The Hitnan: A Tale of Blood and Canes

by Wez Wallie

  Dotty just turned to stare daggers at her.

  "...Which we would totally never do, because I understand now that Peader would end up as collateral and collateral have feelings too..." Dotty nodded and Tilda looked sorrowful. "Gosh, that Bingo thing was quite awful now I think about it..."

  Back down the hall, Peader was putting the pieces together whilst trying to calm his breathing without much success. "Wait a half crackin’ minute now, de Agency is worldwide. How d'ye not already own Bognor and everyting else? ...Yer not actually in charge of anyting, are ye, Mrs Fishie?"

  She looked at the ceiling coyly, avoiding his gaze. "I mean, look at all dis gear. Ye used ta have good stuff and now it's all defective tat. Youse had to get it from de Chinese back-channels on budget I bet."

  "Shut it, Peader..."

  "Ye don't have any resources. Dat's why ye were banished ta de library station - ye were demoted!"

  "Fine!! The Bognor Board found out I had been using Agency assets to settle personal scores and banished me to Peckham. Little did they know, this was my hometown, and there's plenty more twats to take out who have pissed me off over the years!"

  "I'll nedder let ye hurt innocent people again! I'm sorry, de Wife of Michael Fish - but dis is fer de deceased Michael Fish!" The adrenaline kicked in again as he thrust his knuckles into her face. Unfortunately, the amount of plastic in her mug merely absorbed the kinetic energy and unleashed a shockwave that knocked him back on his arse.

  They were both quickly back on their feet and sparring as Peader was off his tits now, like Lee Evans on speed or a Jack Russell with ADHD, and he was unleashing a flurry of jabs and fists at all angles as his opponent countered and parried.

  Robert sprang up from Tilda's gob and said, "Oop, now the fella needs help!"

  They ran over and soon The Wife of Michael Fish was surrounded by all four of the teammates, attacking in a circle like a money-shot scene from The Avengers, (again, Marvel, not Jo-Lum), and if they had a theme song it would probably be a dubstep remix of the Countdown tune as hummed by the man himself, Nick Hewer.

  If there was a camera filming this it'd be circling them with gusto as each one threw limbs and fists and feet and canes into the centre enemy, wearing away at her resolve both physically and mentally, until the adrenaline began to wear out of Peader and she seized his outstretched wrist, and before he could say "Oh Lordy!" he was knocked out sparko and flung down the hall, sliding on the floor in a sitting motion until he came to a nice rest and gently bumped up against the far wall, already snoring.

  Dotty was standing in place just whacking her cane atop the Fish Wife's head over and over, until she too was disarmed and spun down the other end of the hangar.

  Only Tilda and Robert remained. Blood tickled down all three of them, as Robert jumped on her back and got a few licks in before being back-slammed to the ground and sent into unconsciousness too.

  "Bobbie-chops!!" cried his lover, as she was pushed back from getting to him.

  "Tilda Matthews..." said The Wife of Michael Fish, exhausted and breathing hard. "You couldn't just bloody kill her, could you. You could be relaxing on a beach somewhere right now with all the contracts you could wish for, if you had just done what was asked. But no, that would've been too easy, wouldn't it. You were s'posed to be best of the best."

  "No," said Tilda. "That's Dotty Walker you're thinking of."

  The Hitnan had crept up behind and proceeded to choke out the struggling woman with her cane crushed across her neck.

  "Checkmate, muvvaclucker. That's why you always work with a team."

  The Wife of Michael Fish struggled against the elder wood, as Tilda struck her in the stomach forcing her to her knees, and Dotty hooked the crook of the cane across her shoulder and flipped her around, delivering the knockout blow with a walking stick directly to her face. The leather clad GILF fell flat into the ground like a lump of coal.

  "Now that's what I call, Topped Bass!"

  Tilda stood over their defeated foe. "Topped bass? Might have to explain that one."

  "Well, you know," said Dotty, awkwardly. "Her code name at the Agency was Top Bass...”

  Tilda motioned for her to go on.

  “Like they say, 'Top Brass' in the cops, but here it's bass: as in the fish, as in The Wife of Michael Fish!" She leaned into Tilda’s shoulder with a whisper. "Don't make me have to explain me bad-arse line after defeating the bad guy! Makes it so less cool!"

  "Who are you having to show off for, there's only me and you awake? Also, isn't it pronounced, ‘base’? That line doesn't really work, Dorothy."

