by Ed Naha
Kuzak picked up the phone. “It never rains . . . it pours!”
Angie breathed heavily into the phone. “Mr. Mayor?”
“Yes, this is Mr. Mayor,” said Kuzak, beaming. “Please turn down your set.”
Hob lowered the volume on the TV as Angie, apparently asthmatic, hissed into the phone. “Your Honor. This is your lucky day.”
Hob began to cackle as the mayor’s eyes lit up. This would teach OCP to fuck around with Hob and his kind.
Half an hour later, at OCP headquarters, things were falling apart quite rapidly.
Johnson trotted to the elevator as Councilman Poulos, summoned by the Old Man, got off on the penthouse level, obviously disoriented. Johnson pumped his hand. “This way, Councilman. Take a look at what OCP has to offer.”
Johnson yanked Poulos toward a display of robotic weaponry.
Poulos was confused, to say the least, as Johnson pointed to one perk after another. “You know, Mr. Johnson, I really don’t feel I have a future at City Hall.”
“Nobody does,” said Johnson happily. “But you’ve got a sweet desk job waiting at OCP, my friend. That’s if your information is worth my time.”
Poulos blinked. “It is. The mayor might have found a way to beat the foreclosure. He thinks he’s found a benefactor. Someone who will bail the city out.”
“What?” Johnson gulped. “Some other corporation?”
“Not as far as I know,” Poulos said. “But definitely big business. A big wheeler-dealer.”
Johnson swallowed the phlegm that was rapidly gurgling its way up to his throat. He led Poulos on a tour of the opulent facility and continued to stroke him. Shit, he thought, if Detroit got away from the Old Man, it was Johnson’s ass on the griddle.
He gazed at the ceilings above him. Sometimes he wondered if he should’ve become a priest, like his mama wanted.
PART
“Maybe this world is another planet’s Hell.”
—Aidous Huxley
[ 27 ]
Dr. Faxx stood anxiously by as wild encephalogram signals spiraled across a monitor perched upon a horizontal metal form. Sweating, robotics whiz Schenck gaped at it. “I’d have to review the interfacing again,” he said nervously. “There’s something here that I didn’t expect. This brain has a chemical dependency.”
“Exactly why I chose it.” Faxx smiled demurely. “Turn it on.”
Schenck hesitated.
“Turn it on!” Faxx demanded.
Schenck nodded dumbly and pressed a button on a large console.
The blackness of the monitor’s screen snapped to. A ghostly white oval shape appeared. Gradually the shape swirled into a facial form: a computer-generated deathmask of Cain. Slowly, its eyes opened. The eyes focused and looked around. Within the great bestial form lying before them, within its bowels of computer-generated hardware, a soul awakened, and first felt the pain of being locked into an enternal hell. The face opened its mouth and emitted a silent scream.
“Such terrible pain,” Faxx noted. “Now you’ll see the benefits of choosing an addictive personality.”
Faxx’s hands slid across the touchpads on a small handheld command module.
From the belly of the creature lying before them on a massive table, a feeding mechanism popped up.
Faxx smiled and slide a NUKE canister into the mechanism. The mechanism snatched it and plunged it into the creature’s inner organs. The sound of pumping echoed throughout the room.
Faxx’s hands slid over the control module once again. She extended her hand toward the stomach of the cyborg and slid the drained canister out. “There now. That’s enough. Feeling better?”
On the monitor, Cain’s holographic face went placid and tranquil, NUKEd out of its gourd.
“You see, Mr. Schenck? A little NUKE and he’s no trouble at all.”
The two leaped back as—slam!—two metal plates closed above the monitor. It was now nothing more than a featureless robotic face on top of the nine-foot body of a titanic metallic form.
“Tell them we’re ready for the demonstration,” Faxx said to Schenck.
She gazed adoringly upon the latest leap forward into robotics. On the slab before her was the ideal combination of cyborg science, topped by the totally subservient addictive personality of the thug named Cain.
“They’re going to love this,” Faxx said, envisioning her own promotion.
