RoboCop 2

by Ed Naha

  “But he’s my partner,” Lewis implored. “He might need me out there!”

  “If he’s going to River Rouge,” Reed replied dully, “he’s going to need the U.S. Marines as a partner.”

  Lewis nodded. Reed was right. No doubt about it: RoboCop was on a suicide mission.

  [ 11 ]

  The outskirts of the River Rouge district was a small slice of hell dropped into the remains of a once-proud city’s innards. Already a slum a decade before, the area had decayed beyond that in the years since OCP had taken over the police force.

  The neighborhood resembled an abandoned war zone.

  Burnt-out and bombed-out tenements and storefronts stood, stretching moodily up from the bowels of the earth. The streets were pockmarked by bullets and caressed by rivers of garbage.

  Hollow-cheeked transients sat bleary-eyed in what was left of the front entrances to long-abandoned dwellings.

  A few wretches lined up for free meals in front of the last remaining outpost of civilization, a graffiti-stained Salvation Army establishment.

  RoboCop sent his TurboCruiser purring through the mean streets. He stared at the ragged remnants of human society that inhabited the area. A twinge from deep down inside him caused him to clench his teeth.

  He knew that something was happening to him.

  He was evolving.

  Or regressing.

  He had to rein in his thoughts and . . . feelings? . . . in order to stay functional.

  He must remain objective, his computer-enhanced brain advised him.

  He must remain detached.

  An empty bottle of Night Train smashed across the cruiser’s windshield. Laughter echoed from the distance. A soft crackity-crack burst forth from a street two blocks away. Gunfire, Robo concluded.

  The battered storefronts eventually gave way to wider, more desolate lots. Barren moonscapes. Never-completed excavations for buildings left unbuilt.

  Weeds overran long-abandoned lots. Families once flourished here, but their houses had been torn down and never rebuilt.

  Now there were only empty shells of basements left intact—bomb shelters protecting the rot and mold from the destructive rays of a deadly sun.

  Robo continued to drive toward the River Rouge’s old factory center: a once-thriving place where workers spent their entire lives constructing goods for an eager public, while bringing paychecks back to awaiting families. Fathers had worked the factories, and then their sons and their sons’ sons.

  All that was gone now.

  The factories had started shutting down back in the 1980s, during the administration of an ex-B-movie actor. The national deficit had spiraled, and the country had lunged helplessly toward default.

  And that, in turn, had led to the megacorporations, outfits like OCP, which had simply stepped in and taken over for the government. A loan here. A savings and loan bailout there. By the 1990s the country’s government was anything but solvent, with billionaires in opulent penthouses calling the shots.

  Robo sent his cruiser gliding past ancient warehouses split asunder by age, the bricks crumbling, the girders rusting, the wooden doors decaying.

  He spotted no signs of human life, such as it was.

  The cruiser rounded a corner. Robo eased his right foot onto the brakes. Before him loomed a series of police barriers, officially sealing off the area from law enforcement.

  Dayglow graffiti was scrawled over the OFFICIAL WARNING signs. GET OUTTA HERE. POLICE AIN’T HERE, BABE. YOU TRY, YOU DIE.

  Robo clenched his teeth, pressed on the gas, and pushed the screaming cruiser into and through the barriers, leaving a spray of splintered wood in his wake.

  The car proceeded to the industrial complex once known as River Rouge. At one time during the 1990s, it had been touted by an ineffectual president as “the largest industrial complex in the world.” It was miles long, sleek and metallic. It had folded within the first two years of operation, when the American production industry was felled by a lethal one-two punch delivered by Japan and its eager newfound allies, the free countries of Eastern Europe.

  Labor had been cheap back then abroad. At home, workers’ unions had tried their best to urge for more money, more benefits.

  Within a year, they’d been beaten and fragmented.

  The American economy had begun to collapse, and no politician in the country could paste it back together.

  Robo gazed at the River Rouge complex, sparkling like a dead fish in the harsh morning sun. Sad. Abandoned. Betrayed.

  Robo’s TurboCruiser was barely a speck compared with the towering, twisting, ghostly structure.

  Robo’s cruiser thundered over long-dead railroad tracks.

