I KILL

by Lex Lander

  My eyes travelled down, over legs that were long and lean, the swell of the calves exaggerated by the high-heeled slingbacks. It was at the other extremity that the perfection was marred. Though lovely, her face had none of that essential womanly softness. The wide mouth that ought to have spelled generosity and kind-heartedness, spelled only calculation and duplicity. Her beauty was the beauty of stainless steel, hardened and tempered and polished to a mirror finish. For all her physical purity there was nothing feminine about Annika de Bruin.

  But neither the shape of her mouth nor her armour plating spoiled her allure nearly as much as the automatic pistol she sheltered behind. The gun I understood and should have anticipated; the nakedness was mystifying.

  ‘Do you find me desirable, Mr Warner?’ she said, and her voice was husky. Her English was also flawless and accentless.

  I laid the Ithaca on the table top. I doubted I could have used it on her anyway, not looking as she did now. It would have been an act of vandalism.

  She smiled, interpreting the gesture as surrender. A triumph of the female form over pathetic male weakness.

  ‘More than desirable,’ I said, and it wasn’t flattery. As ever when confronted with the unclothed female form, my prick was sending urgent messages. Such as, here it is, on a plate, so what are you waiting for, schmuck?

  ‘For a man like you there is a place in my organization,’ she said. ‘An important place.’

  ‘I don’t make deals from the wrong end of a gun barrel.’ I was no longer looking at her face. The things she was doing to herself with her free hand were bringing out the beast in me. ‘And I already turned down an offer from your husband.’

  ‘Ah, but he had less to offer.’

  No disputing that. The hand movements grew more frenzied. Her fingers and the insides of the tops of her thighs glistened.

  ‘How right you are,’ I croaked. I was starting to sweat. ‘But I’m still not interested. In a job, I mean.’

  ‘This is not a job I am talking about, you fool!’ She was panting now. And I was right there with her. ‘I am offering you a partnership, more money than you could earn in ten lifetimes.’ Her eyelids flickered, her mouth parted, she was close to orgasm. The gun slipped from slack fingers, thumped on the carpet.

  ‘Come.’ She reached for me. ‘Love me.’

  The magnet of her superb body was irresistible, and I was too weak to resist it. It drew me into her arms. She was flushed, her body throbbing as if from some mechanism deep inside, and the smell of sex that rose from her was miasmal. My belt was suddenly undone, my fly unzipped, and no sooner had my jeans descended below my thighs, my underpants in close attendance, when my prick was enveloped in a slippery, clinging heat. All I had to do was stand there. Annika was in control. Annika would always be in control. To her men were just studs, sexual adjuncts. I ought to have cared, but I didn’t. I ought to have hated her but I loved her instead. And hated myself.

  Some women are subdued in their lovemaking, others exuberant. Annika may have been a robot-woman in some ways but her commitment to the sex act owed nothing to robotics. She revelled in it. Every jerk of my pelvis pushed a squeal of delight from the wide, scarlet lips, the squeals growing in volume and intensity as we bumped along towards a climax. She signalled her readiness by lifting her feet off the deck and scissoring my waist with her legs. I staggered briefly as I took her weight – she was no sylph. I cupped the cheeks of her backside, and at that precise instant we both climaxed, as near simultaneously as made no odds.

  It was an orgasm to end all orgasms, long-lasting, noisy, and excessively seminal. Gradually though, the screams quietened to groans and ultimately tapered off to a protracted sigh. Hands still interlaced behind my neck, Annika unlocked her legs slowly and let them slide to the deck. The internal muscles of her vagina still clamped me, no less fiercely than during the act. Her sex odour was stronger than ever. To inhale it was to be drugged by it.

  Drugged. The word roared in my ears.

  Now I remembered why I was here.

  I was here for Lizzy.

  Lizzy, now a drug addict because of this woman.

  Lizzy, forced by her into unnatural sex acts. Brutalised. Beaten. Corrupted. Contaminated.

  I felt dirty.

  We were still coupled when I squeezed the trigger. The punch of the bullet ripped her away from me and drove her backwards to slam into the wall. Incredibly she remained standing. Staring, aghast, at me, at the still-pointing, still-smoking gun. Not downwards at the once-pristine plain of her stomach, now marred by a purple-edged puncture with a halo of flash burns, so close had been the muzzle when I fired. Blood was welling, thick as oil, and a scarlet runnel descended into her pubic hairs, meandering through them as a stream through a forest.