  "Shut it, Tilda coontin' Maffews! I knew there was a reason I hated you! And I'm showing orff for the punters - look, I've been live-streaming the whole fing all night!"

  Dotty took out her phone and proceeded to throw up gang signs and pulled 'ard faces into the camera.

  "You've been filming a Dotty's Diary all bleedin' night?! You've compromised all our identities, you wally! She was right, we are liabilities..."

  "Oh," said Dotty looking at the screen with disappointment. "Turns out I didn't press record. What a bummer. I would have got at least 112 likes from tonight's ordeal! How incompetent of me."

  Tilda was already trying to wake up Robert and ease pressure on his previous gunshot wound, with which a few stitches had popped with all the excitement and heavy action. Meanwhile, Peader had already roused and gave them both a hug when he came over. "I'm glad yer okay, Ms Walker and also Ms Matt'ews. What a crazy day."

  "You did good, kid," said Dotty, with a hearty slap on his back, (which also popped a few stitches on his clavicle). "Real good."

  Peader smiled warmly as the adrenaline was beginning to drain from his body, which also left him with a warm yet raging lob-on, (though whether that was the result of the drug's side effects or just him staring at the big shiny butt of Michael Fish's sleepy-spouse nobody knew).

  "So, what we gon' do wit her, den?"

  "Well, first thing's first," said Tilda, pirouetting on point and seizing the woman's wrists. She pulled the ropes off the chairs and bound her wrists in place with a knot.

  "That was totally unnecessary, Maffews."

  "What?! She has to be tied, what if she wakes up?"

  "No, I meant that poncy spinny-fing you just did - why is everything gotta be so dramatic wiv you? And I don't remember you ever being a ballet-bird."

  Tilda shrugged. "Whatever. But anyway, your boy is right, we can't really hand her in to the coppers. It would expose all of Bognor - and us!"

  "Maybe I could knock together some KNOCKRers and erase her short-term memory?!" said Robert to be helpful.

  "How long does it take to make a pair of those?"

  Robert shrugged. "'Bout a week."

  The Hitnan scoffed. "Her short-term memory of tonight will have become her long-term memories by then! And besides, we got no time to be pissing about now. Police are probably on their way after that rocket went off."

  Dotty fumbled around in her pocket and found one of the poison darts from the library. "I got just the fing." She hauled up the Wife of Michael Fish, whose pulverised charred face was barely recognisable, (which sorted Peader's lob-on rather nicely). She seemed fairly conscious now though, so Dotty whispered in her ear before holding up the poison dart ready to strike:

  "Say Hi to Michael for me..."

  "DAMN YOU PG TIPS!!"

  "Ooh," said Dotty. "Now you say it out loud, that's not that great either... if I have to have a code name, then you can call me... The Hitnan."

  She was about to bring the dart down into her neck, but something stopped her. Maybe it was the pathetic look in her enemy's sunken eyes, the chopped fingers and general visage of the woman's entire crippled body, (or maybe just passing gas), but she couldn't be bothered to finish the kill this time.

  "Sod it. You ain't even worth it. But I'll be taking these, fanks." She pulled out the plane keys from deep between her scorched norks.

  They all left her there
, crumpled in a puddle of her own wee. Except it wasn't a puddle of wee, but leaking oil from Peader's souped-up wheelchair contraption.

  "Don't you walk away from me, Dotty Walker!" The Wife of Michael Fish dropped a nearby loose firecracker into the oil and the entire trail went up in flames, and within moments the wheelchair did too, and then the crates, causing fireballs to shoot off in all directions like a dominoed chain reaction which quickly created a wall of fire blocking the hangar entrance.

  "You batshit crazy twonk! You'll kill us all!" The Hitnan screamed.

  "That's...kinda the…point..." whispered The Wife of Michael Fish, slowly succumbing to the smoke and encroaching flames.

  Dotty chucked the keys over to Tilda - "Quick, get in the Cessna 208b Grand Caravan - it's the only way!"

  "Yesss!" Tilda squealed again. "And well-remembered, Dorothy!"

  They all leapt inside the plane: Tilda in the pilot seat, Robert as the Co-Pilot, (Peader as the heavy cargo in the back that they might need to jettison if it struggles to get airborne). Dotty hopped onboard and Peader tried to close the sliding door as smoke grew thicker and the plane's engine roared into life.

  "Wait, where's me cane?!"

  Robert leaned back in the seat: "Sod it - you can't go back for it now, woman!"

