Krokodil Tears Read online

  “Jessamyn…” said the Doc. “Stop it.”

  Everyone in the saloon was looking at her. Their heat-patterns flared, as if they were blushing all over.

  She pulled the trigger.

  VI

  Cocooned inside the air-cooled cockpit of his DeLorean “Snowbird” SandMaster, Bronson Manolo checked the dispositions of the Holderness-Manolo forces surrounding Dead Rat. Within five minutes, they should all be in place.

  Once the spotman reported back that Jessamyn Amanda Bonney was in Dead Rat, Manolo had called in Holm Rodriguez from Denver and Susie Terhune from Phoenix. Terhune was an assault specialist solo who had subcontracted for H-M on several occasions, and Rodriguez was their top Colorado Op, further qualified because he came from the quarry’s home turf. When he was with the Denver paycops, he had busted little Jessamyn on some juvie beefs. Truancy, stealing lollipops, pulling PZ brats’ pigtails, whistling commie songs in church, assault with a deadly weapon: kidstuff like that.

  “One good thing about this action,” Terhune claimed, “at least nobody in Dead Rat could possibly be classed as an ‘innocent bystander’.”

  H-M had enough field Ops to handle the sanction, but Manolo recognized his limitations, and had had Rodriguez and Terhune augment his forces with some local soldiers who knew the sand. Most of his full-scale skirmishes had been in NoGos or Urban Blight areas. Out here in the Big Empty, the situation was quite different. Less cover, more miles. This was sandrat heaven. He was quite willing to delegate field command to Terhune until the objective was obtained.

  He checked his GenTech digital chronometer against the dashdial. He was synchronized with the machine.

  “Ommm,” he said to himself, shifting his level of psychic awareness, “ommm.”

  Gari the Guru had given his blessing on this sanction down at the Pyramid. “You can’t destroy, Bronson, you can only convert a thing’s form.” That was true, converting forms was Manolo’s business. He took nasty live people, and turned them into nice dead ones. Bob Holderness would have been proud of him.

  When this take-out was over, he was looking forward to a session in the hot-tub with Kandi, maybe a few snorts of cocoa, and some radical waves to ride out in the bay. The pollution didn’t kill the ripple, and couldn’t get through to you in a skin-tight SCE unit.

  Manolo didn’t groove to the Big Empty. He was a cityguy. He didn’t like to breathe anything he couldn’t see.

  “In place, Bronson,” said Terhune. Her light blinked green on the mapscreen. “Mortars ready to ride. Let’s nuke the spook.”

  “Rodriguez?”

  Manolo tapped the screen, and Rodriguez’s light flared. “Okay for sound, chief. We’re in place.”

  “The quarry?”

  “We tracked her from the Threadneedle site. She’s in the Silver Shuriken now. We’ve given her enough time to get blasted out of her skull.”

  “Excellent. Judicious. Righteous.”

  “Thanks, bro.”

  Manolo pulled his seatbelt across his lap, and plugged it in. The console lit up, and he flicked some buttons. The inboard computer flashed stats at him. The weapons systems gave him some readiness read-outs.

  “Okay Jose, let’s spread some karma…”

  VII

  The bullet flattened against her temple. She felt as if someone had taken a swing at her with a sledgehammer, but didn’t fall off her stool. Her arm flew out, wrenching her shoulder, but she kept a grip on the gun. She shook her head, and the spent slug fell to the saloon floor.

  “Let’s look at that,” said the Doc, prodding her sore spot with his fingers. “Hmmnn, more bruising than there ought to be. Your steel-mesh underflesh hasn’t quite knitted properly. The durium platelocks are fine, though. You might have done something less drastic to test my handiwork, but everything seems to be holding up properly.”

  Curtius Kenne was staring at Jessamyn as if Jesus H. Christ himself had ridden into town on a donkey, walked into the bar looking for trouble, and kicked him in the gazebos with steel-spiked sandals.

  “Freakin’ hell,” he said, almost in reverential tones.