The metallic monster that was once Cain waited until the two scientists had left the room. He slowly rose from the table and teetered to his feet, snapping open the two metal plates that encased the black computer-generated face. He forced his soul to come to. The blurred white face of Cain, the human, gradually formed on the visage.
He gazed down at his newfound black and sleek metallic gray body. Nine feet tall it was. A metallic X on the mighty torso opened up to reveal a feeding tube. NUKE time. That was certainly all right. DANGER and NUCLEAR ENERGY: KEEP OUT decals littered his front.
He glanced to his left and right. He had two powerful, three-pronged crablike arms. There were four spotlights—one on the top of each shoulder and two attached just below each armpit—and a smaller light he could see on his back, his head now having the ability to rotate 360 degrees. Yes, he could target any prey with these pretty little suckers.
His left arm was basically topped by a club, and atop the club was a 7.9mm rotary cannon—a Gatling gun. An ammunition shuttle ran below his chest. Quite a powerful guy, this newly made Cain.
Cain continued to sense his left arm. If he didn’t want to beat something to death, he could eject the club and extend a 22-foot solid tube that would effectively grasp an enemy as if he were a fish and reel him in for the kill.
He turned to his back. Behind his right shoulder blade was placed a 20mm pom-pom gun—a two-barrel cannon. He flexed his back. The cannon slid up and over his shoulder, aiming at the wall in front of him. Nice touch, Cain thought.
Also on his back was a welded shield that could rise and fan out to become an effective bullet-proofing device. He liked that. He liked that a lot.
Cain was delirious as the NUKE pulsated through his system. Cain flexed his mighty legs. He walked across the lab, wobbling slightly. He noted that his feet had disc brakes and shock absorbers. Each foot had two dual-grasping claws, curled up next to his ankles: crustacean toes, capable of grasping anything should he topple, or crushing anyone near him should they fall.
Cain instinctively felt the presence of hydraulic pumps. He took what, for a human, would be a deep breath and found his torso rising almost one foot. He took another deep breath and found his shuttered head rising another foot. Hell, at full tilt, he could stand eleven feet tall.
He twisted his torso around. It spun in a full circle.
He flexed his chest.
Small explosive hatches popped open, able to launch minimissiles at whatever threatened him. The computer-generated face of Cain smiled, high atop the monitor housed in his metallic head’s shell.
They shouldn’t have done this to him, he realized.
He would never touch the eternal—not like this.
But he was determined to touch a lot of people.
Cain’s holographic face sneered. He was no longer part of the program. Sorry about that.
• • •
Across town, Mayor Kuzak’s limo rolled across a strip of long-disused railroad tracks and rumbled to a halt outside a rickety gate. In the back seat of the limo, the smiling mayor, a worried Poulos, and an even more worried elderly attorney named Darren Thomas, sat. The driver in the front seat of the limo wasn’t too thrilled about the meeting spot either.
Kuzak leaned forward toward the driver, Corman. “You sure this is the place?”
Corman nodded. “You said three lefts off the Toyota-Ford E-Way. If you got it right, we’re at the right place.”
“Of course I got it right.” Kuzak grinned. “I wrote it down.”
The mayor’s eyes bulged as a tall, well-dressed and well-
scarred man appeared at the gate, who motioned him forward into a factory complex.
“Follow the man, Corman,” Kuzak said.
The driver grunted and sent the limo purring after the ambling man. “I don’t know about this,” Poulos muttered. “Damned strange place to meet an investor.”
“Don’t be so judgmental,” said the mayor. “He has a nice suit and a nice haircut.”
The limo hit a dirt hole and got stuck. The driver gunned the engine, causing the rear wheels to spew an arc of mud and grit in the car’s wake.
“I don’t like this,” Poulos whispered. “Let’s get out of here while we can!”
“I know what I’m doing,” Kuzak assured him, climbing out of the earthbound limo. “Come on, let’s go.”
Kuzak led Thomas and Poulos through an opened door at the factory complex. Inside the factory, they were greeted by an equally well-dressed and equally ugly hood.
“If you’ve got any cash on you, now’s the time to put it in a sock and hand it over,” grumbled Poulos.