  Dotty quickly relented. "Ohh, fine! Whatever - Go, go, go, Tild, this place is a literal fireworks factory – and when it blows, there's gonna be more than bullets popping off, son!"

  Tilda acknowledged, (her lanky legs so squished in the footwells that her knees were almost above her head!) "Here we go - hold on to your drawers!"

  Robert tried to guide her forward through the blackening smoke, and for a moment he thought he saw something move in the flames, but the plane began to taxi forward and quickly gathered momentum as it sped down the length of the hangar, bashing through the remnants of the charred Wheely McWheelface 5000 and approaching the plumes of fire hanging like a crematory curtain down over the entrance.

  Tilda pulled back on the control column and pressed the customised turbo-boost button: "Hold on everyone, this is the moment of truth!"

  They sped toward the fire, crashed through it with a roar and up and out into the night sky, salt air refreshing the lungs as they passed out over the waters and into the crackling clouds. They cheered and hollered in relief, when in seconds, the entire hangar below exploded into a giant thunderous fireball which shot out a ton of cheap Chinese bullets into the air, (thankfully missing them but taking out a few unlucky birds on the way, and quite possibly the whole dang ISS, based on subsequent NASA press conferences scrambling to explain why the whole station mysteriously spontaneously combusted around about the same time...)

  Then came the fireworks. Greens and golds and pinks backlit their narrow escape, and the screeching and banging accompanied the spectacular visuals, serenading the group into what was totally not the New Year yet may as well have been.

  The Hitnan relaxed into the back of the cabin. "Huh. Why were there fireworks in there anyway? Not like you can fit those inside a library book is it?"

  "I dunno Ms Walker, but ye might want ta ask her yerself, now!"

  "What?!"

  "Behind ye!"

  Dotty turned to face the door and sure enough, The Wife of Michael Fish was climbing up from the bottom wheels and clinging on to the side door using The Hitnan's cane, her crusty smoky cheeks losing squares of burnt, (and expensive), skin as they rippled in the wind.

  "LET ME IN, IT'S FUCKING FREEZING OUT HERE!!"

  Dotty heaved the door open and the howling early morning wind swept through the cabin, instantly soaking through with the spray of sourced rain, and the sudden loss of pressure caused extreme turbulence in the plane as it rocked from side to side.

  "ZOMBIE!"

  Her once-dead foe was now a monstrous apparition; she had no hair left on her charred black skull, and fingerless she looked like some irksome revenant spat back from the bowels of a hell that not even Lucifer Morningstar wanted anything to do with. Her suit had singed to her entire body and she was black all over. She was hanging on with the one structural hand she had left as they soared over the sea to the exploding cacophony and lightshow behind.

  Dotty shouted through the slipstreams:

  "BLOODY HELL WOMAN, YOU'VE GOT A GOOD GRIP! BUT YOU JUST DON'T SEEM TO KNOW WHEN TO QUIT DO YOU?!"

  "THE STORM IS UPON US! UNLIKE MY USELESS HUSBAND - I TOTALLY PREDICTED THIS! HAHAHAHA!"

  She cackled through the statically-charged thunder, almost blowing Dotty out the door.

  "I gotcha, Ms Walker!" Peader grabbed her waist as she leaned out and began trying to knock her fingers from the crook of the cane, which was now hooked onto the door handle beside her.

  "DON'T DO IT - WE CAN STILL WORK TOGETHER! WE CAN BE PARTNERS! I CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD FOR YOU; HOW ABOUTS WE DO SOME COLLABS ON YOUR CHANNEL? THE LORD SENT ME BACK FOR A PURPOSE, AFTER ALL: YOU AND I ARE GONNA BE BIG STARS - I'M TALKING BRADLEY WALSH LEVEL, HERE!"

  "I'M A STAR WITHOUT YOUR DEAD-STENCHIN' ARSE - I GOT TWO FOUSAND, NINE HUNDRED AND 41 SUBSCRIBEYDOOS ON ME YOUTUBES!"

  Dotty was about to punch her in her crispy face when she suddenly screamed:

  "WAIT! THINK ABOUT IT - IF I DIE, YOU'LL ONLY HAVE TWO THOUSAND, NINE HUNDRED AND FORTY SUBSCRIBERS!"

  The Hitnan thought about it for a few moments, but quickly decided to make the ultimate sacrifice by taking the loss of one subscriber to her Youtube channel and ending her reign of terror once and for all.

  She gave her a few whacks, and whilst not enough to dislodge the pasty slop-goblin from the plane, it sure was satisfying.

