Toxicity (11 page)

“Good,” said Randy, and placed
the muzzle of his pistol against Jenny’s head. “Then you’ll be handing that
over to me,” he said. He smiled.

Sick Note spun, eyes filled with
rage, body tense for combat.

“I wouldn’t, motherfucker. This
baby has a hairline trigger and could go off with the slightest squeeze. And by
that, I don’t mean Jenny’s clit.”

“How much did they pay you,
Randy?”

“Not enough,” he said, voice
charming now as he stood and Jenny rose with him. Her guns and bombs; so close
and yet so far. If she could just...

“Do not be fooled by my apparel,
nor my nonchalant charm,” said Randy, leaning in close to her. “I’d kill you as
readily as swatting a fly. I
will
spread your brains across the wall.”

“What did you do with Flizz?”

“Let’s just say some big men in
big coats with a big black van took her away. Somewhere nice. She can, oooh,
perhaps have a snooze, with a nice meal; then a spot of torture for dessert? I
think that may be on the menu.”

“Blow it,” said Sick Note, eyes
and gun fixed on Randy.

“She’ll have a job,” said Randy,
smiling easily. “I swapped the trigger lines. Now, give me the det.”

Suddenly, there was a deafening
clatter of three choppers, slick and glossy, which zoomed across the sky,
searchlights painting massive circles of light against the ground. Jenny
sensed, more than saw or heard, the special ops soldiers behind her; creeping
through grass, drifting like ghosts between the trees with weapons primed and
hearts hard. They really had been set up. The enemy. The Company. Aided and
abetted by a back-stabbing Randy. The bastard.

Jenny turned and looked at him. “Why?”
she said, eyes haunted, lost, hurt. Then she spat in his face and watched the
dandy in him leave, like a soul drifting upwards from a corpse.
Was it just
a persona? A created character for our benefit; to get inside Impurity? To get
inside us? To break us?

“Give me the detonator, bitch,”
he said.

The special ops soldiers were
through the fence now, a ring of weapons around Jenny and Sick Note. Slowly,
Sick Note bent and placed his weapon on the ground, hands in the air, game over.
Jenny, however, seemed locked in battle with Randy. As if some great contest of
wills was taking place, and he really
didn’t
have a gun to her head.

“When I detonate,” said Jenny,
slowly, enunciating every word with care, her eyes locked to Randy’s, “you know
as well as I the whole fucking place is going to come smashing down. This
close, it’s a toss-up between whether we live” - she licked her lips, and
smiled - “or die. I believe in my cause, and I’m willing to die with honour,
Randy. Are you in the same place? In your heart? In your soul?”

“I explained,” barked Randy,
annoyed now. “I swapped the trigger lines.” He gave his own dark smile then; it
was almost as dark as his hooded, glassy eyes.

“And I’m explaining now,” said
Jenny, dipping her head a little and lifting the detonator in her gloved fist, “that
I bypassed them altogether. I didn’t trust your alien shit. I wanted the job
done.”

Her hand was high in the air,
now. Her eyes shifted and met Sick Note’s. He knew what to do.

“So - it’s live?” he asked.

Jenny could see a pulse beating
at Randy’s temple. It was flickering wildly.

“Oh, yes,” she said, and squeezed
the detonator like a lover... and in a dream, watched the world come tumbling
down.

~ * ~

THREE

NEVER
LOSE YOUR temper.

Horace was bald. Horace liked
being bald. He especially liked it when somebody shouted, “Oi! You! Bald
bastard!” Then, Horace would have to remove a few teeth. Horace had removed
lots of teeth in his career, but that wasn’t why they called him The Dentist.

“Never lose your temper.”

Horace stood cupped in the
shadows of the gloomy, low-rent, drag-strip neon-tattooed bar, arms limp by his
sides, face neutral, and stared at the three large, hairy, overly-angry men
before him. Glass lay shattered on the whiskey-stained boards. A woman in a
leopard-skin mini-skirt sat, stunned, blood trickling from her smashed lip.

One man growled something
incomprehensible, and snapped a pool cue over one knee. Horace gave a long,
slow, reptilian blink. The length of splintered wood whistled as it slammed
through the air, and the modest-looking, mild-mannered Horace twitched and
swayed to the side by just enough, eyes cool, face serene, breathing calmly.

The second strike was avoided
with equal ease, and screaming in frustration, the large, heavily muscled
wife-beater leapt at Horace, who simply turned sideways, allowing the huge man
to cannon past, charge uncontrollably into a stack of tables, and send the
whole tower tumbling down with a noise like a fat man falling down the stairs.

With neat little movements,
Horace turned his back on the group and walked towards the exit. On his way out
from the darkened, seedy bar he pocketed a photo cube in his expensive neat
black suit pocket. A glass flew past him, shattering on the wall, and then
Horace was outside, breathing cool, snow-laced air, neon party-lights
flickering above him with promises of SEX SEX SEX and CUNT CUNT CUNT. Digital
echoes played across Horace’s alabaster skin.

He started down the sidewalk,
filtering out the noise of the partying nightlife all around. He sensed the
three men emerge from the bar behind him. A door cracked shut.

“Oi, you! I said YOU! Bald
fucker!”

Horace stopped dead.

A tiny muscle twitched in his
jaw.

