by Andy Remic
And Horace had a trump card.
He knew from whence the intel was leaked...
Horace walked, through rain and mud. Occasionally a truck would pass him on the road, a great lumbering beast, gears crunching, engine labouring, tyres grinding through mud and sludge on its way to or from a rendezvous with waste. Horace tended to step back from the road when such a vehicle passed, lowering his head. No need in advertising his whereabouts unnecessarily, he reasoned. And he knew he was invisible to these people; these drivers and workers and wastemongers. He was a ghost.
The lights on the hill twinkled like a beacon, and Horace stopped in the mud by a road sign warning “NO TIPPING.” Ahh, that would be Greenstar’s amazingly surreal sense of humour, would it? No tipping? On the Toxic World? Boom-tisch. Comedy at its most sophisticated. Horace stood for a while, watching those distant lights, then his eyes traced the winding road back down the steep hillside, twisting like a snake to his present position.
He continued to walk, trudging along, his pace never faltering. Behind him, even through the darkness, a green smog hung over Bacillus Port like a bad toupee. Horace pushed on, legs working hard, his bald head slick with dark rain. But no matter. Soon he would have his answers, and head back to the Hilton, and dry off, and freshen up...
The gradient increased, and Horace had to work hard, but still showed no signs of fatigue. After all, he’d climbed a thousand mountains in his life; both physical and metaphorical. None of them caused him problems. Not one. Horace didn’t get tired. And he never got angry. Never get angry...
Because.
Well, because bad things happened when he was angry.
It took him a half hour, and closing on the house - which wasn’t so much a house, as a vast mansion of the über-wealthy - Horace slowed and observed. There were high iron gates and a high chain-link fence. Horace’s experienced eyes picked out surveillance cameras. There was also a sign. For attack dogs. Horace moved off the road, swift now, sure-footed on the drenched, hardy heather of the hillside. He crept around the edges of the perimeter fence until he found a suitable spot, distant enough from the imposing white house, and situated on a rear corner of the property. He moved to the chain links, scanned them, witnessed the anti-intrusion wires. He placed his briefcase on the heather, finding a nice flat spot, and listened to the rain drumming on its cheap leather for a moment before opening it and taking out several pieces of filament silver. These, he wove into the fence, and watched them ripple and then merge. He removed cutters, and starting at hip-height, cut downwards to create his entry point. He could hear the tiny snicks as the filament wire intercepted digital signals, blended them, and soothed the system so that there was no alarm.
Through the fence, dragging his case after him, Horace settled into the darkness and surveyed the surveyors. There were twelve cameras he could detect from this position; and until he could get to a master hub, he would have to do it the hard way. The Seeker P5K fired a narrow-range atomic pellet. Horace took out the cameras one by one. He knew if there was somebody physically monitoring the cameras, it would be a dead giveaway to intrusion; but then, that mattered little at this point. This was mostly to prevent leaving any evidence. Horace was in. And the police, guards, army - they were at least five minutes away. That was enough. That was always enough.
Horace moved forward in a commando crawl, which must have looked ridiculous to any onlooker; a bald man in a suit with a briefcase, commando crawling across lawns and gravel drives. But it worked for him. Horace had little use for comedy.
He reached the wall, a mixture of stone and rendering. The windows were old and made from steel. Glancing left and right, Horace heard the attack dogs coming from the darkness, with a pitter patter of promised violence. The lead dog snarled from the darkness, a huge black and tan beast baring its fangs, saliva drooling at the thrill of a fight and a feast. It leapt for Horace, and was easily half his size, rippling with muscle and a coiled spring of aggression.
Horace moved fast, stepping forward, left hand grabbing its long snout in mid-air, right hand cutting under, between the dog’s legs, and grabbing its cock and balls in one great handful. The dog, surprised at this sudden turn of events, grunted and Horace... folded it in half, with a terrible cracking of breaking spine and neck and jaw. The dog hit the ground limply, as its four brethren emerged from the darkness like demons. They were growling, eyes fixed and focused, long strings of saliva pooling from twisted fangs.
Horace held both hands wide, almost in pleading, in supplication, in a posture begging forgiveness.
“Here, doggy doggy,” he said, and the dogs leapt...
The night was soon filled with snapping, cracking and breaking sounds.
~ * ~
HAVING REMOVED HIS shoes, Horace padded silently through the house. The place oozed opulence, but in bad taste. The sort of opulence learned by a poor person who’d made it good and rich, as opposed to opulence instilled by decades of breeding and education. It mattered little to Horace. Because Horace was The Dentist, and he was here to do his job.
He’d found the central console for the alarm system, and with deft fingers, had twisted, removed components, and isolated the entire camera and alarm system to external alert. It was almost with disappointment that he realised there were no armed guards to kill. Obviously, this particular politician-slash-Greenstar-company-director hadn’t quite upset enough people just yet. But it would come, Horace knew. It always did.
The stairs were broad, sweeping in a generous curve to a wide balcony overhead. Horace moved at a leisurely pace. There was no hurry. His target wasn’t going anywhere, he would be asleep and fat and snoring, with his snoring fat wife beside him, both of them pumped and slumped on rich food and red wine and bad perfume and drunk sex. After all, it was Saturday night.