  "...AND THAT'S FOR LYING ABOUT THE LORD! YOU AIN’T EVER BEEN TO HEAVEN AND YOU SURE AIN’T GOING THERE NOW!"

  "THAT'S NOT TRUE - ULRIKA JOHNSON WAS A MAELSTROM ON THE MATTRESS; A REAL TORNADO IN THE TENT, IF YOU CATCH MY DRIFT!"

  The Hitnan upchucked for real this time and vomited all over the sooty-faced corpse-walker.

  The plane was careening through the ferocious air, flinging them all side to side. Tilda leaned over from the front seat - "You gotta lose her, Dotty, I can't keep control much longer!"

  The slimy-hemgremlin was looking up at her in pity. But before Dotty could decide what to do it reached up with all its might and clawed at her face with its knobbly stub-knuckles, giving her a right face-noogie and cackling wildly into the wind.

  The Hitnan grabbed her arm in fury and wiped the black cinder flecks from her nose as Peader locked his legs against either side of the doorway, straining to keep them both from tumbling out. "Any time now, Ms Walker!!"

  "COME HERE!" The Hitnan heaved up the undead fiend with her well-toned, chair-wheeling arms and brought them face to face, and then ear to mouth:

  "THE DEVIL'S GONNA WANNA KNOW WHO SENT CHA, SO LISTEN CLOSE: IT'S DOTTY FACKIN' WALKER - REMEMBER THE NAME!"

  The Hitnan smacked her square in her well-baked face and what remained of her nose collapsed in on itself, and with wide-eyed mania The Wife of Michael Fish began to fall back through the luminescent neon cloud layer as the fireworks show continued below, cackling through the currents as the air chipped the shavings from her bones, and the remaining outer layers of charred skin began to disintegrate into dust, leaving a trail of floating flakes above in her wake and raining down 'til what was left of the carcass was swallowed by the sea with a splash and then nothing more.

  Dotty watched the lights fade and the echoes hush as she heaved the door shut, and soon all was quiet as the plane steadied itself. The storm clouds calmed and dissipated into the ether. Dotty brushed off the smoky dandruff from her cane and set it across her lap as Peader fell back into the seat beside her and buckled up, exhausted. She looked out of the window at the shitshow behind.

  "Well, the fireworks certainly weren't defective," she said with a smirk. "Cor, I'd murder for a smokey right now."

  Peader pulled out a melted four-finger Kit-Kat from his new lucky kecks, broke it in half and passed it to her. "So much fer st
aying under de radar, eh, Ms Walker," he said with a cheeky yet tired grin whilst massaging his shoulder, the pain of his bullet wound returning now the adrenaline shot had worn off completely.

  Tilda and Robert turned back and gave them both wide smiles and a thumbs up from in front.

  "At least her death looks like an accident now!" Tilda shouted.

  "A little something I picked up from a friend," Dotty returned with a smile. "Just this once, mind."

  The flight continued over the sea and into the cool night air, the voices from inside the plane now growing fainter as it proceeded into the distance.

  "...I could design someting ta erase people's memories, like - wouldn't dat be magic!"

  "True say. I tell ya what, when we get back Peter, you're gonna get me some big fat KNOCKRS."

  "But Ms Walker, it's a bit late in life ta decide ta become a lesbo, now!"

  "Eh?"

  "I mean, I'm all fer ladies of de daisy persuasion, but it's a bit late in yer autumn ta be going t'rough phases now..."

  The Cessna's shape disappeared into the milky horizon, steady and stable, as a new dawn broke over England.

  Chapter 23

  "...After a spate of wrist-slitting suicides sweeping the nation, BBC1 have cancelled the scheduled repeats of Ms Brown’s Boys for the foreseeable future, and now instead present the highly anticipated trailer for the gritty modern remake of a '90s comedy classic..."

  The screen cuts to a sexy 20-something with a shoulder-length black bob throwing her white robes apart to reveal a cream bikini, with the camera leering on a close-up of beads of sweat rippling off washboard abs, and a fuck ton of guns stuffed into the thin straps of her bra and thong. She screams: "Suck on deeeese holy relics!!" as she proceeds to gun down the entire congregation and a passing flock of sheep at the local village fayre. The green, green grass of home is now stained blood, blood red as she blows away the smoke from her steaming AK 47s. She strikes a model's pose and smoulders in the sun’s saturating lens flare, as blood runs down from her dog collar and through the centre of her saucy norks, whilst the dramatic American voice of the narrator accompanies the titles: