by Jack Cuatt
MACHINE’S WORK
Jack Cüatt
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, businesses, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form except for the case of a brief quote utilized in a review or criticism. Please do not encourage piracy of copyrighted material.
Machine’s Work
ISBN-13: 978-1507778630
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2015 by Jack Cüatt
Cover design by Brandi Doane McCann
Edited by Lana Baker ([email protected]}
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1
Machine waits motionlessly in the deep darkness at the head of an alley on Bexar Street. His black overcoat blends with the night. A black baseball cap casts a veil of shadow across his face. Only his chest moves, rising and falling; a ripple in the night; a breathing shadow. It's 3:30 AM. He's been waiting for four hours, ready to work.
Time passes slowly. The sky grays and light crawls down the crumbling tenements and into the street revealing a desolate landscape of stripped and burned-out cars, empty buildings, dead streetlights, and trash drifts.
As the dawn draws near, Machine decides to give it up for the night. He doesn't work the daylight hours. Too many citizens and cops. The first rule of every job is don't get caught; the second is don't get killed. Those are the only hard rules, the rest is gray. He takes a step toward the mouth of the alley, but the slap of boot-leather on concrete stops him. He falls back, his hand slipping under his overcoat to touch the silenced Smith & Wesson 9mm automatic holstered under his left arm.
Three teenaged white males pass the alley, just feet away. They are dressed in leather jackets with a red sledgehammer stitched on the back, pegged jeans and combat boots. Hammerskins: a skinhead crew that controls the abandoned streets on the edge of the old city.
These are the men Machine has been waiting for. He listens to the footsteps fade to silence before exiting the alley. There’s no need to follow closely; he knows where the skins are going: their crash pad, a third floor apartment in an abandoned brownstone two blocks west. The apartment had been Machine’s first stop of the evening. Three of the Hammerskin crew had been home when Machine arrived. What's left of them still is.
When the skinheads turn the corner at the end of the block, Machine breaks from cover and trots after them. He wants to arrive at the apartment hard on the skinheads’ heels, before they have a chance to find their friends.
Machine plans as he moves, calculating the risks. He had expected this to be easy work. He had planned to do it on the street. On the skins’ turf. His orders were to send a message: Don't fuck with the Kukov family. It's too late for that now. Even in this neighborhood it pays to be cautious. He’ll do it inside. That changes the odds, but he doesn’t really care.
The chopper is coming.
Machine sprints up the brownstone's front steps, reaching it just moments behind the Hammerskins. A slab of plywood covers the door, only the nails at the top still in place. He lifts the lower portion and ducks through into a dim hallway. Crouched in the musty darkness of the vestibule, he can hear the skinheads trudging up the stairs. They're still talking, laughing.
Machine eases the 9mm from its holster and follows them quietly up the steps, the Smith leading the way, safety off, hammer back. The 9mm’s sound suppressor extends the barrel by four inches and cuts the sound by ninety percent. A fifteen round magazine loaded down with 9mm Federal Hydra-Shok hollow-points is locked into the grip. Four spare clips weigh down the overcoat's pockets. Enough ammo to kill two dozen men.
Machine catches bits of the skins’ conversation as he trails them, staying one floor below. He hears the name, Marlene, the name of the girl they raped three nights ago. They joke that the cops will never catch them. That the girl was too scared to report the rape. They don’t know that they picked the wrong girl. That her father works for the Kukov family. And the Kukovs don’t need leads or clues or DNA or police reports. They don’t care about due process or rules of evidence or lines of investigation. No, the Kukovs just kick down doors and break bones until someone coughs up a name.
And then they call Machine.
A door slams, cutting off the voices.
Time to go to work.
Machine flies up the last flight, trusting the closed door to cover the noise of his quiet rush. He makes the turn at the third floor banister. The only light up here is a pale sliver under the last door on the right. The door itself is old and rotten. Machine snaps a kick into it that splinters the jamb and knocks the door off its hinges. He rushes through the gap, the 9mm sweeping up, his finger taut on the trigger.
The apartment is furnished with broken down sofas and car seats. Beer cans and fast-food wrappers litter the floor. The only light comes from a bug encrusted ceiling fixture. There’s blood everywhere from Machine’s previous visit, and three dead men, their flesh already bloating. But Machine cares nothing for the dead. They’re an undertaker’s problem now. He focuses on the three men still breathing.
The one on the right, yellow skin and bad teeth, spins toward the door and makes a grab for the pistol shoved into his waistband, but Machine is already working the trigger. The Smith coughs twice and two Hydra-Shoks explode from the barrel.
The first round smashes through yellow-skin’s front teeth and snaps his head back. The second buzz-saws into his brain and knocks him sprawling, but Machine doesn’t see him fall; he’s already sweeping the pistol left, lining up the smoking barrel on the next skinhead, a bone-thin twenty-year-old with a purple blotch covering half his face.
