‘You’re a long way from home,’ I tell him, and he nods.
‘Pull up a cloud, wiseguy, we’ve got business.’
I take a seat.
‘The man you’re looking for is Steps Mackenzie. He’s taken over this joint pretty quick, see, and he’s gunning to franchise it out. Hell’s not bringing the Mickeys in and Steps is a greedy man. You see what I’m saying?’
‘He’s aiming to take over topside.’
‘You’re not just a pretty face, wiseguy.’ The figure snaps his brim. ‘You want a ride, just call out for Mugsy. Tell him I sent you.’ He creases a half smile and then seems to disappear into the shadows.
I leave the joint with the shard man still playing his head like a fiddle. Outside it’s chaos and madness.
‘Mugsy!’
A finger taps me on the back. I turn, and if this is Mugsy then he’s not happy to see me. Mainly since I plugged him ten years ago after he escaped from the big house. It paid for my car.
‘Finally made it down here, then?’ Mugsy smiles a very sick smile. I should land him a solid right, but something tells me I might need him.
‘I’m only visiting. I’m looking for someone.’
‘Good luck. There’s a million lost souls down here.’
‘You know I don’t believe any of that crap, Mugsy,’ I say, and blow smoke in his face. ‘Someone told me to call for you, and I have, and you’re here, and for some reason he thinks you can help me. You gonna help, or do I put you down a second time?’
Mugsy chews this over. Then nods.
‘You’re not gonna like what you see.’
TWENTY SEVEN
The processing factory. Steam vents and huge funnels and churning machinery. The place looks like a giant slaughterhouse with everything five times bigger than it’s meant to be.
A row of people shunt along a rack, upside down with meat-hooks through their ankles.
‘Okay, here’s where we process ’em,’ says Mugsy, pointing to the bodies. He nods to a yawning furnace at the end of the rack. ‘Right in the centre of the first city of Hell. They go through there, all consuming fire, baddabing—come out the other side ready for the proper show. We got an entire valley full of processors just to assign punishments. Is that progress or what? You remember the old days when the horned assholes used to poke people with pitchforks. Man, I love the reformation. Screwed this place up good.’
‘You’re all heart, Mugsy,’ I tell him. ‘I’m looking for—’
‘I know, I know,’ he interrupts, waving me quiet. ‘I knew when she turned up. Had the stench about her. Goddamn do-gooders. Come on.’
Mugsy leads the way out of the processing hall and into a quiet office. You can still hear the screams, but it’s less of a distraction.
‘Take a seat.’ Mugsy nods to a chair. ‘I got someone who wants to talk to you.’
He leaves and the figure from the fast food joint enters. For some reason, no matter where he goes, half his face is always in shadow.
‘You made it,’ he says.
‘You could have brought me here yourself!’
He smiles at that and nods. ‘Don’t like to carry my own dirty washing.’
The figure takes a seat. ‘You can call me Chicago. Suzanne’s fine and ready. Plucky dame.’
‘She’s got more moxy than most of the skirt I know.’
He chuckles. ‘You’ll get her back regardless, but right now I need a favour off you. A big one. One that guarantees you a one way ticket out of here.’
‘I prefer to make my own rules, Chicago, but I’m willing to listen.’ I settle back for the big reveal.
‘Take out Steps for me.’ Chicago leans forward, serious. ‘I’d do it myself, but my face is too well known around these parts. He’s got ties with Kieran.’
‘That joker gets everywhere,’ I say.
‘Kieran’s got a lot of fingers in a lot of pies.’
‘Okay,’ I say, nodding. ‘What happens if I do take him out? What then?’
‘You get the girl and get back to topside.’
I finger the watch in my pocket and Chicago flicks his eyes to it. He knows.
‘You can forget about that trinket. It doesn’t work anymore.’
I pull it out and press the button. He’s right.
‘Take out Steps and you’re back on the road.’
‘Why me?’ I ask.
‘Because you’re the only one I can rely on.’ He leans back, a hint of a smile on his face. ‘Besides, I thought you might like the challenge.’
‘I’ll need the girl first.’