“That’s just plain rude,” Kuzak said, extending a hand and winking at the new hood. “Howya doin’,” he enthused. “I bet you all have great plans for this place. Golly, lots of potential hereabouts.”
Without returning the burst of enthusiasm, the hood silently turned and led the terrified trio further inside.
A single light blazed at the far side of the hangar-sized room. The trio followed the hood toward the source of illumination. A small conference table had been placed below a low-hanging light. Four hoods stood nearby. At the table, an accountant-type fingered the pads on his laptop computer as tiny Hob whispered information into his left ear. At another end of the table, Angie, exposing her legs as much as possible without causing a vice raid, polished her nails.
The mayor’s party approached the table.
Hob nodded to the accountant, and the man disappeared into the darkness.
Kuzak ambled toward the table. “I wonder if any of you can help me. I’m looking for a Mr. Hob.”
Angie slithered out of her chair and stood behind the boy, her breasts resting upon his head. She pointed at the lad.
Hob nodded at the mayor. “Sit down, Mr. Mayor,” he chirped. He turned to one of the hoods. “Get us some Cokes.”
Kuzak sat down before Hob, who asked, “How much do you need? Money, I mean?”
The mayor giggled nervously. “Well, our current debt to OCP is . . .”
Councilman Poulos sat down beside the mayor. “Thirty-seven million, four hundred and eighty thousand, nine hundred and eleven dollars.”
Hob shrugged. “Thirty-seven million, four hundred and eighty thousand, nine hundred and eleven dollars. Guess you’re in pretty deep shit.”
“We need all the help we can get, young man.” Kuzak grinned lamely.
“Tell you what,” Hob offered. “Put me down for fifty. Just to make sure.”
“Fifty thousand?” asked the mayor, beaming.
“Don’t be a queer,” replied Hob. “Fifty million.”
“Oh, goddamnit,” Poulos moaned. “Let’s get out of here.”
Poulos got to his feet and turned to leave. Kuzak hesitated, then got to his feet as well. “Jeez, the things people will do just to get a chance to meet me.”
Kuzak found a small Beretta placed firmly against his crotch by a well-dressed hood.
Hob faced the darkness to his left. “Show the man.”
A well-armored truck backed into the light, and four niftily suited thugs swung open its back doors. Hundreds of millions of dollars were stacked to the ceiling.
The mayor’s jaw dropped, nearly rebounding off his shaking knees. “That . . . tha . . . tha . . . mo . . . mon . . . money . . . moneymoneymoney.”
“So.” Hob shrugged. “Will fifty cover it?”
Kuzak nodded. “Yeah. YEAH! That’d do it.”
He glanced at his stunned compatriots. “Don’t you think that would do it, men?”
He turned again to Hob. “Yeah, that definitely would do it, Mr. Hob.”
Hob chuckled, sounding like a chipmunk. “Okay. So, now we know how to fix your problems. Let’s talk about mine.”
The old lawyer, Thomas, pulled Kuzak aside. “Please excuse us for a moment.” He smiled at Hob before facing Kuzak. “For God’s sake, Cyril. These people are criminals!”
The mayor made a tsk-tsk noise. “Why do we have to label people? I hate labeling people.”
The mayor turned to Hob and nestled down in his chair. “I’m sure there’s some middle ground we can agree on,” he assured the boy. “But we cannot capitulate in our war on crime. I’d be voted out of office . . . And I don’t think anybody wants that.”
Hob shrugged. “War on crime’s okay with us. It’s business we’re talking about. You got any idea how many people I employ?”
“You know,” the mayor conceded, “I’ve never thought about it that way. You’re quite a . . . sharp kid.”
Hob pointed a finger at the mayor. Kuzak leaned over the table, and Hob sneered at him. “You think I’m full of shit, don’t you? Can’t figure out how it is that I run things around here.”
“I try to keep an open mind.” The mayor smiled.
“Listen, dickhead,” Hob said, his features growing hard. “They do what I tell them to do because they can’t make NUKE without me. I’m the only one who knows the formula who isn’t dead.”
“He only saw it once,” said Angie. “He’s like that. Sees it and remembers it. Every detail.”
