. She and her cat are more or less content to sleep the day away in their trailer park until a predator-obsessed Internet celebrity decides to stalk and kill her, with a million viewers following along. Zoey is rescued by some confederates of her father (who she learns is dead), which leaves her having to flee from his enemies, but his friends aren’t much better. It seems as though everyone wants something from her, and she isn’t sure what she even wants from herself. She makes it to Tabula Ra$a, a Vegasesque city deep in the Utah desert, where there are no rules and everything goes beyond over-the-top. Staying alive is Zoey’s top priority as she and her sketchy new companions struggle to work out the mystery of her father’s legacy—oh, and save the world from a megalomaniac calling himself Molech. Biting humor and blatant digs at modern society overlay a subtly brilliant and thoughtful plot focused on one young woman’s growth and survival against all odds. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media Group. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"With verve and velocity, the story moves...one cinematic set piece after another, strung together with twisty fun and wit." - The New York Times Book Review

"Cracked.com executive editor Wong (This Book Is Full of Spiders) unabashedly trolls everyone and lampoons everything in this beautifully outrageous science fiction adventure...Biting humor and blatant digs at modern society overlay a subtly brilliant and thoughtful plot focused on one young woman’s growth and survival against all odds." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

"All right, grab some popcorn and strap in. We're in for another profane and funny roller-coaster ride from Wong...Some of the sci-fi elements are comic book–y and the humor is as juvenile as ever, but the book more than makes up for any shortcomings with its Technicolor tomorrowland, mischievous humor, and frenetic action sequences." - Kirkus Reviews

"Well-timed humor and explosive thrills, a smart backbone, and witty wordsmithing make this new release by Cracked.com’s pseudonym-wielding Jason Pargin (John Dies at the End, 2009) as fun as it gets. Steer this one toward readers of sf with a sense of humor, and fans of Max Barry’s satirical futuristic novels." - Booklist, starred review

"Wong has proven himself a master of both the hilarious and the horrifying, and this newest work aims his brilliantly cynical comedy style at a possible future for our society...Wong is a keen observer of the human condition, and is able to translate that into an apt, and often snarky, prediction for society’s trajectory...Like Jonathan Swift for the internet age, Wong’s novel offers an engrossing journey and razor-sharp wit inside of an uncanny prediction of an American future. His humor ranges anywhere from blatantly poking fun at our world to more subtle aspects of life that one would not even think of until pointed out. Wong’s capability as an author has steadily matured since he won cult status with John Dies at the End in 2007, and his newest is only more proof that he will be remembered as one of today’s great satirists." - Nerdist

"With plenty of unexpected twists and turns along the way, you'll almost be sure that you forgot to plug your blink feed in, as we face even more perils than Zoey Ashe could have dreamt of, and that's just the holographic Christmas decorations. A sofa clutching read from beginning to end, and a great look at the constantly growing world of social networking." - Starbust, 9 out of 10 stars

“David Wong’s writing style is a great mix of Tom Robbins meets Philip K. Dick. You could throw in some Christopher Moore as well. Wong’s sense of comedic timing is honed to perfection from his time spent as Executive Editor at Cracked.com. He has his finger on the pulse of popular culture, current trends, and how quickly both can become absurd and take civilization to places that it should not go...Fast, fun, brutal, hilarious, and quite thought provoking, Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits is highly entertaining and well worth every page turn. Whether a reader is familiar with Wong’s work or not, this novel is indicative of the writer’s talent for mixing wit and violence." - New York Journal of Books

From the Publisher

Well-timed humor and explosive thrills, a smart backbone, and witty wordsmithing make this new release by Cracked.com's pseudonym-wielding Jason Pargin (John Dies at the End, 2009) as fun as it gets.

starred review on FUTURISTIC VIOLENCE AND FANCY SU Booklist

05/15/2015
When he's not Jason Pargin, executive editor of the comedy site Cracked.com, Wong writes New York Times best sellers like This Book Is Full of Spiders. In his latest, set in a bloody near-future, superhero vigilantes duke it out with self-proclaimed supervillains, as a group called the Men in Fancy Suits keep things calm. When Zoey discovers that her recently deceased con artist dad had redeemed himself by joining the Fancy Suits, who subsequently rescue her from some nasties, what choice does she have but to put on a suit herself?

