by Wol-vriey
She smiled tightly at the Forks. “Okay, now you’ve got what you came for. Please leave us to bury the last President of the USA with some dignity. Jeff was a great man—whatever you Forks think.”
“But of course,” Lord Tav said. “He was a great man. That is the whole point of this.”
The Forks faded from view. Jefferson Lincoln’s funeral continued under the popcorn rain.
CHAPTER 37
Malone & Posh
Two days later, Malone drove over to Hailey’s Toy Factory again.
This time he was armed to the teeth. His trunk was loaded with all the military firepower he’d been able to scavenge and borrow—six blasters, three energy rifles, a machine gun, grenades, and a bazooka.
Frank wanted a fight? Malone planned on giving him one.
Malone was under no illusions about the magnitude of the task he’d taken on. Though he’d seen none activated during his captivity, he expected to have to contend with Rachel Fischer’s robots.
There was, however, the slight chance that only Rachel could switch her machines on.
Slight, but unlikely. Sure, Frank was crazy, but he wasn’t a lunk.
Posh rode beside Malone in in the car.
“I really wish you stayed at home,” he told her. “I foresee this getting quite messy. I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll stay in the car, be your getaway driver, just in case things don’t work out.”
He couldn’t argue with that.
Posh looked him over with concern. “I’d still have preferred you waiting till you’re healed better.”
He scowled. “I already told you—I’m too pissed-off to wait. More important—Frank will still be mourning Rachel now. He should be too mentally tattered to resist capture. I’m counting on the element of surprise.”
He considered. “I’m also hoping I can retrieve Rachel’s body for her mother to bury.”
Malone drove past the Old State House. The entirety of the redbrick building above The Grid was invisible beneath layers of pterodactyl excrement. Some of the dino poop had streamed through the space between dragon-shield and building, coating its walls like dripping wax.
“No idea why they like pooping on it so much,” Malone said. “I liked seeing the old lion and unicorn.”
Posh smiled. “I guess they have to go to the toilet somewhere. And it does looks like a mountaintop now.”
***
Since transforming back to a human again, Posh was happy.
Topping her list of pleasures was the fact that Malone had accepted her. He’d not questioned her story about Herbie, or even seemed to care about her profession.
But then Sookie had suggested he wasn’t overly prudish.
And with the turn of events after her rescuing him, Posh felt they’d both accepted to stay together.
She was falling deep in love with Malone. And she had a strong intuition they’d be very good for each other.
There was however the slight matter that they’d not made love yet.
Posh didn’t feel horny in the least. She suspected this had to do with the dragonreich she’d ingested. Or maybe, it was fallout from her fucked-up experiences of the past week—it was hard to think of intimacy with anyone after Oswald Watkins.
Lust or not, however, Posh knew it was imperative she and Malone get it on as soon as possible. That would set the seal on their relationship.
However, Malone’s stitched-up torso meant she couldn’t force the issue. She’d look really silly if he couldn’t get it up because of the pain he was in.
***
Malone had told Posh what had happened after she became a dragon. She had a snapshot sequence memory of events—of herself ripping Ma Cure apart—and departing with the old woman’s body.
Of eating it.
She was horrified by the memories, but unable to relate them to herself now she was herself again. They seemed the actions of another.
Posh was intensely relieved that Ma was ‘okay’—that Malone had saved the old woman’s head.
***
The one thing Posh hadn’t mentioned to Malone was her new hunger for the drug dragonreich. Whilst becoming a dragon, she’d experienced a rush like never before. Every fiber of her being craved that sublime feeling again.
***
“Oh, no,” Malone groaned, sighting the black blob in the sky over their destination. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
Posh patted his arm. “What’s wrong, baby?”
He pointed to the monster beetle floating up overhead on the right, laying a skyscraper. “That’s where we’re currently headed. I think it just flattened the factory.”
Posh grinned. “Great. Eliminates the need for you fighting then. I no longer need to worry about you getting shot to bits.”
A scowl on his face, Malone drove the rest of the way in silence.
The Toy Factory was already half-submerged under a mountain of cement when they arrived at it.
They parked a safe distance away and watched. Both were entranced—building birth was an arresting sight.
***
Like concrete shit, the building slowly extruded itself from the floating monster insect’s birth-hole.
The beetle took a long time giving birth. The skyscraper was very large—Malone estimated it might easily be fifty stories high.
Rivers of liquid cement mix dripped from it. These coated the factory afresh—now completely drowning it—before flooding its parking lot, and running out into the street.
Finally, however, the building was totally extruded.
Now began the tricky part, when the beetle—manipulating the new skyscraper with feet and jaws—slowly lowered it to ground, centering it in the pool of cement slime that had accompanied the building out of it.
It placed the skyscraper directly atop Frank’s robot storage warehouse.
Malone imagined the shattering iron girders in the building’s skeleton as it crumpled and was forced deep underground by the building being planted in its place. He also imagined Frank’s broken and pulped body inside the warehouse.