  Jessamyn handed him the still-smoking gun. “Didn’t I mention that I had a bullet-proof skull?”

  He took the weapon and looked at it. The barrel was blackened at the end.

  “Silly me.”

  One bullet, one chamber.

  “Your turn,” she said.

  He held the gun as if he didn’t know what it was, and looked at her.

  She smiled pleasantly. “You heard me, cowboy. It’s your shot.”

  Jitters laughed and clapped his hands, then slapped Kenne on the back. “Yessir, now it’s time to see some bloody buggering Yankee guts and glory spread out all over this pub, eh what? That do-or-die Davy Blooming Crockett spirit. Come on, Ragtime Cowboy Joe, take your medicine. The bint did her bit, now it’s up to you to show us what you’re made of…”

  Kenne swallowed his spit. Tears leaked out of his eyes.

  Jessamyn knew what the cowboy was made of. Flesh and blood and bone, just like everyone else. No blastic, no durium, no implants, no steel, no diamond-chips. Just chemicals and 78% water.

  They weren’t even the same species, Kenne and her. She couldn’t feel anything for him. But she helped him.

  She took the gun, and put it into his hand properly, wrapping his fingers around the butt, shoving his forefinger through the trigger-guard, and held the barrel to his ear. She thumb-cocked the piece, and stood back, admiring her handiwork. Kenne stood like a statue, Rodin’s Old Cowhand Blowing Brains Out.

  “The game ain’t over ’til the whistle’s blown.”

  The cowboy was sobbing now, the gunbarrel shaking against his flesh.

  “That cracker-ass pussy ain’t gonna do it,” said one of the Maniax, turning away in disgust. “Never no good entertainment out in the sand.”

  Kenne was shaking all over. He lowered the gun, and it hung limp in his hand, barrel to the floor.

  “Just a bloody buggering knee-trembler, eh what?” Jitters jumped up and down, face red with excitement.

  Jessamyn picked up her perrier and finished it. The moment was over. Magda poured her another drink. Later, she would pick up the misshapen bullet from the floor. It would make a nice souvenir for her charm bracelet.

  Kenne turned, and staggered towards the door, his chest heaving as he cried. A dark stain was spreading from the crotch of his Levis.

  “Got your arses whipped in Nicaragua, and now you’ve lost it all in bloody buggering Arizona,” Jitters shouted, keeping up with the broken American.

  “Oh, say can you see, by the dawn’s bleeding light, what so proudly we turn into spineless gibbering jellyfish with no dickybirds at the twilight’s last gleaming…”

  Kenne struck out at the drunk, but Jitters stepped back.

  “Whose broad bums and shite cars through the perilous night, as on the ramparts we cowered in abject and pathetic fear was so chicken-livered streaming…”

  The cowboy was nearly out of the door now. People were back to their drinking, drugging and whoring. Tcherkassoff was on the video-juke, with “Siberian Sayonara.”

  “Oh the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in the air made us manufacture chocolate in our underpants through the night though our god-rotted yellowstain rag was still there…”

  Kenne sagged against the doors.

  “Oh, say does that star-strangled banner yet flap…”

  Jitters leaned close and spat at the cowboy.

  “O’er the land of the Yanks, with their heads full of…”

  Then, the explosions started.

  VIII

  As the mortar-flashes lit up Dead Rat, Holm Rodriguez signalled to his soldiers to move in. They were all people he could trust, unlike that Angelino pendejo Manolo. This wasn’t a surgical strike, this was a massacre. All well and good, and he had no real objection to anything that rid the world of a townful of sandrat trash, but it was a pretty inelegant manoeuvre.
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br />   He sent Mostyn out on point, giving him Lucy Cheadle as back-up. Mostyn’s M–29 spat, and somebody rolled down the dunes. The soldier gave Rodriguez the thumbs-up. First kill. That gave him dibs on the scav, not that there would be much worth looting in this sandhole.

  Susie Terhune’s crew laid down some heavy fire. Buildings started burning. The incendiary charges Manolo’s experts had set up earlier in the day went up on schedule. By the time they got to town, most of the heavy stuff should be over.

