by Andy Remic
And with a cold clarity Jenny realised she could not blame them. How could she blame them? This wasn’t an exercise in strength or bravado or manhood. And as she watched Randy Zaglax appear, carrying a long, thin hypodermic needle, her mouth dry and stale with the taste of old blood, her skull throbbing from forced teeth extraction, Jenny Xi knew it was simply an exercise in survival.
“This is going to hurt,” said Randy, brutally, his destroyed face flapping.
The needle pushed into her throat, sinking deep, and she gritted her teeth and forced herself not to cry out. Then the stars fluttered like escaping butterflies and the world went dark.
~ * ~
NINE
“HELLO THERE, HORACE,” said Juliette JohNagle, the man-i-woman creature, an entity of merged flesh, of two human beings forced and squeezed and crow-barred genetically into one frame. Horace groaned, tongue lolling, sight not yet returned, and yet his instinct kicked in and a natural violence, a need to kill and to survive, was in his heart. He lurched forward, but tight bands of steel around his ankles and wrists held him to the wall. Cruel laughter mocked him.
“Go on, son, do your best. You’re the fucking Dentist, aren’t you? Sent here by God-only-knows-who to take me out. Well, sunshine, we’ve been watching you. Watching you enter the hotel, anyway. We have files on you, y’know? We’re not as stupid as you think. Are we? No, we’re not.”
Horace frowned. Pain beat his head like a hammer. He could taste blood.
Horace opened his eyes. The world was blurred at first, but swam slowly into focus. They were in an extensive hotel suite. It was daytime, now, and green sunlight blazed beyond high smoked windows. In the distance, the Biohazard Ocean gleamed like mercury.
“Worm got your tongue?”
“The worms,” spat Horace, focussing on his captors. There were two stocky men, typical bruiser types, heavy on neck muscle, steroid suppositories and mental napalm. They bulged in suits too small for them, presumably to make them look larger and more intimidating. To Horace, it just meant a larger surface area.
Silka? questioned his mind, but he bit his tongue before he said her name.
Dead, probably. But... maybe not.
“The worms?” said JohNagle, and grinned through a face like a breeze block. “Yeah, we froze the worms. But they’re still inside you. Move away from this controller” - a stubby fist showed Horace a small red globe - “and they’ll warm up, continue their little journey to feast on your heart and lungs and kidney and liver and spleen. They like a bit of spleen, do our little wormies. Ain’t that right, guys?”
There came some grunts.
“So... you’re Juliette?”
“Yeah, Juliette JohNagle. What of it?” grunted the politician. Horace confessed to having never seen a picture of this particular director of Greenstar. He had imagined a creature of feminine persuasion, but if anything, JohNagle was more masculine than masculine. Like a big fat bricklayer pumped up on steroids and fed nothing but meat pies for a decade.
“I just imagined you’d be... shorter,” said Horace.
“Very fucking funny,” snapped JohNagle, levering hisher bulk to hisher feet, and stomping across the carpet towards Horace. “Just because I have the finesse of a builder doesn’t mean I have the brain of one. So shove that up your arse and squirt it.”
“Charming,” said Horace.
“Who sent you?” said JohNagle.
Horace’s mouth clamped shut. It was That Time again. And That Time was a Bad Time. Horace readied himself, because it would hurt, but he had the ability not just to shut down from pain, but to shut down his body entirely. In effect, he could play dead, although he would have to suffer a pretty hefty beating first in order to make the “death” plausible. It was a trick shot, built into all Anarchy Androids...
He looked up into JohNagle’s grinning eyes. “Yeah, that’s right,” mouthed the pudgy face. All it was missing were forehead tattoos and stubble. Heshe certainly looked quite wrong in the bright red shade of lipstick heshe wore. And the blue dress over the hairy legs and big, fat hairy feet in red high-heels took some beating, to Horace’s imagination. It wasn’t even the effect of a badly orchestrated drag queen; no. Horace quite liked drag queens. Drag queens were fun. No, this creature, this unnatural merging of two different entities was just plain wrong - wrong, because it wasn’t truly one thing or the other. Not that Horace cared, because he was about to have his skull caved in by a political lunatic.
JohNagle continued, eyes alight with good humour and a glint of superiority. “I know what you are, Anarchy man. And I know you play dead. Which is why, the minute you shut down that pretty little body of yours, we’re going to cut off your hands and feet.” Heshe produced a long, narrow, serrated black blade. “I used to be a butcher, so it really don’t bother me overmuch.”
“That’s quite a work history you have,” said Horace, smiling.
“Don’t try and be fucking smart. Now talk. Who sent you?”
Horace closed his mouth, and stared at JohNagle, and then he closed his eyes. He heard a swish, a gesture, and felt the two hefty beefcakes closing in on him. When the first punch connected it was a shock. It’s always a shock. But after a while he rolled with the punches and felt himself swimming in an ocean not quite of pain, but of disappointment and frustration.
Brought down by his own fucking arrogance.
Never lose your temper...