Then the new building stood tall in its new domain. A residence on its path to becoming its own insect
The beetle hovered awhile longer over its odd child, an asteroid-sized black insect flapping wings the size of jumbo jets, its train-legs twitching beneath it. Its yawning birth-hole poured a final river of cement down over the skyscraper.
Then it flew off.
***
Watching the beetle depart, Malone fought off the sense of overawe which always consumed him when he watched building-birth.
“Quite a spectacle,” he said.
Posh nodded, snuggling up close to him. “You don’t sound happy though.”
“It’s inconclusive as shit. I’d love to believe that that shithead Frank was inside and just got crushed to death—but there’s no way we’ll ever know for sure now.”
Malone sounded so cheated at being deprived of his revenge that Posh felt she had to cheer him up.
She turned his face to hers and kissed him.
He initially resisted her lips. “You don’t have to,” he said.
“I want to,” she replied.
And that was that. Their kisses became more fiercer, till they tumbled together into the rear of the car and ripped each other’s clothes off.
Posh gasped, her eyes widening in pleasure when Malone penetrated her. She still didn’t feel aroused, but oh, the satisfaction of being with him! Finally she felt she belonged somewhere, with someone.
She relaxed with satisfaction, accepting his thrusts into her body with a gladness, a love for this man she’d just met that transcended passion.
And in response, passion flowed from her love. Her body lit on fire, her loins and lust burning hotter and hotter, till it felt like she was a torch.
She lifted her head off the car-seat and kissed Malone hard, sucking his tongue deep into her mouth.
Malone fondl
ed her breasts, then gripped them hard. “I love you, Posh,” he gasped as he spurted his cum deep into her.
“I love you too, baby,” Posh replied, rising to meet his orgasm with hers.
Then they hugged each other tight, staring deep into one another’s eyes to preserve this moment in their hearts.
CHAPTER 38
Smith
It was two in the morning.
Old Smith, Sara’s butler, made his way through Rachel Fischer’s basement laboratory.
The room was dark except for the single lamp at its far end illuminating the table on which rested both Rachel’s head and President Jefferson Lincoln’s liver.
Smith greatly disliked coming down here. Normally he let his mistress handle her own business. Tonight, however, he’d had no choice. Sara Fischer had accompanied the Forks somewhere and he had to ‘feed’ the president’s liver its booze.
There was a carton of Jack Daniels under the table. All Smith had to do was pour it and leave.
Smith considered even this little task too much work.
Smith was supposed to have done this at nine p.m., but he’d fallen asleep. Being conscientious, he’d decided better late than never, hence his coming downstairs this late.
Best I get this over with as fast as possible, he thought. In addition to the sheer morbid absurdity of the task, he’d of recent begun suspecting that Jefferson Lincoln’s liver was developing intelligence.
Absurd? Maybe. Stupid? Very likely. But whatever anyone says I can’t shake off the thought that that chunk of meat is trying to talk to me.
He hastened past tables of scientific equipment of different kinds, all dusty now since their owner’s demise.
His view of his destination was blocked by several large screens. Rachel had initially used the screens to partition her lab. Sara had now arranged them all in the corner housing Rachel’s head to give her privacy when down here.
Dammit, Smith thought, she’s turned this place into a shrine to her dead daughter and boyfriend.
For Smith, an ex-army chaplain, the concept was too morbid. The dead should be permitted to rest in peace.
He’d more than once asked Sara to bury Rachel.
“Forget it!” she’d snap each time. “Back to work, you! The pantry’s that way!”
***
Smith reached the closest screen and walked around it.
He pulled up sharply.
There was a man seated there, holding the specimen jar containing Rachel’s head.
Frank wasn’t startled like Smith was; he’d heard him approaching.
Smith regained his poise. He coldly regarded the thin young man with distaste. To Smith, who’d served in the trenches in the Syrian War, Frank looked weak.
Weak, yes; harmless, no.
Smith found the young man’s gaze disturbing. His sky-blue eyes were unbalanced, like he was surfing sanity’s edge.
Smith felt chilled. His years as a chaplain had made him a good judge of people. This young man was dangerous. No doubt about it.
“What are you doing here?” he asked gruffly. “How did you get in?”
Frank frowned. “I’m here for two reasons.
“Firstly . . . ,” he tapped the specimen jar, “The rest of Miss Fischer is over in my freezer. I want to bury her as a complete woman.”
Smith now realized who the man talking to him was—the psycho who’d kidnapped and murdered Rachel.
(To maintain family appearances, Sara hadn’t let on to anyone that Rachel had actually colluded with her ‘abductor.’)
Smith began looking around him for a weapon.
“You said two things,” he said to distract Frank. “What’s the second?”
Frank smiled. “I got ahead of myself. There’s actually three things.” He swiveled on his chair to the table and hefted up Jefferson Lincoln’s liver. “Whose liver is this? This is literally most cirrhotic specimen I’ve ever seen.”
Smith went with the flow. “You’re a doctor?”
“A hepatologist—liver specialist.” Cold eyes stabbed into Smith’s. “Whose liver is it?”