Library Journal

★ 03/01/2016
In this laugh-out-loud adventure complete with superhero costumes and a cat named Stench Machine, Zoey Ashe discovers that she has inherited billions from her deadbeat dad. Unfortunately, the sudden windfall means that the entire city of Tabula Rosa (think of a tackier, more sinful Las Vegas multiplied by 10) is out to capture her to control her money and her inherited weapons. Zoey may have just been a curvy barista living in a trailer park, but she is her father's child—she's smart, a bit conniving, and a threat to her enemies. She's ready to take on Molech and his biologically enhanced minions, especially after they kidnap her mother from the strip club. This hilarious novel is perfect for students who are ready to move from Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart (Delacorte, 2013) and on to something more like Matt Ruff's Alex Award-winning title Bad Monkeys (Harper, 2007). Wong (a pseudonym of Jason Pargin) is a comedic writer at Cracked.com, as well as the author of John Dies at the End (2009) and This Book Is Full of Spiders (2012, both St. Martin's). Readers can't help but snicker—Zoey is snarky, and a serial killer and chili farts are mentioned in the opening pages. Just as in a box office hit, the action is nonstop, the humor is crude (the book's back cover features a picture of a robotic middle finger), and the plucky female main character saves the day. VERDICT Give to mature young adults who appreciate wit and crude humor.—Sarah Hill, Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

School Library Journal

Narrator Christy Romano captures the sarcasm, angst, and exhilaration of this audiobook’s protagonist, Zoey. When her alienated but super-rich father dies, leaving her his wealth and secrets, she becomes the target of every deranged and genetically enhanced person in Tabula Ra$a, a city where anything can be bought, including superpowers. Romano’s lively, raspy voice keeps listeners' attention, and she maintains good pacing throughout, balancing it with emphasis, attitude, and emotion in the dialogue. Her male character voices are believable, and she narrates action scenes with mastery. Now, Zoey has to figure out whom to trust in a city without rules while fighting off people who can level whole buildings. Working at a diner did not prepare her for this. L.E. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2016 - AudioFile

2015-07-15
A young woman who believes her father dead enters a cyberpunk theme park where everyone is trying to kill her for a secret she doesn't even know she has. All right, grab some popcorn and strap in. We're in for another profane and funny roller-coaster ride from Wong (This Book is Full of Spiders, 2012, etc.)—better known as the playful pseudonym of Cracked's Jason Pargin. Here the author strays from his previous horror adventures to craft a sci-fi comedy-thriller full of ray guns, sentient programs, and cybernetically enhanced psychotic killers. Our hero(ine) is Zoey Ashe, a self-identified "trailer troll" from rural Colorado whose single mother shills drinks in a zombie-themed bar. It doesn't take long for Wong to offer lots of clues that this is the near future, one in which the chasm between the rich and the poor has reached cartoonish proportions. It turns out that Zoey's father was Arthur Livingston, the founder of a utopian city geared toward criminals and the superrich called Tabula Ra$a, located out in the high desert. Arthur was blown up by a rival arms dealer, so his gang, the Suits of the title, are under instruction to fetch Zoey, who holds the key to retrieving his fortune, not to mention his violent revenge. "I want no part of this nonsense," Zoey says. "This whole city is a butt that farts horror." The enhanced bad guys are all broadcasting to the fictional "Blink" network, a kind of POV live stream that lends itself well to the insane supervillain monologues that pepper the book. Meanwhile, Zoey's lack of enthusiasm is irksome to Will Blackwater, her escort. "You take risks; you get hurt," he says. "And you put your head down and plow forward anyway and if you die, you die. That's the game. But don't tell me you're not a hero." Some of the sci-fi elements are comic book-y and the humor is as juvenile as ever, but the book more than makes up for any shortcomings with its Technicolor tomorrowland, mischievous humor, and frenetic action sequences.

Kirkus Reviews