  Despite his bulky Kevlar Hell-and-Back suit, Rodriguez moved fast. He jogged every morning with lead weights slung on his chest, back and thighs to get him used to the extra poundage of the armour. The IR visor of his helmet showed him the desert as if by the light of an overcast day.

  His team looked like a gang of astronauts in desert-camouflage kit.

  “Ve-hickle coming,” Lucy Cheadle’s voice crackled in his earchip. “Cyke, two riders. Can’t be our girl. The reading’s wrong.”

  “Take them.”

  “Done, sir.”

  The cyke came up over a dune, and Mostyn and Cheadle caught it in a crossfire. It exploded in mid-air, and the two riders somersaulted to the sand. Haggett got in there with his bayonet, and speared the two as if they were straw figures.

  “Down and out,” Haggett shouted.

  That had lost them precious moments.

  “Come on, team,” Rodriguez ordered, “let’s move it. We’re expected at the Silver Shuriken in 78 seconds. Manolo will ream our butts if we’re off-schedule.”

  The soldiers jogged at full speed, M–29s jiggling in their arms. Rodriguez thought they must all look like big, hairless teddy-bears romping over the dunes.

  They tore in formation down the main street, firing at anyone in sight. The gas station was an inferno. Someone dashed out of an alleyway, pumping a shotgun. Haggett’s sandy expanse of chest was splattered red. “I’m hit, I’m hit,” he said, sinking to his knees, his communicator crackling as he faded. Mostyn reacted, and brought the sumpsucker with the shotgun down with a burst of fire. It had been an old-timer, with a long white beard and a Gabby Hayes hat.

  They jogged round a corner, and found themselves in what passed for the town square of Dead Rat, Arizona. There was a disused town hall, an abandoned Sheriff’s office, and a still-operational five-customer gallows. And the saloon.

  “Make the play,” Rodriguez shouted. “Now!”

  Mostyn and Cheadle humped themselves up the stairs, and crashed into the Silver Shuriken, guns discharging.

  IX

  She would have to learn to trust her new senses. There had been people out in the desert. And now they were in town, and she had to assume they were after her. It was just like the good old days. Cops and Ops and Soce Workers, all after her pretty little head.

  Part of the ceiling had come down, and everyone was panicking.

  “Magda,” she said, “give me a gun.”

  “Sure thing, honey, take your pick.”

  The older woman pulled out a tray of handguns, and used it to push the glasses and drinks off the bar. Jessamyn picked a Smith-and-Wesson semi-automatic pistol, and jammed a couple of extra clips into her waistband.

  “Good choice,” said Magda, taking a Colt Python police special.

  Some of the sandrats were milling around. Some of them weren’t, because they were dead.

  “Guns on the house,” Magda shouted. “Come and get ’em.”

  Jitters and Curtius Kenne had been knocked flat by the first blast. They stumbled to their feet. Kenne had a proper grip on Jitters’s gun now. One chamber, one bullet.

  Doc Threadneedle tugged her sleeve. “Remember, don’t be too confident. Jitters’ revolver was just a pop-gun. Your underflesh won’t stand up to depleted uranium or armour-piercing rockets, and you still burn and bleed like the rest of us.”

  Magda ze Schluderpacheru was unslinging a rocket-launcher from under the bar, and passing it across to the Maniax. Jitters was trying to wrestle his gun out of Kenne’s grip.

  “You got your Colts, yankee bloody doodle. Give me my gun back.”

  Two hefty figures in combat suits thundered through the doors, spraying the saloon with fire. The pointman steadied and looked around.

  He saw Jessamyn and took aim. She was right. This was all for her benefit.

  The pointman pulled the trigger, but his shot went wide. The Maniax had the launcher readied, and put an anti-tank missile into his stomach.

  He was torn backwards, his hands flailing, and he got a grip on the doorjamb. He was completely impaled, his combat suit stoved in, the trefoils of the missile sticking out of his gut. The rocket fizzled, and shot through him, exploding against the gallows on the other side of the square.