Purple-blotch’s street-tag is Pagan. He’s what they call a ‘Warlord.’ His reputation in Low Town is as a stone-cold killer. A chopper-wannabe. The lowest level of street-killer. Just name the price and the target. He likes knives. Close work. But he doesn't look tough staring down the barrel of Machine's 9mm. He looks horrified. He doesn't even make a move to aim the pistol in his hand.
From ten feet away, still walking toward his targets, Machine squeezes the Smith's trigger twice in rapid succession. The first hollow-point knocks a chunk out of Pagan's forehead and spins him around. The second shatters his spine at the base of his skull, sending him down in a tangle of arms and legs.
That’s when the third skin comes unstuck. The kid is younger than the others, maybe sixteen, a year younger than Machine. The kid
’s face is a mess of pimples and open sores. He moves fast, dives toward the nearest sofa and the twelve-gauge pump lying on the greasy cushions. But he’s not that fast.
Machine’s pistol tracks pimples’ leap. The kid hits the sofa, snatches up the shotgun and rolls fluidly to the middle of the floor, frantically working the shotgun’s slide. He’s got it halfway back before a pair of hollow-points smash through his nose and tear the back of his skull off. He crumples behind the gun.
Machine ejects the low clip, pockets it, locks a fresh one into the Smith, and de-cocks the automatic. His eyes skim over the carnage. Six dead men. Blood-streaked limbs, flesh the color of wet ashes, frozen faces with glazed-over eyes. Nothing more to do here. He stoops, collects his brass and turns for the door. He pauses just inside the sill and takes a quick look left and right down the murky corridor - all’s quiet - then turns back to the room. From the overcoat’s inside pocket he takes a one-liter plastic soda bottle. The bottle is filled with a mixture of gasoline, laundry detergent and alcohol. Homemade Napalm. The mouth of the bottle is corked with the cut off tip of a road flare. Directly beneath the flare is a small amount of gunpowder sealed in cellophane. A very simple detonator. Machine has been making them for years.
He pops off the flare’s end-cap and scrapes the igniter. A burst of blue-white lights up the room. He tosses the bottle into the middle of the apartment and turns for the door.
Time to go.
The Smith leads the way back down the stairs. Machine crouches at the exit, pushes back the plywood and takes a look out at the street. A sludgy drizzle has started to fall. The rising sun is a red-black tumor behind dirty clouds of smoke rising from the Easter Industries chemical plant. An ambulance's klaxon shrieks. The rippling roar of distant gunshots tears through the early morning silence.
Home.
Machine puts the Smith in its shoulder holster, ducks onto the stoop, drops down the steps and turns right. The rain is gritty against his skin, more chemical than water.
He’s halfway down the block when the napalm bomb detonates.
The explosion sends flames roaring out of the apartment windows and showers the street with glass and shattered brick. Machine doesn’t look back. The dead can do him no harm. His eyes pan the gloomy landscape ahead as he walks purposefully, but not quickly. He ducks down the alley at the middle of the block and breaks into a run. Even in Low Town, the fire will bring the cops and the fire trucks. Machine plans to be far away by then.
A beat-up Ford Granada is parked in an alley three blocks east. It doesn't look like much, bashed-in quarter panels, mismatched rims, and rusted fenders. But under the dents is webbed armor plating, bulletproof windows and self-inflating tires. The fuel-cell is reinforced with armor plate and connected to a three-hundred-fifty cubic inch engine. A nicer looking car would be stripped if left unattended in a Low Town alley; the Granada is ignored.
Machine kneels beside a stained mattress, reaches under the front bumper and deactivates the first of two detonators before unlocking the driver's side door. The dome light doesn't come on as the door opens; the bulb is in the glove compartment. He slides behind the wheel, puts the key in the ignition then reaches under the dash to flip another small toggle, deactivating the main detonator before cranking the car and putting it in gear.
The Granada rolls smoothly through the trash to the street. He flips on the headlights as he turns right, toward the old downtown, an area of Low Town now called the Free Zone.
2
Machine parks the Granada two blocks from his hotel, three blocks from the Metropolitan Transit Station. This is the heart of the Free Zone, an area set aside by the Christian Council as a discretionary enforcement zone. Vice crimes are not prosecuted here. It costs too much, and even good Christians need a place to let off steam. Any crime short of murder is ignored. The Christian Police, better known to the inhabitants of Low Town as the Jesus creeps, make arrests only when more labor is needed for the corporate farms and prison factories. But the creeps aren’t the real power in Low Town. That distinction belongs to the Children of The Blood Militia.
After the global economic melt-down of 2030, the Moral Revolution Party took control of the US Congress and the Christian Council took over Low Town. It wasn’t a peaceful transition. Food riots and antigovernment demonstrations were a daily occurrence. The Children of The Blood Militia, at that time one of a half-dozen civilian militias operating in the area, offered the newly appointed Council the use of their Shock Troops to restore order. The Council accepted and a bloody pact was made.