Chicago shakes his head. ‘She stays here.’
‘No dice, Chicago. Give me the broad or the deal’s off.’
He studies me. Then nods.
‘You know, if I don’t, I get the feeling I might regret it.’ He leans back and yells over his shoulder. ‘Bring her in!’
Mugsy leads Sue into the office. He’s nursing a bruised jaw, so I figure she didn’t come easy.
‘You took your time,’ she says.
‘Consider it done,’ I tell Chicago, and then the ceiling explodes.
TWENTY EIGHT
A giant steel claw slams down into the room and grabs Mugsy round the waist, wrenching tight and slicing him cleanly in two.
‘Get out of here!’ yells Chicago. He pulls out a popgun and starts blazing away at the steel claw as it gropes around for another victim.
I don’t need telling twice. I grab Sue and we’re out of the door quick, straight into a world of chaos.
Demons and muties and creatures are spilling through the factory, some with guns and some with blades. A hulking green creature with multi-horned head, a fistful of eyeballs and a jutting jaw spins an ugly looking cannon at me and I slam my elbow into its face, sending it down and out.
Sue picks up the cannon and starts blasting a path through the chaos. A ninja wielding a wakizashi sword comes at me and I spin and straight arm him and he goes down for the count. I stamp on his face to make sure he’s learnt his lesson and then we’re off again.
Something with heads where its hands should be comes at us, snapping away. Sue gets caught on the arm and almost drops the cannon, but I grab the two snapping heads and slam them together. Sue kicks it in the crotch for good measure, then turns the gun on a phalanx of ravenous, red-eyed Leprechauns who are spilling through the main door.
‘Let’s make an exit.’ Sue turns the gun on the wall and starts firing shell after shell into it. The steel warps, buckles and then explodes outwards and suddenly we’re out in the fires of Hell.
It’s worse outside. Something big and ugly with jagged steel spikes on its legs is tearing down the city’s main street. Buildings crash in its wake and tortured souls shriek fresh peals of pain. This is something they didn’t bargain for when it came to eternal damnation. All I can see above the legs are too many teeth and too many eyes.
‘Where’s my mommy!’
The voice is like nails down a blackboard. We turn and there’s a small girl with rosy cheeks and a flowery dress holding a lollipop and a balloon. Sue levels the cannon at the creature as it smiles a gap-toothed smile, blowing it into history and leaving nothing in its place but a lot of smoke and a pair of hands holding an egg whisk and a cheese grater. It could have been nasty.
‘Good call,’ I tell her, and we start beating a hasty retreat down a street littered with twisted bodies.
I glance behind me. Whatever the thing with the teeth, eyes and spiked legs is, it’s zeroed in on us and is starting to catch up.
‘Time for a miracle,’ I mutter, and a solid rope falls down in front of us, keeping pace.
TWENTY NINE
‘Hang on!’ I catch Sue around the waist and grab for the rope and look up. Above us is a helicopter and, just visible, Chicago at the controls.
The helicopter rises, taking us up, and the eyes and teeth creature starts to double its pace, pealing out an ear shattering roar. Sue spins in my arms, turns the cannon on the t
hing and starts blasting away at it.
Eyes explode and teeth shatter but the thing keeps coming. A huge boiling arm of fire comes reaching up for us. The rope jerks sideways and I look ahead and there’s a glass building blocking the way.
‘Brace yourself,’ I warn, and hold Sue tight. We crash through the glass, shards spinning, and land on our feet as the rope slips away. We start running, tearing through the office building as the blazing arm smashes into the glass wall and sends fire roaring out behind us.
Straight ahead I can see the only way out. Right through the glass and fourteen storeys straight down. But I keep on running because there’s no escape behind us.
We both take a leap and smash through the glass just as the rope hovers into view. I reach, grab, snap an arm around Sue and suddenly we’re off again, sailing high over the blazing buildings, leaving the cavernous roar of the eyes and teeth creature behind us.
‘You got any shells left in that cannon?’ I nod to the oversized popgun and Sue checks the breach and nods.
‘A few. Why?’