“Photographic memory,” added the mayor.
“Digital,” Hob corrected. “So, your war on crime: You want to win it or what? We’re the only chance you have.”
“Say what?” Kuzak blurted.
Angie took that moment to plunge a NUKE ampule into her neck. “Lissen to him,” she advised. “He has it all worked out.”
“Why do people commit crime?” Hob asked.
“Well, most are . . .” The mayor hesitated. “Well, I guess because of drugs. Most people take drugs.”
Hob shook his head. “Because they want drugs! The kind that cost too much. NUKE gives high quality at a cheap price, and if you get off our backs, we’re gonna make it cheaper.”
“And safer,” Angie interjected.
“And safer,” agreed Hob. “We don’t shove our stuff down anybody’s throat. We don’t advertise, like they do with cigarettes and booze.”
“Leave us alone,” said Angie, “and anybody who wants it, gets it.”
“So,” concluded Hob, “no more crime. And you get to be the mayor who cleaned up Detroit.”
Kuzak turned to an ashen-faced Poulos. “He’s got a point.”
The mayor next turned to the elderly lawyer. “Don’t you think he has a point?”
The meeting was cut short by a screech of gears. The assembled stared at the side wall as, abruptly, it caved in, sunlight searing into their startled faces.
Silhouetted against the light and framed by the ruptured wall stood a hulking robotic shape. Eleven feet tall. Black as night. Angry as all hell.
Cain.
The beast cackled, sending a spine-chilling laugh throughout the building as he opened up with a burst of machine-gun fire that shattered the overhead lamp.
The conspirators tried to scramble out of the way. The metallic monster lit up its headlights, forcing the cowering crowd back further.
“God!” Poulos yelled. “What is that thing?”
The well-dressed hoods in the room pulled their guns and, lit by the blinding white light, opened fire. They were easily sliced in two by the steady rat-a-tat-tat gunfire offered by the Olympian intruder.
One hood, wielding an AK-47, fired a lethal round of fire at the gargantuan creature. The bullets pinged harmlessly off its king-sized chest. The thug hid behind the factory’s boiler. A round of heavy-duty ammo slammed into the boiler, causing it to erupt into a wall of flame. Within seconds, the thug was nothing more than a quivering skeleton, its flesh melted upon the c
oncrete flooring.
Hob dove under the table, his eyes wide with terror.
Angie ran to a corner and huddled amidst a mass of machinery. She pulled a NUKE ampule from her purse and tried to insert it into her neck. Her hand was shaking so hard she dropped it. “Damn!” she swore.
Kuzak and his followers crawled along the floor, passing the badly mauled bodies of mobsters.
Poulos and Thomas decided to make a run for it. The searchlight zeroed in on them.
Gunfire.
Thomas fell to the ground in six pieces.
Poulos threw up and hit the ground again as the searchlights passed above him. He skittered out of the factory and toward the mayor’s limo.
Bullets zipped above his head, slamming into the limo and killing Corman, the driver.
Poulos leaped to his feet and began to run. He felt a shard of lead enter his back. He gaped down as his insides became outsides. He hit the side of the limo, dead.
Inside the battered factory, Angie cowered in a corner. She located another NUKE ampule and plunged it into her neck. Pfffft. Ahhhh. She felt better now. The lights wielded by the monster focused on her. She froze, her breath eluding her. The gigantic gorgon marched toward her, its body hissing and wooshing from its hydraulic system. The lights on her dimmed.
She gazed up at the black creature’s head.
The visors atop the head sprang open.
She saw the ghostly face of Cain.
Angie stared at the visage in stoned-out disbelief before grinning finally. “Cain! Oh, wow, man! You look great! Nice outfit!”
Angie walked toward the nightmare.
A large clawed hand reached out for her. She extended her right hand. “Really. It’ll take some getting used to,” she said, her speech slurred. “But it’ll be great! Me and Hob, we’ll always take care of you . . . Just like always.”
While Angie grabbed for the extended claw, the Cain-Creature’s other hand reached behind her back and grabbed her by the throat, slowly and deliberately lifting her high off the ground.
Her garble ended in a gurgle.