  ‘You … shot me.’ Her legs began to crumple. She slid a few inches down the wall. ‘How … could you l-love me like that … then … sh-shoot me?’ She was genuinely incredulous. Maybe she had a right to be.

  She slid further and faster, until her bottom bumped on the deck, wrenching a gasp of pain from the mouth that was like a slot. In the wall, just above her head, was a hole and around it, dark as burgundy, a splash of blood from the exit wound. Strands of her blonde hair were stuck to it, drawn up from her scalp.

  Her mouth squirmed. Her teeth were stained pink, a shade lighter than her lipstick. She mumbled something in an unfamiliar language, her native Dutch I guessed.

  ‘Are you talking to me or clearing your throat?’ I said coldly as I stowed the Korth in its holster.

  ‘Why d-did you …?’ she slurred, then her words tapered off in a groan.

  ‘Shoot you?’ My jeans and pants were still around my ankles. I hoisted them to more dignified levels.

  She was panting now, her eyes all but closed, the colour wiped from her complexion.

  ‘In the … name of … God– why?’ she whispered, as if it mattered any more.

  I shrugged as I buckled my belt.

  ‘In the name of God, why not?’

  The air on deck was pure and clean after the stink of carnage and gunpowder fumes and the juices of Annika de Bruin. I had spent ten fruitless minutes in search of Petit, calling his name and going from cabin to cabin. Maybe the bastard didn’t trust me not to give him the same treatment as his late colleagues. Perceptive of him. I was in the mood for a clean sweep.

  At the head of the companionway I came across the spread-eagled form of a man in sailor togs. The epaulettes suggested an officer. No external injuries, but he was dead all right. Tom-Tom’s work, I didn’t doubt. In the wheelhouse was a second stiff, also a crew member. Again no obvious cause of death.

  I propped the Ithaca in a corner of the wheelhouse, and gave the controls a once-over. As you’d expect, the ship lacked no modern navigational aid. She could be sailed by computer. The crew were almost supernumerary. Providentially, since I was disinclined to spend hours reading the instruction handbook, manual controls had not been dispensed with altogether. I was tinkering with the Cetrek auto-pilot when a shadow fell across me. I glanced up. Tom-Tom peered balefully through the open doorway, his bulk blotting out the sun and a good part of the sky. The man was a walking eclipse.

  ‘Que fais-tu?’ he growled.

  If I answered truthfully, I’d have to kill him. Or he me.

  So I said, ‘Just looking around.’

  I edged towards the Ithaca while making a pretence of studying the control panel.

  ‘No, you don’t.’ He dived for the gun, beating me by a nose.

  ‘You’re forgetting something, Tom-Tom,’ I said pleasantly, tossing him a comradely grin. ‘I’m working for your boss.’ I tapped him on the chest. It was like tapping on a stone plinth. ‘You and me, we’re on the same side. Where is Petit anyway?’

  ‘Waiting for you to leave.’ Tom-Tom’s pebble eyes were bright with suspicion.

  ‘I thought as much. He doesn’t trust me, does he?’

  He moved in a sidle to the door and, with a notabl
e lack of effort, flung the Ithaca high and far into the Mediterranean. It flew a long, long way before plunging into the pale blue waters. Now I was annoyed. That was an expensive piece of hardware.

  ‘Now, Tom-Tom, that wasn’t friendly.’ I promptly covered him with the Korth in case he had ambitions towards evicting me by the same method.

  ‘Dehors.’ Meaning I was to beat it. ‘You’re leaving, Varnair.’

  ‘Okay, so I’m leaving.’ A brawl with Tom-Tom was not on my agenda. I’d had a good run. I was content to settle for what I’d got. In the end it was Tom-Tom who chose war when he could have had peace. As I detoured around him he grabbed for the Korth. Like many outsize blokes he could be cobra-fast when it suited. The only shot I got off before the gun was wrenched away, almost taking my arm with it, definitely hit meat. For all its disabling effect on Tom-Tom I might as well have said ‘Bang, you’re dead,’ and saved the price of a bullet.

  Subsequent developments were mostly to my disadvantage. Tom-Tom lifted me bodily and gave me a big squeeze to show how much he loved me. My rib cage buckled. Quite by chance my knee, while flailing about like the rest of my joints, got wedged in his crotch. I drove upwards with my kneecap. Surely in that area Tom-Tom was just as tender as any normal-sized male.

  I was only partly-right. The only reaction was a hissing of garlic-fumed breath past toothless gums, and enough of a slackening of the bear hug for me to disengage my arms and deliver a clubbing blow to the side of that pineapple-shaped head. This induced a roar of pain – from me, not him. A cannonball would have been softer. In retaliation he projected me aloft, cracking my skull against the roof. I saw not just stars, but a whole galaxy. This, however, was only the run-up to the short trip Tom-Tom was planning for me: from one side of the wheelhouse to the other without ever touching the deck.

  I came to rest in a corner, draped over a fire extinguisher. Dazed, but damage still superficial. Icicles of fear transfixed my heart as the extent of Tom-Tom’s physical superiority sank in. More than that, he had a touch of madness about him. His jaw was working in a loose, unhinged fashion, his hands opening and closing in spasms, like mechanical grabs. He advanced on me, mouthing gibberish. My only salvation lay in staying out of grabbing range. I needed room to manoeuvre. Room, bluntly, to get the hell out of there, and off the ship while I was still in a fit condition.

  In theory Tom-Tom’s ponderous lumber was easy to dodge. I demonstrated how easy by nipping under the out-stretched arms, which brought me within bolting distance of the door, only to be caught by a chop to the back of my neck that lifted me off my feet and out of the wheelhouse altogether. Well, wasn’t that what I wanted? My already sore midriff fetched up against the rail, deflecting me back towards the wheelhouse where, kinetic forces expended, I was mercifully permitted to crumple to the deck. Bruised, stunned, weakened. The wound in my arm had opened, bright baubles of blood dribbling through the tear in my sleeve. No respite was forthcoming though. This wasn’t a punch-up out of the pages of a Superman comic. Tom-Tom burst from the doorway like a rampaging bull. His grin as he lit upon me was a gummy half-moon of rapture.

  ‘Say your prayers, Varnair,’ he said, a thread of saliva dangling from his chin. ‘I am going to break you into very small pieces.’

  I believed him.

  ‘Now, wait a minute, Tom-Tom, let’s discuss this rationally.’

  I was in a dead end. Rails to the right and behind, the wheelhouse to the left. Tom-Tom in front and the most impenetrable of the lot.

  He shuffled towards me, not hurrying, drawing out the kill. I had only seconds left to put up some kind of defence. The smallest move was agony, but I straightened my leg and tore the skin-diver’s knife from the tapes that bound it to my ankle. Its appearance had no deterrent effect on Tom-Tom. It didn’t prevent the grab-like hands from locking onto me, nor from hauling me upright, nor yet from crushing my shoulders together until my collar bones creaked.

  In a despairing last act of self-preservation, I lunged with the knife at his lower gut. So sharp was the blade that it went in all the way to the hilt. The pressure on my shoulders continued unabated. I jerked the knife free. It came with a squelch and a gush of blood that dyed my hands instant red. Again I lunged, twisting, working the blade from side to side. A reaction at last, the grip on my shoulders easing, my weight pulling me free. Still I worked the knife, the blood now spurting, great gouts of it, darkening Tom-Tom’s royal blue pants and spraying over me. A half-hearted cuff flung me against the rail. Temporarily Tom-Tom lost interest in me to attend to his hurts.

  Such wounds as I had inflicted would have immobilised if not killed most men. But Tom-Tom was to most men as a dinosaur is to a lizard. A strip of band-aid and he would be good as new. I had gained at best a few precious moments, life-giving as a drop of moisture to a man dying of thirst though they were. As Tom-Tom slumped against the rail to get his second wind, I ducked down and took a handful of his trouser bottoms. A startled grunt escaped him. He clutched at my head, probably with the intention of removing it from my body. I rose, yanking at his trouser bottoms, lifting his legs clear of the deck so that he was balanced on the rail, which acted as a fulcrum. He swore, he kicked, he tried to unscrew my head from my neck but the loss of several pints of blood had affected even him. Almost casually, I tipped him over the rail.

  A shout exploded from the cavern of his toothless mouth. It wasn’t far to fall, seven feet at the most to the main deck, but twenty-plus stone is a lot of deadweight to drop from any height. I swear the ship heeled over when he landed.

  I flopped against the rail, puffing harder than a steam loco on an uphill gradient. The Incredible Hulk was splattered on the deck below like a giant spilled jelly. It was quite still, and if the fall hadn’t killed it, chances were it would bleed to death.

  Back into the wheelhouse then, at a weak-kneed stagger. Find the starter; thankfully, AnnRik could be started from the bridge. A turn of the key and engines below broke into a lazy rumble. Needles came alive on dials, illuminated digits and computerised images glowed from the Navstar navigation displays. This plethora of electronic data was just a jumble of hieroglyphics to a traditionalist sea dog like me. Besides, I could manage without it. I looked out across the peaceful bay, its waters winking under the fading sun. Inshore a scattering of boats and skiffs, all at anchor and lifeless. In the opposite direction, out to sea, Seaspray was the only craft in sight, her mast a lonely silver lance.

  Now for the anchor. It was raised by a motor on the foredeck, controlled remotely from here, which was just as well since I could never have managed the trek to the bow and back in my depleted condition. I located the appropriate button. The anchor came clattering up, the motor cutting out automatically as the flukes entered the hawse-hole. As I moved across to the wheel my toe stubbed against the Korth. I slipped it into its holster. Might need it yet. Tom-Tom might revive.

  The beat of the diesels was steady, the revolution counters showing 250 rpm. I folded my fingers around the twin T-bar throttle levers and pushed. Response was instantaneous: a tremble underfoot, a forward surge that rocked me on my heels, and we were on the move, ten knots coming up fast. A touch of negative throttle, and she settled at ten, cleaving the water cleanly. I felt like the master of an ocean liner.

  A twitch of the wheel to port, the electronic compass flickering, 265 degrees … 266,267,268 … I kept her swinging until 305 flashed up, then straightened up as the reading stabilised on 310, the bows now pointing towards the Atlantic. AnnRik was on course for several thousand miles of ocean waste.

  Setting the auto-pilot I went below, limping and groaning and feeling sorry for myself. It stank down there. Blood and cordite mostly, smells that stuck to my palate, making the gorge rise and my stomach lurch.

  ‘Petit!’ I bellowed. ‘It’s safe to come out. They’re all dead.’

  Only the drumming of the engines answered me. AnnRik was a ship of ghosts, a floating abattoir. I stepped over the corpses in the corridor.


  ‘Petit!’

  The swirl of water along the hull was transmitted through the soles of my feet. Eerie, somehow, to think of that empty wheelhouse and the helm making microscopic adjustments, as if under the direction of some invisible agency. Angrily I shook off the spooks, disregarded my hurts, and went about my business.

  On a vessel of AnnRik’s tonnage there is no obvious location for the sea cocks. I had to hunt hard to find just two. These were amidships, below the main staterooms, and the flow rate when I opened them was only moderate. It would be some hours before the hull became waterlogged. Long before that, however, the cocks would be inaccessible to anyone other than an experienced underwater swimmer. I doubted whether Petit qualified, or Giorgy, if either of them were still on board. Tom-Tom, if he lived, certainly didn’t, although the other two might be able to use him as a life raft when the yacht sank.

  A last fruitless hail to Petit before I went up top. A sea breeze had arisen as AnnRik passed beyond the shelter of Cap Malabata, with its ugly squat lighthouse. Seaspray was far astern, just a speck of white on blue. I made sure Tom-Tom was still comatose, then went aft. The Dutch flag on its short pole agitated about my head. To starboard, in the direction of Spain, two oil tankers were heading towards me in echelon. By my estimation they would cut AnnRik’s wake. If they didn’t and by some freak chance collided with AnnRik, well, that would just hasten the process I had already set in motion.

  Seaspray’s inflatable was wagging crazily in the propeller wash. Hugging my bent rib cage with one arm, I unhooked the grapnel, flung it well clear. That done, the longer I hung about, the longer the swim, so I went in off the stern rail in a clean shallow dive. When I broke surface AnnRik was already a hundred yards away, the square stern rising from the white commotion of her wake, cruising majestically to her doom.