The blows rained in. A pounding, like the Biohazard Ocean against a beach of insane improbability... and Horace felt himself slipping, falling, drifting, until he heard the laughter, and anger flared a bright rage that burned from the pit of his stomach all the way up his oesophagus and into the centre of his burning fucking brain. How dare you laugh at me, thought Horace, and information flooded into him from a different source, a different world, a different realm - and he felt, bizarrely, as if he was being fed information, because it was certainly not information he’d acquired on his own, and it came in a stream, like sausages of data from a sausage machine... and the man-i-woman known as JohNagle is not what you think it is, it’s an alien construct and as such cannot be killed in the normal way of most human beings, and the worms inside you have been frozen, yes, and you must cut into your flesh in the proximity of the freeze globe and remove them or they’ll shred your heart and shred your life, and we are waiting for you because we have seen you, and we have waited these long, cold years, can you see us? can you hear us? can you feel us? for our flesh is your flesh and in the great cycle of things, we are all truly one being...
Horace opened his eyes. Blinked. He spat out blood and, ironically, a tooth.
“Lucky they call you The Dentist,” crowed Juliette JohNagle, hopping from one fat high-heel to the other and back again in an almost tribal dance, fists punching the air, face filled with glee at his pain and suffering...“Anyway, why do they call you The Dentist?”
The sound came from beyond the spectrum of human hearing, a high-pitched sbreeeeeeeee that seemed to go on and on and on, in a slowly descending spiral, and as it reached human hearing the two grunts went, “Huh?” and there was a blur, and something landed on one of the beefcakes’ shoulders, ran around the back of his head, and drilled through the back of his cranium with teeth gnashing and spinning like drill bits and thrashing gears. All Horace saw was Silka emerge from the man’s suddenly destroyed face like a mini tornado, all teeth and claws and fur in a blood slick, grinning like a lunatic having a good ol’ time. Then she leapt and chewed through the bands on Horace’s wrists, teeth moving like a diamond-tipped blade and rattling through the steel in an instant.
With hands free, Horace clenched and unclenched his fists, staring hard at JohNagle as if weighing up the man-i-woman; weighing up the odds. Silka had dropped to his ankles and gnawed through the bonds, and Horace stepped forward.
“Kill him!” screamed JohNagle, taking several staggered, panicked steps back.
The remaining beefcake launched at The Dentist, who delivere
d a powerful right straight - fist slamming through teeth, opening, grabbing the man’s lower jaw, and wrenching it out through the hole in the front of his face.
Horace stared at the slick, bloody, broken jaw for a moment. So did the beefcake. Then his eyes rolled up, and he hit the thick hotel carpet on his face.
“No!” screamed JohNagle, “No, no, no!” as Horace dropped the jaw on top of the corpse.
“To answer your question, MrMrs JohNagle, they call me The Dentist because... well.” He smiled. “I like to show my teeth.”
He leapt forward, but JohNagle was screaming into the small red globe. “Activate, activate, activate!” heshe got out, before a punch caught himher and sent himher spinning backwards.
“Silka!” yelled Horace, as JohNagle suddenly switched tactics and, heaving hisher huge bulbous bulk around, attacked with more speed than any man-i-woman had a right to possess.
Silka leapt on Horace’s back, and burrowed under his clothing, teeth gnashing, sending strings of fibre spitting outwards. As JohNagle launched at Horace, huge thick hairy arms encircling the Anarchy Android, Silka cut and bit into his flesh with long incisors, burrowing down into him as blood flowed down his skin, and chewed through muscle and burrowed deep and found the first worm, biting it in half. JohNagle spun Horace around, far stronger than Horace had anticipated, and launched him across the hotel suite. And even as he flew through the air, Silka ran across his belly and launched down into his abdomen. He grunted in pain then. It hurt. It really fucking hurt. Hurt more than the table he crashed through, sending spears of glass rearing up around him, jagged porcupine spikes erupting upwards. JohNagle ran at him, as Silka found the second worm and shredded it. She was deep in his bowel now. Her teeth felt like acid. Horace grabbed a glass shard and threw it, and it stuck in JohNagle’s eye, squelching into hisher skull by six or seven inches and almost penetrating all the way through. JohNagle did not cry out. Did not falter. Just came straight on, a huge hulking bear. Horace rolled left, grabbing two more table shards and slashing them in front of him. JohNagle came up sharp and grinned at Horace through rivulets of blood.
“I guess the cat is out of the bag,” heshe said.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” said Horace.
“Save it for the fucking peasants,” snarled JohNagle, and lunged. Horace slashed with the glass, cutting a long stripe across JohNagle’s hand, but at the apex of the strike hisher hand suddenly closed and wrenched sideways, tearing the shard from Horace’s grip. Hisher arm came back, and heshe launched the glass like a spear. Horace shifted, but not quite fast enough, and it cut across his shoulder even as Silka burrowed towards his liver and kidneys and he gasped, breathless for a second, disorientated by the feeling of his friend inside him, eating through him in search of the worms that would tear his organs apart...