‘We’ve got company.’ Huge, mutant helicopters spin around the building we just vacated, part machine and part demon, their front ends wide open mouths and blood red eyes. Clawed feet are hunched up in the underbellies, while the rotors buzz out of the creatures’ backs. They carry big, ugly guns fifty feet long, and they don’t look friendly.
‘Time for a smoke,’ I mutter, and Sue spins the cannon on the ’copters and starts raking them with shells, knocking chunks out of the skin and blasting the rotors into shattered bone shards.
But this is just a distraction. I turn in time to see something bigger and meaner than anything I’ve ever seen.
‘Damn, I thought he was long gone,’ I manage, before a huge frosty claw plucks us out of the sky. We’re pulled up and up until we’re looking straight at an impossibly wide face.
‘Hello, Joe,’ booms the creature. ‘Long time no see.’
‘Sue, meet Bob, the ruler of Hell.’
THIRTY
It’s cold on the hand of the ruler of Hell. Sue huddles up and Chicago sits pensively by as we stride through the burning wasteland towards the towering citadel in the distance, where Steps Mackenzie rules.
‘You losing your touch or something?’ I yell at Bob. ‘Remember when all this used to be ice? What the hell happened to it?’
‘You can’t hold back progress.’ Bob sighs. ‘Besides, Steps offered me an easy retirement and I took the opportunity.’
‘Who the hell is this asshole?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know,’ says Bob, shrugging his shoulders. Ice splinters and cracks on his skin. ‘He’s just convincing.’
‘He’s obviously convinced you to turn into a heel,’ I yell, and despite myself I’m angry. ‘Grow some balls.’
‘I can’t,’ booms Bob. ‘He took them off me. He convinced me to hand them over and well that’s what happened.’
‘Jesus, Bob!’ I shout, and turn away in disgust. It’s a bad day in Hell when the ruler gets hoodwinked into handing over his cojones.
I sit down next to Chicago and spark up a cigar.
‘Got any ideas how to get out of this one, wise guy?’ I ask him, and he shakes his head and stares off into the eternal flames.
‘I think we just lost the initiative.’ He puffs out a peel of smoke and then throws the butt of his cigarette over the side of Bob’s hand. It spirals down and a jagged-beaked human vulture swoops and snatches it out of the air.
‘Or maybe not.’ I have an idea.
THIRTY ONE
It doesn’t take long for Bob to hand us over to the guards. I consider taking a few out, but Chicago just shakes his head and silently warns me off. Something tells me he has a trick up his sleeve.
They tie our hands behind our backs, take away our cannons and lead us away.
The stately throne room of Steps Mackenzie is the living embodiment of over-indulgence. If a surface isn’t plated in gold it’s studded with diamonds. The throne itself is made of human skulls, all of them with gags in their mouths to stop them complaining.
Steps himself is a small guy, but too many steroids have pumped his body up and left his head looking like a peanut on an oversized torso.
Chicago is his first port of call.
‘Ya weasel,’ he spits. Chicago doesn’t budge. ‘Ya thought you could take me out? Ya thought you could get the drop on me, huh? Ya thought you could take on Steps Mackenzie and get away with it? Well, I guess I showed you, ya goddamn low life no good nobody.’
‘You talk big for such a small man.’ The mocking smile on Chicago’s face makes it all the worse.
‘I’m gonna take ya down, Chicago, ya hear me!’ rages Steps. ‘I’m gonna take ya right down and bury you so goddamn deep you’ll never get back to the top, do ya hear me?’
‘I don’t hear nothing, Steps.’ Chicago is cool as a cucumber. ‘All I can see is your jaw flapping and nothing coming out. I bet you don’t even have the moxy to take on my pal here.’ He turns to me and nods. ‘Isn’t that right, Joe?’
I’m quick to catch on. ‘Pint size like him. I bet his mother still puts him to bed.’
Steps is over like a shot. ‘You leave my mother out of this!’ His finger is right up to my face, but I shoot him a look that says I know he still wets the bed. He shakes and shivers with rage and then slaps me hard and fast around the jaw.