He searched through various rooms before finding the master bedroom. The door opened softly on well-oiled hinges, the work of a master craftsman; ironic to find one operating on a planet filled with junk. Still, Horace was wise enough to understand the entire planet of Amaranth would hold these pockets of perfection every once in a while. Power and wealth bought quality no matter on what shit-hole one decided to exist. Horace chose the word exist as opposed to live. For Horace didn’t believe that people such as this, with planetary atrocity on their tox-smeared hands, could ever truly live. Living was what the noble of heart did. Existing... well. He smiled. That was left to the rest of the trash.
The bed was large and vulgar, as befitted a director of Greenstar. Two blubber mounds were tunnelled under the blankets like fattened, hibernating pigs. One was snoring like bubbles blown through a mouthful of marbles. Horace gave a narrow, straight smile. Oh, the comedy of the situation! It will be a pleasure cutting the slabs of fat from your distended bellies...
Horace’s nostrils twitched and his eyes flared and he knew in an instant something was wrong. A metallic scent. The scent of...
A boot hit his head, slamming him backwards to the ground, where he rolled fast, savagely, into a crouch. The figure, highlighted by weak starlight, landed, whirled, and Horace caught the flash of silver. A knife. The attacker came at him again, knife slashing down left, right, left. Horace shifted from each stroke, then grabbed the wrist, ducked under a right hook, spinning behind the attacker, and dragged the knife back into the attacker’s own chest. Horace let go and front-kicked the attacker away, and an almost sixth sense alerted him and he twitched, as a second attacker flew by him. He grabbed the figure from the air by the ankles, swinging it around and launching it at the wall, where there came a crash and the smash of a large mirror, and assailant, mirror shards and broken frame all landed on the bed, revealing the dummies within.
A set-up.
Horace smiled grimly. A fucking set-up?
That normally happened to other people.
The two attackers were on their feet, a knife in the chest not even slowing the first figure. Clouds had shifted outside, and by green starlight Horace saw t
he two attackers were - women. This didn’t matter. He’d killed women. Children. Priests on the job. Politicians on the toilet. It was all the same kettle of mashed-up organic pulp from where he was standing.
And yet it made it interesting.
Horace moved his head left, then right, releasing cracks of tension, and lifted his fists. His T5 9mm was in his pocket; not enough time for that.
“Who sent you?”
No answer. They launched at him, silent, professional. He dodged various punches and over-athletic high kicks, then dropped and slammed sideways, sweeping the feet of the first attacker. She hit the carpet with an “umph” and Horace grabbed the knife in her chest and wrenched it sideways. There came a flush of blood, and the woman seemed to deflate. She sighed. Horace rammed the knife into her eyeball with such power it drove through eye, brain and skull, and pinned her head to the floorboards beneath. She lay, body spasming and twitching, head pinned in place.
Horace rolled, came up, and looked down the twin barrels of a D4 shotgun. He slammed left as the boom deafened him, making his ear ring, and something cut a searing hot line over his right shoulder. He dived into his pocket, T5 in his hand, and was shooting through the fabric even as he rolled and hit the wall with a slap. Bullets fizzed and whined, ruining the cut of his mud-splattered suit. Another shadow passed the doorway.
A third attacker.
Horace clenched his jaw, pulled out the T5, and put ten rounds through the wall. There came a thump. He smiled. Horace had been conned like that before.
He scanned the sudden bleak darkness; an awesome, deafening silence.
Rain battered against the windows. Gun smoke hung heavy in the air, shimmering in twisting slow-mo coils
Horace eased himself upright, T5 tracking the gloom. He knew his bald head shone under any form of light, and it was moments like this he cursed his baldness with a wry irony. Oh, to be killed by his bald head! That would be a great line for the stand-ups.
Lowering himself to the carpet again, on his belly, Horace scanned the room. There. At the head of the bed. Slowly, he extended his T5 and aimed, waiting, breath held, body rigid. And then the feet were gone, and Horace rolled as a D4 boom spat fire and ferocity at the point where he’d lain. The T5 gave a crack and he heard the splatter of blood on wallpaper. Still tracking, he fired again, blind but precise. Another crack. Another splatter. There was a thud as the shotgun hit the carpet, and Horace stood. He moved through the gloom to the shotgun, picked it up, checked it was still loaded. Then he stepped backwards and to the side, poking his head out into the hall. Another woman, lying on the patterned carpet, face screwed in silent agony, clutching three bullet holes in her belly. Horace gave a nod, and moved back in. The attacker who’d taken two rounds was crawling towards the wall -and God only knew what. There was no escape there. But maybe... were they here to protect the Greenstar director, or to kill him? It was unlikely both were true. So which was it?
Horace walked forward, wary of more attackers leaping on him from the dark. He hated that. Hated it with a vengeance. Horace liked to be in control. Horace liked to be calling the winning shots. Horace liked to be the one behind the pistol. Like... now.
He knelt on the shot woman, feeling blood pump from her wounds as he did so. She groaned, and Horace put the T5 against her lips.
“Who sent you?”
“Fuck off.”