JohNagle crashed into Horace, and they both slammed backward, staggering past the crushed table and into the bar. There was a crump under the impact, and the whole structure wobbled. Horace ducked a punch, and drove his own punch into JohNagle’s groin. JohNagle grinned at him.
“Sorry man. No balls.”
The head-butt caught Horace off-guard, and the punch to his windpipe felt like a sledgehammer blow. He hit the ground on his back, choking, as JohNagle disappeared for a moment and then loomed above him. Heshe heaved a safe, a huge block of steel, over hisher head.
“I’m going to crush you like a bug,” growled JohNagle, and the safe came crashing down. Horace grunted as Silka found the last of the worm parasites and chewed it into oblivion, then turned - he felt her turn around inside his body - and followed her own chewed tunnel for the exit. Horace rolled fast, and the safe left a deep dent in the floor. JohNagle cursed, and bent to lift the safe again. Horace coughed blood, and rolled onto his hands and knees. Then Silka emerged from his mouth on a shower of blood droplets, landing sedately on the floor. She turned her head, grinned at JohNagle in hisher act of lifting the safe, and launched at hisher throat...
JohNagle screamed, staggering back. The weight of the safe caught himher off-guard and Silka launched, biting into hisher belly, chewing through flesh and muscle, burrowing into the gestalt creature. Heshe screamed again, and the stagger became a fall, and the heavy safe intended to crush Horace’s head instead crushed JohNagle.
Almost.
Heshe turned as heshe fell, the safe glancing from hisher head and compacting maybe a quarter of hisher skull into crushed brain paste. JohNagle gasped, legs kicking as heshe lay pinned to the floor by hisher squashed head. If hisher head had been smaller, heshe’d have been dead. However, JohNagle’s head was such a heavy, blocky thing, the man-i-woman’s (or as the stand-up comedians called them, momens, or wen - a-har-har-har) skull saved himher.
Horace lay for a while, panting, his insides feeling odd. He was churned up. Internally ruptured. Blood leaked from several orifices. He felt sick; he rolled over, and was sick.
Horace pushed himself to his hands and knees and squatted for a while, panting, drooling saliva and blood. Then he coughed, and spat, and when he rocked back on his heels his eyes were gleaming.
Horace eased himself upright, and with one hand flat against his belly, moved painfully to stand over Juliette JohNagle. He spat down into the Greenstar politician’s face.
JohNagle had lost hisher cocky assurance. Hisher eyes were darting left and right, and the creature had lost the use of one arm, and the remaining limb had not the strength to shift the safe.
Horace stared at JohNagle. It was fair to say that his sense of humour had gone by this point.
“What are you doing?” snapped JohNagle. “How are you even alive?”
Horace grinned, blood and saliva stringing on his teeth. But man, he felt like shit. That was the hardest fight of his career. Of his life. What the hell was JohNagle? “It’s time,” he said, sitting down cross-legged in front of JohNagle’s pinned body, “for us to have a little chat.”
Horace fished inside his suit, and pulled out a velvet tool roll.
“What’s that? What are you doing? What’s that, you fucker?”
“These,” said Horace, licking his lips slowly, “are the tools of my trade. And as you said, they call me The Dentist. Now it’s time I showed you why.”
“No,” said JohNagle. “I have money. More money than you could ever dream possible! I can pay you! I can promote you! Power! Women! Boys! Cash! A high position in Greenstar! Anything, all this, I can do.” Hisher eyes were twitching spasmodically. Hisher lips worked ceaselessly, as if recanting some religious doctrine that had condemned himher.
“None of that matters,” said Horace, unrolling the black velvet. Tools gleamed. The tools of The Dentist.
“I’ll tell you everything,” said JohNagle, voice thick, words slurring.
Horace fixed JohNagle with a vulture’s glare. “Yes. You will,” he said.
~ * ~
AND THERE HE had it. His answers. Well, some answers. Laid out in neat little rows like fine food on a silver platter. JohNagle had sung. Heshe’d talked. Heshe’d chatted. Heshe’d begged, whined, screamed, drooled. Heshe’d cried, threatened, cajoled, wept. But ultimately, heshe’d talked. Given answers. Because Horace was The Dentist and The Dentist always got answers.
They’re tired of you.
They’ve had enough of you.
You are a threat.
Why am I a threat?
You are.
Says who?
Says The Children.
What fucking children?
Not any children. The Children. The psi-children from the sludge, from the puke, from the fucking toxicity, all right?
In what way am I a threat?
To Greenstar. To The Company.
I don’t see how that’s possible. How is that possible? I am employed by Greenstar. Fat Man gives me missions; assassination missions. I fucking WORK FOR YOU! I do your dirty laundry. I kill the terrorists who threaten you, I wipe out those who oppose you, I terminate those who backs
tab The Company.
They still want you dead.
Who?
I don’t know.
Who?
I don’t know! Aiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee. No, please, don’t do that again. Please. No. I’ll tell you. Everything. Anything you want to know. I’ll tell you how to access my credits. I’m a fucking wealthy man-i-woman. Fucking wealthy. You’re an assassin. You work for money. I can outbid those who sent you. Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.
How far does it go?
I don’t know!