  It rumbled through the shattered shell of an empty warehouse.

  It rolled carefully over several side streets now inhabited by weeds and rats.

  Behind the wheel, Robo scanned the desolate landscape, his RoboVision searching for something . . . anything. Any signs of life. Any signs of activity.

  He gazed across row after row of factory shells. He stiffened. He trained his gaze on a powerplant partially hidden by an old TV factory.

  Robo sensed the activity.

  His TurboCruiser spun out of the side street, fishtailing down an alleyway toward the powerless powerplant.

  Three blocks down the road, he brought the TurboCruiser to a halt. He stared at the power-plant before him. A higher chainlink fence, topped with coiled barbed wire, lined the area. Battered signs reading HOKUSAI POWER: SALE OF WHOLE OR PART. INQUIRE: KOKIMA SAVINGS AND LOAN (312-555-6309) and NO TRESPASSING: UNDER PENALTY OF LAW. hung from the fence.

  Robo stepped out of his cruiser and strolled up to the fence.

  He scanned the area and noticed a large metal gate, still locked with a rusted padlock.

  Robo marched up to the gate and grabbed the padlock.

  With an effortless grunt, he yanked the padlock off the gate. He raised his right foot and sent it smashing into the gate. It toppled over with a tiny, rust-laced whimper.

  Robo returned to his cruiser and gunned the engine, sending the car speeding onto the megacomplex.

  High above him, four hoods stared silently at the advancing intruder. One of them motioned silently to the other three with his hand.

  Below, Robo proceeded toward the power station. He tilted his head upward. Something was wrong. The car lurched into the air wildly.

  Robo felt himself slammed back against the driver’s seat as a land mine detonated beneath his car.

  “Plastique,” he muttered, watching his right rear wheel careen wildly above and beyond his windshield.

  A fireball engulfed the vehicle.

  Robo sighed. He had had enough of this.

  Four young hoodlums appeared beyond the column of smoke belching from the ground.

  Robo dove out of the car as the gas tank ignited. A mushroom cloud of flame and smoke extended an angry fist toward the sky. Robo rolled over onto the side of the road.

  Within seconds, the car was nothing but a blackened shell.

  The four hoods leaped through the smoke grinning, their assault rifles held high.

  “Gotcha!” one of the hoods cackled.

  “Not so,” Robo said, arising from the grit with his gun drawn. “Throw down your weapons,” he announced. “You are under arrest.”

  The four young hoodlums were amazed to see Robo had survived the inferno. “Last chance, creeps,” Robo stated flatly.

  A fifth hood appeared from the gulley behind Robo and winked at his friends. He produced a hand grenade from his pocket and, pulling the pin, heaved it at the cyborg cop. Robo had felt the heat of the hood’s body and that of the weapon. He whirled around, his pistol ready, and fired two shots, one aimed high, one aimed low.

  The grenade exploded in midair.

  The hood exploded near ground level.

  The four other hoods opened up on Robo with their assault weapons.

  Feeling the lead pellets plink harmlessly off his
metallic skeletal system, Robo calmly fired four times. The first thug smashed into the factory wall, his insides became outsides and, finally, a crimson graffiti stain on solid concrete.

  The second punk found himself spiraling upward toward the metal stairs he had just descended.

  The third dropped his gun and reached above his neck toward where his head had been not a second before. No dice. The corpse fell to the ground, still grasping for its recently departed personality.

  The fourth slimeball had charged, at first not noticing that his spinal column was a memory, lying some several yards behind him. When the dawn of recognition did enter his facial features, he was too bereft of blood and muscle to do much about it. He collapsed in a heap some ten feet in front of Robo.

  “Arrest would have been easier on you all,” Robo opined, continuing his march toward the abandoned power station.

  Robo marched into a ruptured door on the side of the power station. He entered a twilight world populated by mazes of pipes and old boilers, his Auto-9 pistol raised.

  He sensed the presence of shadowshapes moving furtively above him, across a walkway. He strained his hearing capabilities. Silence. Bare feet on rusting metal.

  Robo paused next to an old boiler. He scanned the area with his RoboVision, punching in the command ENHANCE AUDIO.

