Witpunk

by Claude Lalumiere; Marty Halpern

Three quarters of me was delighted the swine had got his due, the rest was apprehensive about what would happen to me.

  "Do I become the property of Southern Cable?" I asked Mo.

  "No," she said. "You're still Jezzer's. The law assigns you into the custody of a named individual for the duration of sentence. You can't be sold, though he can hire you out and keep your earnings."

  I had this appalling vision of him undercutting the local paperboy . . .

  "You're in a much more powerful position," said Mo. "If he needs you, he's got to start being nice. And Wayne needs to carry on being nice to me if he wants his kids looked after properly while his wife works to supplement the family budget. So in view of your declaration of your feelings, I can no longer see any objection to our performing a full-on Frenchie snog right here in broad daylight, but for the sake of the children I'll have no groping . . ."

  I accepted her invitation with more speed than grace. We canoodled like teenagers for a blissful eternity, only coming up when we heard the dog barking in front of us and a child's voice saying, "Eurrrgh! What are they doing?"

  Jezzer was talking to his solicitor when I got back: ". . . listen, even if I did want to talk to LBM – and I admit the thought had crossed my mind – I wouldn't dream of doing something as stupid and obvious as that . . ."

  The man on the screen sighed and went on about how Industrial Tribunals had been abolished. He'd have to go for a civil action, and that'd cost.

  I retired to the garage and my books. When I looked in again midevening, Jezzer was in a heap in an armchair, cradling a nearempty bottle of panther sweat.

  I went to the kitchen, perched myself at the breakfast bar, and helped myself to bread and jam. It was hazardous, but I had to eat.

  Jezzer stumbled in, red-eyed.

  "It was Wayne, boring old useless old Wayne Roberts," he said to himself. "It must have been. He suggested Sir David look at everyone's bills. He fitted me up so's he'd get my job . . ."

  He leaned heavily over the sink, turned on the cold tap and splashed water on his face. "What a state," he said. "What a bloody awful mess. Wife leaves me, kicked out of my job. Jeez, what a bloody mess . . ."

  He turned to me. "I'm not as bad as you, though." He laughed a little. "No. I'm not a loser. Henderson is the best there is."

  He opened the cupboard and took out his little onyx pillbox. Before I could decide whether or not to stop him, he had popped two of IJ's pills.

  "Still the fucking best," he said, and crashed out of the room and up the stairs.

  I didn't know what the pills were, but I knew he shouldn't be doing them in his loaded state.

  I went to the bottom of the stairs. Before I could figure out how to stop him, he appeared on the landing, suited up. In his hand he held the remote, and into a silk sash around his waist was tucked a real samurai sword.

  Oh bother.

  "Out of my way, loser," he said, waving the remote. "Any trouble out of you and I'll immobilize you and cut your fucking balls off."

  Oh well, I thought, standing aside as he thumped down the stairs, on your own head be it, Jezzer, mate.

  I watched from the kitchen window as he stood on the lawn, pulled down the visor, drew the sword, and started swishing it around in the air, occasionally letting out some bloodthirsty yell as yet another phantom enemy fell to his cold steel.

  Nothing weird happened through twenty minutes of this. I began hoping the pills were duds, and I'd plugged in Hieronymus the wrong way.

  But no. Somewhere in Jezzer's head, his samurai opponents began to shape shift.

  (IJ explained some days later. The pills were his own recipe, involving caffeine, a load of ketamine, a little acid, and a few other things. On arriving at Sir David's home, IJ immediately identified the man's twenty-four-year-old son as a feckless slacker and had discovered and ransacked his stash in exactly twenty-seven minutes. Hieronymus was IJ's own creation; he'd taken a couple of Bosch paintings and used one of Sir David's machines to assemble a plug that kicked into the Bushido game. At first, the images were subliminal, gradually accelerating into limited animation, until the point at which Jezzer, tanked up on a hallucinogen which can give you nightmares if you're not a happy bunny, found himself in hell.)

  Jezzer was chasing next door's cat across the lawn with that sword, which no doubt had been lovingly sharpened.

  I ran out, too late. The cat let out an astonished howl and cleared the fence in a single leap, leaving half its tail on the garden path.

  "Stop, JH, stop!" I yelled. "Take the mask off!"

  To my relief, he did, and looked around like he'd just beamed down from another planet. He threw the mask to the ground in disgust.

  Then he walked to his 4WD. "It's Wayne, it's fucking Wayne Roberts who shafted me. They're all trying to destroy me. Wayne, Sir Frigging David, Natasha . . ." He looked at me. "And you!" He pointed the sword at me.

  He opened the car door, threw the sword onto the passenger seat. "I'll sort you later," he said, starting the engine.

  The Lada lurched out onto the road and sped away.

  I gave chase. He quickly lost me, but I knew where he was going with that sword. To where Wayne Roberts, his wife, four kids – and Mo – were.

  The Roberts house was ten minutes' walk away. I got there in two. It fronted onto the village green, a patch of grass about the size of a football field with a few park benches and flowerbeds and a venerable old oak in the middle.

  Jezzer's Lada was smashed into the low brick wall at the front of Wayne's house.

  In the car, Freddie Mercury was singing "We Are the Champions of the World" loud enough to drown an aero-engine, and Jezzer stood on the front lawn waving his sword, demanding Wayne come out to fight him like a man, and not cower like the treacherous piece of shit he actually was.

  All the lights in the house were on, but I couldn't see anyone at the windows. I prayed that Mo and the kids, at least, had slipped out of the back door, or had barricaded themselves in securely.

  "Jezz . . . Jeremy . . . JH, stop, for God's sake, stop," I yelled as I ran across the green towards him. He didn't even look at me, but in one smooth movement his left hand swept into the air and descended again to point at me.

  I stumbled and fell. I couldn't get up again. He'd had the remote in his hand. I'd been immobilized.

  I lay on the grass village green about thirty meters from Jezzer, utterly helpless, but I could see everything.

  It was like this:

  Another 4WD pulls up close by and out climb both the shift rent-a-cops. They look at one another as if to say "you tell me what to do so's you get the blame if we screw up."

  These people protect the community from the barbarians outside; they don't have a freaking clue what to do with an actual resident who's gone harpic. They've not been trained in counseling skills. (Actually, they haven't been trained in anything.)

  Jezzer sees them and is still having flashbacks about demons; he turns, lets out a ghastly scream, lifts the sword high above his head with both hands, and charges at them.

  For one of those frozen moments, the goons can only gape. Then, cartoon characters, both turn and run. A moment longer and the nearest would have ended up with his head split neatly in two and with a sword lodged in his sternum.

  Jezzer pulls up, stretches his arms out and bows, as though being applauded by an imaginary audience and sings along with the stereo.

  "Weeeeeeeee are ther champions mah fre-hend . . . !"

  As he turns, the tip of his sword touches the goons' 4WD. He stops, looks at me with a dastardly leer, and says, "I wonder . . . ?"

  He pulls open the door on the passenger side and emerges with an assault rifle with a big tube running along the bottom of the barrel.

  He laughs triumphantly, lays the gun on the bonnet of the car and oh-so-reverently sheathes his sword.

  The gun has three magazines taped together. He pulls the first out and satisfies himself it's fully charged. He pushes it back in and cock
s the gun. He reaches into the car again and brings out what looks like a weightlifter's belt with tin cans attached. He takes the first of the cans, pokes it into the rear end of the tube below the gun barrel, and slings the belt over his shoulder.

  I could have told you someone would get hurt when the government allowed rent-a-cops to be armed. Business is business; you've got to control costs, so you hire people who'll bring their own tools – friendless losers and fantasists who'll work double-shifts for a price of a tin of beans per hour, on the promise that one day they might – just might – get to lob rocket-propelled grenades (which they've paid for themselves) at a house-breaker or a twocker.

  The main bedroom window in the Roberts house briefly glows orange, then the glass bursts out in millions of beautiful crystal fragments.

  The curtains billow out after them. Only then is there any noise. It's quite loud.

  "Put the gun down now!" shouts one of the goons from outside my field of view. Jezzer turns and fires the rifle on automatic.

  He empties the whole magazine. Bullets ricochet, crack, and whine deafeningly from a stone wall close by.

  He loads another grenade and fires it through a downstairs window of Wayne's house.

  I have let Jesus into my heart; I am praying, really praying, for the first time since Mum told me that Jesus and Santa were two different people, praying that Mo and the kids and their parents are out of the house.

  And Freddie Mercury is preening himself on the car sound system, something about having just killed a man, Mama . . .

  There's a lot of noise else. Jezzer has alerted the whole village, and there's a deal of screaming and shouting all around.

  He loads another grenade and fires it towards the far side of the green. I can't see where it goes, but the explosion is close.

  There's this agonized creaking of wood and a sort of crump noise.

  Jezzer has wasted the olde oak tree, pride of Hinton Lea.

  Nothing happens for a while.

  Now, we see that some resourceful member of the community has Done Something. From a side road emerges a drudge, a domestic robot with a happy smiling friendly helpful face-decal at the top. And a shotgun held in the arms that normally take the feather duster and the bog-brush.

  Its owner must have rigged some kind of radio control, but it's academic. A well-aimed RPG from Jezzer turns Helpful Henry into a cloudburst of components.

  Its happy face flops to the ground a few feet from mine.

  What's that old movie where the two Americans end up surrounded by the whole Bolivian army? It's like that; there are suddenly dozens of people firing guns at Jezzer from three sides of the green, with more joining in all the time.

  Several men and quite a few women have mustered like the stout yeomanry of old to save the town. They've formed a posse with their shotguns and licensed pistols, their .22s and even air rifles. They crouch behind garden walls and other cover to blast away at Jezzer.

  As well as worrying about Mo and the Roberts household, I am now concerned about me. The sky is crowding with projectiles, and I can't even bat my eyelids for help, never mind crawl away. I suppose if anyone's noticed me lying here they think I'm dead.

  Freddie Mercury assures us that he and his mates will rock us.

  The Hinton Lea Home Guard are all lousy shots; most of the shotgun owners only use them occasionally for clay pigeons, and the pistol owners are firing from too far away.

  So Jezzer stands there in full view, and looses four more RPGs in various directions.

  This only stings his tormentors to redouble their efforts.

  The 12-bores are making a real mess of his Lada.

  Only when Freddie finally falls silent does Jezzer realize he's in a hostile environment. He steps back and disappears behind Wayne's garden wall.

  A bullet furrows into the ground in front of me. Then another. And another, which I swear actually touches the tip of my nose.

  I'm moving. Someone brave is dragging me towards the comparative shelter of a nearby garden.

  "Are you all right?" says the voice I most love in all the world. Mo's face is right in front of mine.

  I can't respond.

  "Oh no!" she says to someone next to her. "He must be hurt. Where does it hurt? Have you been paralyzed my love . . . Oh. Paralyzed. Oh. That's all right then. Jezzer's immobilized him . . . Brian, darling. I'll have to leave you here for a moment. We have to get the children out. I'll come back to you in a minute . . ."

  Someone shouts from the far side of the green, telling Jezzer to surrender before anyone gets seriously hurt.

  Jezzer gets up and fires another grenade.

  He doesn't dive back to cover immediately. He stands in full view and rests the butt of the gun on his hip and surveys the town contemptuously.

  Although he's an easy target, everyone stops shooting. Maybe they're impressed, or want to savor this moment before the mad dog's last stand. I am certain that for most of the people here this is a game; there may be plenty of worried, terrified people elsewhere in the village, but the idea that guns and grenades maim and kill hasn't occurred to anyone who's come to play tonight. They've seen too many movies not to know that the good guy always lives in the end.

  Suddenly, I am in pain.

  I can move again.

  I slowly, carefully, get to my knees.

  Jezzer is holding the remote up high. "Brian, where are you? You're not much of a hostage, but you're all I've got. Come here, come to Uncle Jeremy."

  I'm willing. Maybe I can talk him out of this lunacy. I get up to a crouch and wave my arms around in the air to show everyone where I am.

  Someone lets off a shot at Jezzer from close by.

  The remote held aloft in his hand disintegrates like a clay pigeon.

  He looks at the hand where the zapper used to be, shaking his head in bemusement.

  And that is all the chance I need. Like a jungle cat, I spring from my haunches over the wall and onto Jezzer before he can bring the gun to bear on me.

  I get him on the ground. He is bigger than me, fitter than me, and more bonkers than me. But I am mad as hell, and to his K-addled brain, I look like the Lord of Darkness himself. So within moments, he's wailing in existential despair because he thinks that Satan himself is going to be kicking him in the bollocks like this for all eternity.

  The citizens were all for hanging him from the remains of the olde oak tree, but it wasn't high enough, and then the police SWAT team helicoptered in to rescue him.

  There were a few bruises and scratches, and lots of ringing ears, but no major injuries. Hinton Lea feted me as the hero of the hour, though you could tell a lot of them were a bit disappointed that the drama had not achieved a fitting conclusion.

  You'd think they'd be sufficiently grateful to petition for my early release, or at least a few months' parole. But oh no. Fair and grateful people don't get to live in places like Hinton Lea.

  The trial was straightforward enough. I'd got rid of the chip back on his suit visor in the garden, and everyone thought he'd just scored a bad batch of pills. So he was sentenced to tagging for life, but the legal squabbles over Jezzer and his property were another matter.

  The judge made some very fine calculations according to all the people Jezzer had harmed. A big piece of him went to Wayne Roberts, another slice to Hinton Lea as a whole. Other individuals who had been injured or whose property had been damaged won minor portions.

  Hundreds of others claimed his actions had stressed them so much they were on tranks or in counseling and entered claims for a morsel of Jezzer or his property. Also, Natasha filed for divorce, demanding half his stuff.

  While the lawyers argue, Jezzer and I belong to Hinton Lea, our labors administered by the Community Council. I don't know who the official remote-holder is, but I've not seen one since that night.

  Jezzer sleeps in the attic of the Parish Hall.

  I'm sharing Wayne's family caravan with Mo.

  Wayne wasn't keen on
this arrangement, and still fears for the caravan's suspension. Mo quietly explained to him how complicated things might become if she were to tell the police about how she had been the one who got Jezzer sacked. Wayne might lose his nice, new, and better-paid job (the one that Jezzer used to have), and it would mean that Jezzer would have to have a retrial and . . .

  Wayne saw that she spoke with great wisdom and caved in gracefully. On what we think of as our "wedding night," he left a half-bottle of Happy Shopper champagne by the bedside. See? A considerate gesture doesn't have to cost much, does it?

  Wayne understands that you've got to meet people in the middle, even if they are taggies.