I take it, and then straighten up. ‘That’s gonna cost you, Steps. You’re just a cheap punk who’s got a big mouth, and you know you’re going down. Touch me again and it’s bedtime for Bonzo.’
This throws him into a spin. You can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s torn between kicking my teeth into next Tuesday and slapping Chicago down until he says ‘uncle.’ Luckily I resolve the dispute for him.
‘Hey, Steps,’ I yell. He spins around. ‘Here’s how to sing soprano.’ And I lay the mother of all kicks into his balls.
That does the trick. He goes down for the count. A man that small had no right to be wearing Bob’s balls, and once the pain starts spreading through him he starts to understand what having a real set actually means.
‘Mama!’ he croaks, and then he keels over and starts moaning like a wounded dog.
‘Untie us,’ Chicago snaps at the guards, and they swap glances, uncertain.
‘Untie them!’ booms the voice of Bob, shattering glass, and before we know it we’re free. I rub the pain out of my wrists as Chicago sits down on the throne.
‘Nice touch, Joe,’ he says. ‘You got the moves where it counts.’
‘We free to go?’ I ask him, and he nods. I grab Sue by the hand and take out the pocket watch. ‘In which case, I’ll see you on the flipside.’
‘That won’t work again,’ Chicago tells me. ‘You had two pops and that’s the end of it. I’ll take you the old fashioned way.’ And he snaps his fingers.
A second later we’re back in Teffle’s improbable lab. Preston and the nuns are gone, but in their place is a giant chicken with a gun. ‘Welcome to the brotherhood,’ says the chicken. ‘Would you like to make a donation?’
THIRTY TWO
We’re all in the giant robot, stamping our way down the dark and dusty road. Night has fallen, the shark is nestled safely in the robot’s claw, and the giant chicken is at the controls.
‘The League of Crime Fighting Chickens! That’s what he wanted to call us.’ The chicken shakes his head and sighs. ‘It was all a big joke. “Yeah, let’s make fun of the chickens—what can they do to harm us?” Well, these suckers will soon find out.’
‘You’re the first talking chicken I ever met,’ I say. ‘How did this happen?’
‘You can probably guess if you think hard enough,’ the chicken replies, and then turns his weary head to the road.
‘Kieran,’ says Sue, and swaps me a glance. ‘I heard about this back in yonder. Teffle was against the experiment because it served no purpose. Giant sentient chickens were an evolutionary anomaly, but Kieran w
ent ahead and did it anyway.’
‘The man’s a sadist,’ says the chicken. ‘I didn’t even know if I was happy or unhappy pecking grain on the farm, but I know I’m not happy now. And neither are the rest of us.’
‘How many of you are there?’ I ask.
‘Enough.’ The chicken glowers, and there’s something unhealthy in his look. ‘He wanted a crime fighting league so he brought in a martial arts expert to teach us everything we know. Pushed us to limits neither man nor beast has ever been pushed to before, and all the while in our hearts the seeds of revolution were growing. You don’t cross a chicken with a grudge and expect to get away with it. Eventually that man is going to rue the day he ever genetically mutated a phalanx of giant chickens and taught them martial arts.’
The chicken takes his wings off the controls and starts flashing through a series of killer moves, which would be impressive if I wasn’t concentrating on smoking my cheroot. He returns to the controls and guides the robot down the road with a steely determination.
‘Chicken-fu,’ he mutters. ‘The most deadly martial art known to humanity. Dangerous in its unpredictability.’ In the distance we see the glow of lights. The chicken points a wing. ‘Base camp.’
As we approach I can see the chickens lined up in rows, drilling themselves through the motions, wing and claw cutting through the air with killer accuracy. Any man could see these chickens have been training hard for revenge.
‘But where’s my manners?’ tuts the chicken. ‘I haven’t even introduced myself. My name is Justice, and I cordially invite you to dinner.’
THIRTY THREE
Of course, it was chicken feed.
THIRTY FOUR
We sit around the table, surrounded by surly-faced giant talking ninja chickens. These look like the kind of chickens who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. They’ve seen the dark side of life and want revenge.
Joe Fury and the Hard Death Page 4