The Militia stopped the riots and demonstrations with bullets and hand grenades. Order was restored and five thousand corpses were buried in a mass grave. In the years since the revolution, the Militia has systematically wiped out every major street gang, except for the Playboy Gangster Crips and the Hammerskins, and formed a shaky alliance with the Kukov and the Scarpo crime families who still control the sex and drug trades. But the gang violence continues as the Militia and the remnants of the Crips fight it out. The gutters run red every night, but the Christian Council doesn't care how much blood the Militia spills, as long as New Town and its citizens are safe.
New Town was the Council's first big project. Two years after the Moral Revolution, in order to stimulate the economy and protect its middle class citizens from the criminal elements of Low Town, the Council began construction of the new city. It was completed in five years, one year behind schedule. Now, brick walls and armed guards divide the gleaming glass cubes of New Town from the decaying old city.
Machine locks the Granada, but he doesn't arm the explosives. Too many innocent bystanders. The Granada should be safe. The area is a red-light tourist zone, a spot of life in the dead old city, and heavily patrolled by the Christian Police and the Children of The Blood. Besides, he doesn't really care if someone steals it. He doesn't plan to see the Granada again. This is the last time he will need a work car.
It's over.
Morning comes slowly to the decaying old city groveling in the shadow of the new, shrouded in smoke from the chemical plant's black chimneys. Maids, clerks, janitors, and soot-blackened plant workers hurry through the rain, coming or going from a twelve-hour shift. The domestics and clerks take the shuttle to the gates of the walled city. The free plant workers, bent almost double, yellow eyes running inky streams, walk to the Metro and take the train to the Easter Industries Chemical plant.
Machine stays close to the buildings and joins the flow of sleepy, slow-moving people. The straights keep their eyes on the sidewalk, aware of everyone around them but not making eye contact. Even with the creep presence, the Free Zone is still Low Town, still the war zone.
Machine turns east on Washington Avenue toward his hotel. All the bars, sex dives, and bottle shops are closed, covered with steel shutters and iron grates. The neon signs are dead. The smells of vomit, urine, and stale sex rise from the gutters. It looks better at night with all the neon lights. A little better.
A bodega is just opening. A short, fat woman finishes rolling up the steel shutter as Machine approaches. On sight of him, she heads for the counter and the pistol tucked under the cash drawer.
Machine ducks out of the rain, into the store. The woman looks him over with narrowed eyes, not liking what she sees. She settles on the stool behind the counter, left hand out of sight.
The store is like most in Low Town, completely open to the street. A narrow counter fronts a small kitchen with a square slot in the wall for passing food through. A fly-specked menu is taped above the gap. The shelves that fill the body of the store are cluttered with small amounts of everything necessary or edible at twice the price of the same thing in New Town. At the back are coolers for beer, water, and soda. Machine heads for the counter, eyes on the menu.
The woman frowns. “Kitchen's not open,” she says, eyes flat, daring him to argue.
Machine makes no reply; he turns away, dripping gray on the yellow vinyl, and walks down the aisle, anxious to
be done and off the street. Daylight is a dangerous time in the Zone; the Jesus creeps don't mind leaving their cars as much.
He grabs packaged muffins, milk, juice, and an overripe banana, a real find in Low Town. With his left arm he cradles his selections, leaving his right hand free to grab the Smith. He returns to the register, dumps the food on the counter top and pulls out his wallet. The woman waits to see the cash before she rings it up. One look at the money and she smiles, becoming instantly friendly. Cash is always welcome. It leaves no electronic trail.
“You want a bag?” she asks, index finger hovering over the register.
“Yes.”
“One dollar recycle fee,” she warns, smiling, pantomiming emotion.
He nods.
She presses the button. “Twelve eighty-five, sir.” Cash makes him 'sir.' Even respectability is for sale in Low Town.
Machine passes over the bills, wrinkled and worn, small denominations. Working money. He glances toward the street as the woman bags his breakfast in plastic.
A junkie is picking through the gutter, gathering cigarette butts, muttering to himself. As Machine watches him, a Jesus creep battle cruiser rolls to a stop out front.
The cop car is low, glistening black armor with mirrored windows. A motorized fifty caliber machine gun, equipped with armor-piercing and mini HEAT rounds, is concealed under a dome bulging from the roof. Two Jesus creeps, invisible behind the one-way glass, come standard. They are Kevlar-armored and equipped with Pancor Jackhammer twelve-gauges and Glock-17’s. Bad news.
Machine turns back to the counter feeling the cops' eyes on him. Tension crawls up his spine and bunches the muscles in his neck. It only lasts a second before the cold ruthlessness floods his heart. Back to work. Back to killing, if necessary.
Calmly he takes his change from the woman and dumps it in his pocket. With his left-hand, he takes the plastic bag and turns for the street, right hand under the overcoat, fingertips on the Smith.
The battle cruiser is gone.