by Logan Hunder
“Banks?!” Sir Head repeated. “Did she just call you Banks?!”
For the first time since anybody here had met him, the old man stood up straight.
“She did. And who the hell are you?”
The Brit wiped one last smearing of blood off his face and postured his way in the hitman’s direction.
“I’m someone who’s not impressed.”
Mister Banks grunted an acknowledgement, then added:
“I’ll try to live with that.”
“Oh, you won’t have to for long.”
“I’m not sure if that’s an old joke or if you’re threatening me.
“Bit of both, now that you mention it. You’re old as shit.”
“Ah. Good one, then.”
“Quit stalling and fight me, you tired old twat.”
“When did I say I was going to fight you?”
“ . . .Well, aren’t you!?”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“You better start plotting then, because you don’t have any choice!”
Sir Head put his fists up once more, waggling them around like maracas. Banks, however, just studied the bizarre motions with a cocked head. After a moment’s mulling, he still neglected to raise his own arms, instead folding them and smacking his lips.
“Sure I do. I could run.”
“You could.” The agent agreed, still waving his hands and now adding some fancy footwork. “If you’re alright with showing us all you have no spine.”
Banks shrugged.
“What do I care what you think? You already said you’re not impressed.”
“I . . . what is going on here!? You’re supposed to be the most dangerous man in my organization’s database. You’ve allegedly brought down ships; massacred entire battalions.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then why are you so shy about an honourable one-on-one, eh?! If you’re so great, then I should be nothing to you.” The older man’s eyelids fluttered, as if the words gave him a headache. After another one of his heaving sighs, he glanced down at Kim.
“Did you two go to the same bad-guy school or something?” His gaze then returned to Sir Head. “Wanna know how I take down ships and all the people in them? It’s because I don’t fight them fairly, I don’t fight them honourably, and I certainly don’t fight them with my bare hands. In fact, if I can help it, I don’t fight them at all. Fighting is a waste of time, a waste of energy, and would be a waste of brains, except if you go looking for one, then you obviously don’t have any. You might think you’re a big man because you knocked the stuffing out of those two, but all I see looking at you right now is a geyser where your nose used to be. But hey, I’m sure the knowledge that you’re the toughest guy around is worth all the broken ribs, destroyed knees, face scars, and arthritic hands, right?”
Like any true manly man of action, Sir Head disregarded any potential wisdom that may have been gleaned and instead shoved Mr. Banks backward.
“Worth every bit,” he snarled through curled lips. “’Cos when it comes down to the wire and it’s man-to-man, I got the experience to get the job done.”
Banks stayed silent for a couple moments after that. He took the time to stare down at his chest, where the Brit had put hands on him. Then, after lifting his head back up, he spoke with an even colder calm than before.
“Well. That’s better than relying on words, I guess.”
At that, he unstuck a blaster rifle from his back and fired a wide-angled laser blast that spanned the width of the hallway and cleaved through both of Sir Head’s knees. Both calf, ankle, and foot combinations remained upright like tree stumps, while everything above them went crashing to the floor. The agent’s cries of agony sent chills up the spines of Cox and Cox, yet did not daunt the man-hunting Martian. He cleared the space the shove gave him with just a few steps then loomed over Agent Head’s head with the same aloof air that he had in every situation. Yet the slight nod indicated at least some sign that this was more than business.
“Not as impressive as a flying roundhouse kick, I know. I just don’t have your experience. All I got is this gun.”
One last click, one last pew, and one last flash of light ended the conflict. It was a moment that would have been perfectly punctuated by a flock of birds flying away. Instead, the only ceremony was the sitting bodies of the two protagonists huddling together in mutual relief and injury while their unexpected saviour wiped a smudge off his trusty, newly-appropriated sidearm with his sleeve.
“I’m keeping this, by the way,” he told them. “Seeing as you made me throw away my last one.”
Neither one replied, instead looking up in discomfiture at the man’s nonchalance. After a beat, Banks gestured down at Sir Head’s body.