  A tremendous hiss clouded his concentration. He spun around, raising his pistol, and faced . . . a very frightened stray cat, back arched, claws extended, defending its right to the bloodied and mangled mouse at its feet.

  Robo nodded toward the cat and continued onward. His metallic feet sounded on the debris-strewn floor. Each clank made by his feet was deafening.

  He marched up to a door. Metal. Old. Brown. He shoved it inward. The door caved in, producing a tinny sound resembling an old woman’s death rattle.

  Robo entered the entrails of the powerplant. A sudden whoosh enveloped him. A flock of pigeons, their squawks amplified even more by Robo’s audio senses, erupted from the floor and flew upward, past a horror gallery of cracked and grimy windows.

  Robo tensed his body.

  He scanned the area, his RoboVision on full-alert status. Rows of long-ignored leviathan machinery loomed before him. Nothing seemed to be moving, except the pigeons, which were still squawking and defecating with glee high above him. A shadow seemed to move. Robo pivoted. A girl inhaled sharply. Robo leaned forward. A frightened sound. A sob. His RoboVision reassured him: AUDIO NORMAL.

  Robo nonetheless aimed his pistol at the shadow.

  No further sound.

  He relaxed his stance.

  From behind one of the Brobdingnagian slabs of machinery, a raven-haired girl clad in black leather and lace emerged, her arms held high above her head.

  It was Angie.

  “Don’t shoot me!” she cried plaintively. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

  “No, ma’am,” Robo replied. “But please, do not move.”

  Robo advanced toward Angie, unaware that his head was now targeted within the precise hairs of a high-powered scope.

  “I’m not doing anything wrong,” Angie wailed.

  Robo tried to comfort the woman as he marched forward. “I am sure you are not, ma’am,” he replied.

  High above the machinery, Hob crouched behind an enormous ack-ack gun fixed upon a tripod bolted to the floor. Behind him sat Cain, his legs crossed casually. Cain was grinning like the fool that, indeed, he was. He casually tapped Hob’s shoulder. Hob turned to him and smiled. Cain flicked a tally-ho salute off his top hat.

  Hob grinned and returned to the gun sights, prepared to squeeze the trigger.

  Chivalrous Robo continued to advance toward Angie. “I am not here to do you any harm, miss,” he announced. “But I would like to ask you a few questions.”

  Ka-pow.

  Robo spun around as his left hand exploded.

  Robo emitted a primal howl as sparks showered out from the stump of his wrist. The hand, still clutching its pistol, skittered around the floor in front of him.

  Angie smiled at Robo. “Bull’s-eye!” she declared.

  Robo whirled as a young friend of Hob’s, a dour-faced lad named Checkers, leaped up from behind Angie, holding a weapon of a sort Robo had never seen before.

  “Howdy doooody!” said Checkers by way of greeting before firing the weapon.

  A large metal ball attached to a wire slammed into Robo’s chest and exploded, driving three razor-sharp prongs into his torso.

  Robo staggered backward.

  “Time to reel him in,” Checkers declared. He worked a control on his weapon. Kzzzzzappp! Shards of electricity surged forth from a battery hooked on Checkers’s belt down the wire to Robo.

  Robo tilted his head back like a guillotine victim, his body twitching wildly as electrical shocks invaded his nervous system. His tongue extended from his mouth and he howled like a banshee. His body jerked like a crippled dancer as the electric shards invaded his innermost being.

  Cain slid slowly down from the scaffolds above, tipping his hat toward the manic metallic cop.

  Cain took a disinterested view of the situation. “Is he lunch yet?” he asked Checkers.

  “Nope,” Checkers replied, still cranking out power.

  Hob hopped down from above, advancing on Robo’s jerking body with a noncommittal look.

  Robo dropped to one knee, his body still convulsing. He glanced upward at the faces of Cain, Hob, and Angie, anger welling up from within him.

  Emitting a fierce, gutteral howl, he mustered up all his willpower and unhooked the prongs from his chest. Glaring at the three villains, he plunged the prongs into his wire-laden, still-sparking stump of an arm.

  He grinned at the trio like a madman.