“You’re an android, right?”
“Fuck you.”
“So this isn’t murder, my beautiful little sweetie pie. When I merge your teeth with your brain with the carpet, it’s just a retirement, as the old cops used to say. A put down. A meat wrap. And, I might add from a personal viewpoint, a fucking pleasure.”
“Go. To. Hell.”
“I doubt it,” said Horace, and grabbed her hair, dragging her kicking and groaning across the carpet and out into the hall. The second attacker was still clutching her stomach, and Horace’s eyes narrowed as he made a shrewd judgement. Which one would last the longest? Which would talk the most? The prettier one would probably have more self confidence, but then with these fucking androids it was all a sham anyway. He smiled at the irony. To think like the killer. To hunt like the predator. To retire an android with complete understanding.
Horace did so like his work.
“Who talks first? The one who talks, lives.”
The two women, side by side now, glanced at one another uneasily. “Don’t tell him anything,” snarled the T5-wounded android. Horace knelt on her, his knees compressing her small, pert breasts. Again, he put the gun against her lips and glanced to the android with triple stomach wounds.
“Talk, or I kill her.”
“No.”
“Talk.”
“Fuck you.”
Horace shot the android through the mouth; through her clenched teeth. Broken teeth and the bullet mashed into her brain, pulping the innards, before exiting into the floorboards. The android went limp, slack, dead. Blood flooded out in a large black pool.
“You next,” said Horace, T5 turned on her. And he knew; deep in his heart he knew she wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t blab, wouldn’t sing like a canary. Because that was the way she was created. Engineered. Unless... unless she had the dreams, the visions, the longing for humanity that so many androids seemed to capture like a particularly nasty virus. The plague of the engineered human. A need to be human.
Horace spat to the side.
“There’s no heaven for you, bitch. You’re a created thing. A fucking machine. When you die, you’ll fade into dust. Your memory will be as nothing when the valves stop working.”
“What’s your name?” she whispered.
Horace tilted his head. Interesting.
“They call me The Dentist,” he said.
“I have heard of you.”
Ah! So, not here to eliminate him. Or rather, if they were, they had no idea who they were dealing with.
“Were you sent to kill me? Or were you just here to protect the Greenstar director?”
“To kill you,” she whispered, and tears filled her eyes, bubbling up, spilling down her blood-speckled cheeks.
“Good girl,” he said, and eased himself up from the dead meat on which he knelt.
“What’s your name?” asked the crying android.
“The Dentist.”
“No. No. Your real name.”
Horace stepped over her, and lowered himself to crouch above her. He stared down into her frightened eyes. And that wasn’t right. There shouldn’t be fear there. After all, she wasn’t human, and she knew it.
“Horace,” he said. “And you?”
“I am Michelle. Listen, Horace. I don’t want to die, Horace.” Her hands clasped his legs, then. Clasped the fine material of his suit, splattered with mud. He noted her hair was tied back in a pony-tail. She was quite pretty, when her face wasn’t scrunched up in agony.
“Michelle, my sweet. Nobody wants to die,” he smiled, and placed his T5 in his pocket.
“So you won’t kill me?”
Horace considered this, then reached forward, took hold of her jaw with one hand, and with a wrench, pulled her front tooth free with the other. Blood spurted and drooled down her shirt. Michelle writhed. Horace’s eyes gleamed.
“Not yet,” he breathed, and strange wild thoughts were flickering through his brain. “I have some more questions.”
“I’ll talk!” hissed Michelle through a mouthful of blood, spraying him with a fine mist. “You don’t need to torture me! I will talk!”
“I know you will,” said Horace, and pulling out a small, black pack from his inner suit pocket, he unrolled it on the ground. It was full of gleaming silver instruments.
“Please don’t torture me,” wailed Michelle.
“I must,” said Horace, with the calmness of a surgeon.
“But why?”
Horace gave a comforting smile to his patient, and the corner of his eye twitched. “Because I must,” he said.
~ * ~
<
br /> IT WAS OVER. Perhaps an hour had passed; maybe less. Horace sat with his back to the wall, exhausted and fulfilled. Some people said alcoholic drink was the best intoxication in the world. Others, a wild plethora of drugs which could stimulate any variety of wild experience. Yet others voted for virtual battlefields to get their milporn juices going, and others a rabid addiction to sex and all its various deviations. But in Horace’s heart, in his soul, he knew nothing touched perfection like the creation of true art.
Horace looked over at his true art. She was dead now, of course. Her arms and legs were all broken and twisted at savage, irregular angles. Well, he’d had to, hadn’t he? To stop her fighting like that. He looked at her face, at the ring of her blood-sodden skull; her beautiful, wounded, scalpel- and needle-destroyed face. She was no longer Michelle, of course. No. Horace had taken that away from her, starting with her teeth, one by one, each removal an exquisite pleasure, each snap and crack of bone a shiver of ultimate arousing ecstasy. On one side, he had piled up the teeth in a neat little pile, as Michelle fought and battled, struck at him, cursed him and begged him, weeping and screaming in equal measures. That’s when he broke her arms like brittle twigs. After all, he didn’t want her to tear his suit.