“Jefferson Lincoln.” Smith saw no harm in telling Frank this—he’d spotted a crowbar just outside the screen on his right. One tap on the noggin with that and sicko here would be out for the count.
Frank gaped. “The president?”
Smith nodded. He cautiously edged closer to the crowbar. He had no idea if Frank was armed or not.
Frank moped. “But he never looked like a drinking sort of man. Dear God, just look at the state of this thing—like the current state of the nation.” He lifted the organ to his nose and sniffed it. “Smells absolutely awful.”
About to bend down, Smith saw that Frank was almost crying. “Such a shame. It would have been an absolute honor too to eat the First Liver. But now? The fucking thing is totally inedible—has to be poisonous even.”
Eat Jefferson’s liver? Kid, you really are a sick fuck.
Smith bent quickly, grabbed the crowbar, and lunged at Frank with it.
Then he felt an incredible pain in his arm and the crowbar wrenched out of his hand. Or maybe the order of events was reversed—Smith wasn’t sure.
After the sharp burst of pain, Smith looked at his arm. It was broken. The front half of his forearm hung off the rest at an angle.
Frank laughed. “You should have stuck to talking, old man. Glory days have passed you by.”
Smith stared mutely as the white robot stepped into view. It was human-sized and human shaped, with a ‘T’ slot in its face in which two red lights blinked.
Frank considered Smith’s agonized face impassively. “You honestly didn’t think I came here all alone did you?”
Smith looked back. He gasped. Behind the robot that had disarmed him stood a second one of exactly the same design. He made out the inscription ‘Product of New Korea’ on the robot’s side.
The fight drained out of Smith.
“Lay him on a table,” Frank said.
“Wha . . . ?”
Both robots grabbed Smith and lifted him off his feet. They carried him out of the screened enclosure.
The robot carrying Smith’s upper body, swiped a hand across a lab table, knocking an array of test tubes and an electron microscope to the floor. Metal clanged. Glass smashed.
The robots arranged Smith on the cleared table. He squealed when his broken arm thumped its metal edge.
Both robots stepped back from the table and froze into immobility.
Smith made no attempt to flee or scream for help. For one thing, this was a basement and the door was closed. No one would hear him. But second, and more important, was the white robots’ pose. Motionless as they were, their only sign of life the red dots blinking in their faces, they gave off an air of subliminal menace that petrified Smith.
Frank walked out from behind the screens. He was carrying Jefferson Lincoln’s liver, now flopping like a landed fish. He stared down at Smith. His blue eyes gleamed like he was dying of fever.
“Don’t kill me, kid. Please. I got no fight with you.”
Frank smiled. “Let’s talk. Tell me what I want to know and I won’t kill you. Understand?”
For emphasis he tapped Smith’s broken arm.
Smith howled. The pain felt like his arm was being broken all over again. He nodded quickly. “Yes, yes!”
“Good,” Frank said. “Now . . .” He stroked Jefferson Lincoln’s liver like it was a baby. The liver calmed. “. . . Tell me everything you know about this organ.”
Smith hastily explained all about the late president’s death and burial.
***
Frank listened in silence. Only an imperceptible widening of his eyes betrayed his surprise on hearing of the Forks’ involvement.
This is very interesting, he thought. It would also explain why the organ he carried was still alive and seemed aware of its surroundings.
“That’s all I know,” Smith said finally.
“There are bottles of bo
oze in the enclosure. What are they for?”
Smith explained.
Frank nodded. This is even stranger than I thought. This liver leaves here with me in any event, along with Rachel’s head. The Forks, eh?
“Where is Mrs. Fischer now? I want to talk to her.”
“She’s gone off somewhere with the Forks. I’ve no idea where.”
Frank frowned. A setback. He’d intended asking Sara where Malone lived.
He scowled. If Malone thought he’d gotten away with murdering Rachel, he was an idiot. He still had hell to pay, but with Sara Fischer away today, Frank’s revenge would be delayed.
He smiled at Smith. “You will deliver a message to Mrs. Fischer for me when she returns, old man.”
Smith nodded. “Whatever you say.”
Frank nodded back. “You’ll not need to remember it. I’ll write it out for you.”
Smith nodded.
Frank dropped the president’s liver on an adjacent table, then returned.
Smith shivered when he saw Frank was now holding a switchblade.
Shit! He made to rise.
Frank gestured to the robots. “Hold him down.”
The white machines grabbed Smith’s arms and legs.
Frank flicked the switchblade open.
“Hey wait! What are you doing? You said you wouldn’t kill me!”
“Don’t be a dick,” Frank said angrily. “I’m not about to kill you. I just missed dinner earlier and intend making up for that oversight. Ordinarily, I’d eat that liver over there. But it’s clearly poisonous now, so some of yours will have to suffice.”
Smith gaped at Frank. “What? Eat my liver?” He fought to rise, but the quartet of metal hands held him firmly in place. He gaped at Frank. “Are you fucking nuts?”
Frank smiled coolly. “Quite a few people think so.”