Horace sighed. And turned. He
watched the three men charging towards him, and waited until the last moment
before twitching sideways to the right, right fist driving upwards under the
middle man’s jaw and lifting him clean off his feet. In a reversal of the same
movement, his elbow drove backwards into another man’s eye socket -
disintegrating the bone - and as the third man stood suddenly still, shock
registering through alcohol and hate, Horace stepped in close and leant towards
him.

“Do you know what they call me?”
he said, quite placidly.

The man tried to take a backward
step, but realised Horace had hold of his belt. He stared down at the neat white
features, the polished dome of the bald head, and he felt a tremor of terror
ripple down his spine.

“No,” he managed, gusting sour
whiskey fumes and spittle.

“They call me The Dentist,” said
Horace, gently, words little more than an exhalation of calm air. “Have you
heard my name?”

The half-drunken thug nodded,
eyes growing wide. Everybody had heard of The Dentist. Everybody had heard
bad
things
about The Dentist. Growing up in Callister Town, the wild frontier
for partying nutcases, the rumours were always exaggerated; but always, as
these things were, based on a grain of truth.
He’s as big as five men, son,
the
bullshitters would bullshit.
He can punch through plate steel, and has balls
the size of watermelons!

But... why do they call him The
Dentist?

Only he knows that, son. But one
thing I can tell you is that if you hear that name, you’d better run, ‘cause
your meat is deader ‘n dead meat.

Jonboy had heard the rumours, of
course he had, everybody had, and the stories, and seen the pictures (artist’s
impressions) in papes and newscubes. The scenes of destruction. Of torture and
murder. The wanted posters containing blurry images and colossal reward sums
for information leading to the capture and execution of the killer known as The
Dentist.

Nobody would invoke that name
without having some serious backup, or serious hardware. Jonboy looked
frantically for a gun, but could see none. No stick, no knife, no ‘dusters.

Shit, he realised. This greasy
little pasty-face bastard was taking the
piss!

Jonboy let out a snort, partly
fuelled by alcohol, partly fuelled by the realisation that only a skinny little
bastard without
real muscle
was gripping his belt. A little bastard who
was about to get the kicking of his life.

“You don’t fucking
say,” Jonboy
snarled, bravado returning on a surfboard of adrenaline and whiskey.

“Yes.” Horace smiled. “Actually,
I do.” His hand came up swiftly, formed a fist, and drove into Jonboy’s mouth
like a pile driver. Fingers opened like grappling hook irons, and Horace gave a
violent twist of the wrist, like he was unscrewing a lightbulb, breaking both
lower and upper jaws with one swift
crack,
and extracting both gleaming
teeth and yellow jaw from the suddenly gaping cavity of the skull. The bone
trailed ripped tendons on a torrent of torn muscle and gushing blood.

Jonboy gawped for a moment. He
had little option.

Horace surveyed the excised
jawbone in his fist, and slowly analysed each tooth sequentially. He gave a
little smile, as if acknowledging some internal diatribe. He then dropped the
jaw to the ground with a clatter and strode away, watched by Jonboy who slowly
folded to his knees, hands pawing his missing lower face.

Within moments, Horace was lost
in the crowds.

~ * ~

HORACE
LIVED IN a big white house on a hill. The house overlooked a vast surrounding
countryside, which constituted flowing, waving keeka grasses and red-leaf
woodland. The expansive grounds of the house were marked by a clear boundary, a
high stone wall topped with black iron spikes. The drive was guarded by high
iron gates which could be controlled remotely from the house, and on the stone
pillars there was a marked absence of an intercom. Horace did not welcome
visitors. Horace did not like visitors. Horace did not welcome
anybody.

The house, which went by the name
of the
Nadir,
was a good hundred kilometres from the nearest village,
and nearer two hundred from the nearest city. The only access to the imposing
white-walled residence was up a narrow dirt track guarded on either side by
dangerous lakes and overhanging, sharp-thorned trees. The land surrounding
Horace’s home was not a welcoming place. It was the sort of location chosen by
a dedicated recluse.

The seasons had shifted, an
almost imperceptible slide from autumn to winter. On this cold, crisp morning,
the lawns were peppered with ice crystals and a cold pastel sun hung low
against a sky as broad as infinity.

Horace stepped from the side
entrance, and shivered. Silka, his pet shifta, slunk over to him and wrapped
herself between his legs, much the same way as an affectionate cat would. Her
long tail tickled his calves and he smiled, bending down, picking her up in one
hand. She purred, wide orange eyes watching him as her almost serpentine body
curled around his hand, six legs with their little hands gripping him lightly.

“You catch anything?”

“Of course,” said Silka.

“So the hunting’s good?”

“At this time of year, the
hunting is always good.” She smiled, and her face was almost human.
Almost.

“Come on, climb down. I have work
to do.”

“The shed?”

“Yes, the shed.”

Silka leapt from her master’s
fist and slunk off into the auburn autumn grass. She disappeared immediately,
engaging her chameleonic colour-shifting abilities and, as usual, Horace spent
a good minute searching for her, without success. Despite Silka’s size - about
that of a ferret - Horace knew she was one of the most deadly hunters on the
planet. Her sharp teeth could easily rip out a man’s windpipe, and coupled with
her near invisibility and human intelligence, she would make a deadly adversary
for any organism. Luckily, she was mostly interested in hunting small rodents.
Well, today, anyway.