“So is he it? Or is there any more?”
“There’s a guy down in the engine room,” Cox spoke in soft, hushed tones like a man in shock and also in a library. “I think Da-, I mean D-, er . . . Whatshername mighta killed him, though.”
“Ah, I’ll sort it out. You two just go deal with the stuff.”
THAT WAS THE LAST they ever saw of Banks. No one was too sure when or how he managed to get off their ship, but they were none too pleased when they found out he left behind the bodies of both Sirs Head and Todgerworth, as well as two hard candy wrappers. Having to fish one of those things out of the Roomba was the least-pleasant goodbye that Cox had ever experienced. However, at the time, he would be flying high on emotion-tailoring drugs to prevent any PTSD from all the death he experienced.
Before any of that could happen, though, Tim and Kim had to pry themselves from the floor and embark on the long limp to Donald’s bedroom. It worked as a three legged race of sorts; each had an arm draped over the shoulder of the other to aid in their zombie shuffle. The majority of the captain’s injuries were situated on his face and torso and so he could actually walk fine, but an arduous trek of mutual injury was too good of a bonding moment for him to pass up. So he held her close and limped like he was on a quest for an Academy Award.
“Do you think mom and dad would hate what I’ve become?” He broke the silence.
“Love, I don’t know,” Kim grunted. “Probably not. They never really cared about much anyway.”
“I guess . . . I dunno. I just don’t want to shame the family name.”
She let out a weak laugh; one that obviously caused her pain, but she could not help but utter regardless.
“Honey, you’re worried about their opinion on that?! Those two couldn’t have set the bar any lower—no offense. You’ve at least done things! Made a difference in one way or another. You told me the only reason those two have any money is because they were lucky enough to be ones alive when your great great great great great great great great great great great grandparents’ Beanie Baby collection finally appreciated in value.”
“Yeah . . .” He let out an unsatisfied sigh. “Do you think maybe this ship will ever appreciate in value, at least?”
“Oh babe, god, no. This thing ain’t even gonna outlive you.”
“Awww! I mean, it helped me do all this stuff, I guess. But is anybody even gonna know?”
She smiled and reached out a hand onto the door that read “Donald’s Room. Enter at own risk” under a biohazard symbol.
“We will. And I’m pretty sure, whether or not they admit it, someone in here is going to as well.”
With a press of some buttons, the door opened wide. Inside was Willy, doubled over in a series of groans and dry heaves, while Donald and Whisper stood over him waving their arms and screaming “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” nonstop.
“What the hell is going on?!” Kim barked, wincing from the force of her yell.
“Willy ate the goo!” Donald screamed back.
“What?!”
“He ate the goo! We heard somebody trying to get in and next thing I know, he dumped the vial out of the bottle, popped it open, and ate it!!”
“What the hell?! WHY!?”
&nb
sp; “I wanted to be a hero!” Willy moaned, bear-hugging himself and squashing all his facial muscles together.
“I wasn’t part of any of this!” Whisper defended herself against a question no one asked. “I just clearly picked the wrong room to hide in.”
“Am I gonna die!?”
“No, no, buddy!” Cox tried to comfort him. “No! No, no, no . . . no . . .”
“Whisper,” Kim ordered “Get us out of here. Set a course for somewhere; we’ll figure it out once in transit.” She swore under her breath and looked down at the pipette in her hand.
“We had the stuff and everything; why couldn’t you have just hung on!?”
“Dude, I’m dying!”
“You’re right. Bad time. I’m just . . . frustrated.”
She tossed the acid across the room, where it bounced off the wall and splattered on Donald’s dresser.
“Hey!” He whined. “That’s my underwear drawer.”
Cox, who had been rubbing Willy’s back the whole time, ignored the two of them as he rushed through the five stages of grief. He was currently on the third.
“Maybe this won’t be a big deal! I mean, we all know stomach acid is tough stuff. It can eat through wood and metal and all kinds of stuff.”
“Maybe,” Kim agreed. “We should still get him to a hospital, though. They can pump his stomach and get the thing out of him while the acid eats it.”
“There we go! That’s the plan. You hear that, Mister Padilla? You’re gonna be okay. We’re just gonna keep the Space Jam in you until we find some doctors!”
“Uh, guys?”
The couple turned around to find Donald holding the bottle of Fireball. Pupils dilated and lips pursed, he upturned the spout into his hand. They listened to a few soft clinks of glass on glass and recoiled in horror when they saw a glass vial pop out.
“There’s another one in there.”
All three of them seemed to follow the same wavelength. Their eyes traced from the bottle to the wall to the sizzling dresser, which had thirstily soaked up every drop of acid spilled upon it. Afterward, they came full-circle, back into looks of defeat aimed at one another. Donald swallowed while husband and wife exchanged glances.
“Can you get mo—”
“That’s all there was.”
Another groan from Willy, who had now gone full sprawl, captured their attention once more.
“Okay, hear me out . . .” Kim began.
“No!” Cox yelped. “You can’t be serious!”
“He already ate some; if it’s going to kill him, then he’s already doomed!”
“So you want to feed him more!?”
“What else are we gonna do with it?!”
“But what about everything he’s done for us!?”
“He hasn’t done hardly anything for us!”
“He ate the Space Jam!”
“That doesn’t matter unless he eats it all!”
“Oh god, I can’t watch.”
“Then don’t. But you gotta hold him down.”
Willy was no pet, and this was no act of euthanasia, but it was heart-wrenching nonetheless. Donald sat on one arm while Cox sat on the other, and the poor fellow beneath them had no trouble deciding which one at whom to aim his clamp-jawed pleading-eyed stare. Even after Kim plugged his nose, the desperate condemned continued to grunt and squirm and warble. Amid the whole display was the wife’s little hand trying to shove a vial of purple slime into his mouth. It wasn’t so much a “here comes the airplane” kind of feeding but instead played out like a PETA advertisement against foie gras.
Cox, who could not bear to listen any longer, begged her to at least knock the man out for the duration. He never did come to understand why she got so angry at the suggestion.
22.
I HAD A WILLY GOOD TIME
EVEN IN THE AGE of space exploration, brain implants, and commercially available murdering machines, hospitals were pretty much the same grossly over-priced motels that they always have been. They had the same uncomfortable beds, the same jaded staff that had seen it all, and the same clientele of people who were probably there as a result of bad decisions or bad days. The only difference between a hospital and motel was in a motel, one had a higher likelihood of being exposed to a deadly pathogen, and a lower likelihood of being killed by somebody.
With an ongoing exploding population and a sharp upturn in everyday items capable of exploding, the waiting rooms were never anything less than Black Friday levels of bustle. Tim and Kim found themselves wedged in between a man with a corkscrew pinning an anniversary card to his chest and a couple mulling over the nosejob menu. In a morbid way, it was slightly comforting to be surrounded by people dealing with difficulties of their own. It helped to take their minds off their unfortunate employee after the nurses wheeled him away.
“ . . . And then that crazy Mars hitman guy came through a hatch in the ceiling!” Cox explained to a nearby child playing with the standard cheapo waiting-room toys. “And he was all like ‘mur muh mur, you don’t scare me’ then he vaporized the secret agent’s kneecaps and blew a gaping hole in his sternum.”
“Get the hell away from my son!”
“Sorry, sir. I was just telling him a story!”
“He’s four! He shouldn’t be exposed to your lowlife garbage. C’mon, Timmy. Let’s go see if daddy’s bottom bitch has woken up from getting her bum bigger yet.”
Shooting Cox one last dirty look, he grabbed the kid’s arm and yanked him away from his playthings. The retro hinge-style door easily flew open from his shove and nearly nailed the doctor approaching it from the other side. No apology was given, and none seemed desired. Instead, the doc just carried on past him and into the waiting room.
“Is there a . . . Mister and Mrs. Cox?”
“Oh thank god. C’mon, Tim. Before somebody stabs you.” They stepped across the strewn-about, teenage-pregnancy Barbies and the My First Meth Lab™ playsets and followed him into an exam room. The lab-coated gentleman took a seat directly in front of a roughly head-sized hole in the wall. His tired, droopy eyes and the few days of scruff sticking out of his face made it difficult to tell if he was mulling over the contents of the chart he held or if the man had simply fallen asleep.
Cox nudged him with his foot. When there was no response, he turned to his wife.
“Why did you insist we come to this one?”
“You really don’t understand how to behave when you’re a fugitive, do you?”
The doctor cleared his throat with a loud “Ahem” that smelled of Jim Beam and instant ramen.
“Ah, here’s the part I was looking for.”
“Oh god.” Cox grabbed his wife’s hand. “Is he okay?”
“I honestly am not sure how much time I’d say he has left.”
The doctor said robotically as he scrolled through the file. “The patient you brought in is extremely overweight. At his current rate of expansion, he will be lucky to see forty.”
“Are you sure? I’ve spent a lot of time with him in the last couple days and he seems like he’s in pretty good shape to m—” Kim clamped a hand over his mouth.
“We didn’t bring him in for you to tell us he’s fat!”
“Oh. What else needs fixed, then?”
“What?! You’re the doctor here!”
“Ma’am, have you seen where we are? The only criteria for getting a job at this place is not asking the interviewer any questions.”
“Yeah, I’ve read the Yelp reviews. I don’t need you to be a professional diagnostician or literate. I just wanted you to pump the damn guy’s stomach.”
“We already did. Now, I know you don’t have much respect for my medical education, and believe me, you shouldn’t, but trust when I tell you that one stomach pumping is not going to do anything to counteract his weight problem.”
“Is there any particular diet program that you would recommend?”
“Tim, shut up. What did you find in Willy’s stomach?” The doctor onc
e again scrutinized the chart.
“Hmmm . . . well, he didn’t have your drugs if that’s what you’re expecting. It was pretty standard stuff for the most part. Couple meal-capsule hot dogs, some coffee, a large ball of assorted brands of gum, several milliliters of some purple substance we weren’t able to identify, half a croissant . . .”
“The purple stuff!” Kim cut him off. “Where is it now?”
“ . . . Uh . . . what, do you think we hang onto stomach contents? What would we do with them? Recycle them and serve them for lunch? All of that was medical waste. It’s been incinerated. Why? Was that the drugs?”
“I thought you guys weren’t supposed to ask questions.” Cox reminded him.
“Oh shit! Oh god. Please don’t tell my boss; she’ll fire me for sure. I can’t go back to working in a normal hospital. They don’t even let you take bribes there!”
Kim could not take any more. Exasperated from the exchange, she left her seat and gave her husband a tug as well.
“Just . . . just send Willy out when you’re done with him.”
Then it was back to the waiting room for them. They left as fast as they arrived, stepping over Archie Joins the Crips comic tablets and Teenage Mutant Crack Head action figures on their way out.
Shifty asteroid settlements such as the one they were on always tended to be the best hiding places when wanted by the fuzz. The constantly mobile, dime-a-dozen, police-unfriendly locations were made all the more ideal when the corporations that owned them became legally defined as people, residences, sovereign nations, and whatever else their CEOs wanted them to be. As a result, communities of former or only-occasional criminals often began to form around the giant core business, Australia style. Once well-established enough to have its very own shady hospital, an asteroid’s surface was usually wholly covered by strip malls of a sort.
The weary couple emerged from the clinic onto a dark street with a döner shop on one side and a strip club on the other. Discarded e-readers containing the news blew through the dark streets. Fortunately, the enclosed environment meant no need for a spacesuit and a pleasantly warm ambient temperature to relax in while they waited for the potential patient zero. Kim folded her arms and leaned against the wall, the natural pose to strike from her former street tough days.