  The prongs shorted in Robo’s half-arm, sending a wave of electrical voltage back down the wire.

  The battery at Checkers’s hips immediately exploded, sending Checkers spiraling upward, his body smoldering around the midsection by the sheer power of the voltage.

  Cain nodded toward the shadows.

  Robo regained his footing, growling like a beast.

  As he did so, the hook of a titanic iron crane crashed into his chest, sending Robo cartwheeling across the debris-strewn factory floor.

  Robo twisted his clouded head, slamming into his Robo Vision full tilt. A large magnet was being lowered his way. White spots flickered and flared before his eyes, along with a discouraging readout: “SYSTEMS DAMAGE ALERT! EFFICIENCY: 43% . . . 37% . . . 20% . . .”

  Robo blanked out as the titanic magnet connected to his chest. Robo was lifted from the floor by the magnetic force as the metal beast drew him into its grasp with a resounding clank. The magnet lifted the inert RoboCop high into the air.

  In the cab of the gigantic crane, the gorilla henchman Catzo guided the magnet home.

  Cain walked cheerfully alongside the magnet as it hoisted Robo toward destinations unknown. Cain paused to help Checkers to his feet.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.” The kid nodded. “I have a bad stomach-ache, though. Shithead cop doesn’t play fair.”

  “Cops never do, lad,” Cain replied.

  Checkers nodded and limped away. Cain glared at Robo as the magnet lowered him onto steel runners.

  Checkers, Angie, and a thug named Gillette pulled heavy metal clamps across Robo’s body, pinning his arms and legs effectively down on the runners. The magnet spiraled harmlessly away into the sky.

  Robo’s head began to sway back and forth.

  He shook his senses clear. Enraged at his predicament, he began to thrash around, growling, howling, snarling.

  “Temper, temper,” Cain advised, tilting his hat down jauntily over his left eye.

  A small army of thugs converged above Robo. One of them hauled up a jackhammer. Another produced a lethal electric drill. Yet another wielded an acetylene torch. All three stood poised, ready to start the robotics operation ordered by Cain.

  Cain lowered himself above R
obo’s silent gaze. “I don’t blame you for this,” Cain acknowledged. “I know you don’t have any choice. They program you, and you do it. But you’ve upset a delicate balance in my agenda, my life-style. We can’t let the police come here. It’s just not possible.”

  Cain raised his skeletal form in a sudden wave of rage. “I don’t blame you. And I know you can’t help but blame me!”

  He smiled sweetly down at the prone cyborg. “But, rest assured, I forgive you for that.”

  Cain lifted a large lug wrench with both hands and swung it down onto Robo’s head. Wham! Again and again and again. Wham! Wham! Wham! Cain emitted a primordial howl as he continued to send the wrench slamming down into Robo’s sleek helmeted head. Again. Again. Again. More! More! More! Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!

  Finally Cain stopped, sobbing.

  Angie moved forward to comfort her distraught leader.

  He shook her away, gazing down at the stunned RoboCop.

  “Good-bye,” he sobbed. “Good-bye.”

  Robo stared toward the ceiling of the factory, wide-eyed. He was paralyzed. His senses whirled helplessly as Cain backed away, dropping his wrench and waving the other hoods forward.

  Jackhammer.

  In the gut.

  Robo screamed.

  Robo passed out before the torches and the drills began their dance of death.

  [ 12 ]

  As dusk fell, the police picket lines surrounding the Old Detroit stationhouse were bathed in a blood-red glow. Chanting and holding their signs high, the police mood of solidarity was fractured by the screeching tires of an approaching limousine.

  The limo careened to a halt, and its rear door opened.

  The cops turned as one as the sound of metal on concrete reverberated in their ears.

  A hapless hunk of metal was tossed onto the street, the limo speeding off after the deed was done.

  The cops, led by a man named Whittaker, ran up to the mangled heap of metal.

  Whittaker grabbed the hulk and turned it over. It was RoboCop. His legs and arms were connected to his torso by threads. His eyes stared blankly at the orange sky above. There were no signs of life, of vitality.

  “My God!” Whittaker whispered. “He’s been stripped to the bone!”