  Jessamyn could see right through the hole in the dead man. His sidekick froze, and was cut down by fire from all quarters.

  A phosphorus grenade rolled in through the door, and everyone dived for cover.

  She could see the explosion through closed eyelids. Her heat sensor sent pain signals to her greymass.

  “Freak,” she swore. “You realize, of course, that this means WAR!”

  X

  Manolo was pleased. It was all according to the plan. Casualties so far were acceptable. As far as he was concerned, the loss of all personnel in the field with the exception of Bronson Manolo could be classed as an acceptable casualty rate if it got the job done. Not that he was callous. H-M had a hefty policy with General Disaster to provide for the dependents of those lost or handicapped in the service of the Agency.

  His mapscreen was lighting up all over. Terhune had laid down all the fire they needed, and Rodriguez’s team was in town, cutting loose.

  “Gas station, saloon, hotel, town hall…” He checked off the targets as they flared.

  He flicked the counter. 0347. Within a five mile radius of the town square of Dead Rat, there were 0347 warm people, excluding the H-M personnel in their combat gear.

  Ooops, 0345. No, 0341. The number fell, as the people cooled.

  He dug a brew out from the cooler under his chair, and flipped the ringtop.

  This was proving to be a stroll.

  As balls of fire filled the interior of the Silver Shuriken, Jessamyn dived for a window. She crashed through a tinsel and spray-snow Christmas decoration and, curled up tight, turned head over end through the air, landing neatly on her feet in the street.

  One of the soldiers stood in front of her, presumably awestruck behind his or her faceplate. She shot through the helmet, and the soldier sagged to the dirt.

  Two more of the space invaders skidded around the building, bringing up their guns. She got them both with a single burst, and sprinted away, zig-zagging down a side-street.

  It was a clear night. The half-moon shone down placidly.

  0326.

  Jitters had his gun back, with just one bloody buggering round left in it, so he would jolly well have to put it to freaking good use, wouldn’t he, by jove.

  Curtius Kenne was cut in half by a falling beam, worse luck, so he couldn’t use his one shot to spread the cowboy’s greymass on the wall. There was no place like the thick of battle for settling an old score. So many people were dying that no one would notice a few more.

  Jitters had been splashed with some of the liquid fire from the grenade, but he was lucky enough to have been blown through a hole in the wall by the blast. He rolled in the sand, until most of the flames were out.

  There were troops yomping down the main street of Dead Rat. It was like being back at Goose Green. But he wasn’t going to withdraw tactically this bloody buggering time, no sir, not with brass knobs on…

  He held his gun up in readiness. His hands weren’t shaking now.

  0318.

  Gretchen Turner knew she should never have left Des Moines with Barry, the electrofence salesman. Her mama had said as much, but D-M was such a zeroville. Barry had been a rat, all right. He’d left her in a town just like Dead Rat. Since then, those had been all th
e places she’d known. But Magda ze Schluderpacheru was better than the other madams, the Silver Shuriken could have been a nice place with a little work. The girls were nice. They had a nice team. Gretchen couldn’t feel anything below her chin, and she knew that wasn’t good. She couldn’t see either. There was fire all around. As she blacked out, she thought it was a pity she hadn’t gotten round to finishing the Christmas decorations.

  0317.

  An armoured ve-hickle trundled slowly through the town, searchlights revolving on the roof. That would be some kind of command module, Jessamyn knew. That gave it a high spot on her list of things to put out of commission.

  0314.

  Simon Threadneedle, late of GenTech, switched off his pain with the circuitbreaker he had inserted into his own grey mass. The combat unit had sprayed napalm or some napalm analogue into the Silver Shuriken, and he was clothed in fire. Nothing would get the stuff off him until it burned itself out. This was the sort of juice that burned even underwater.

  It was amazing what modern technology could accomplish. The GenTech labs couldn’t do anything about the common cold and no government had been able to develop a workable public transport system, but when it came to deathware, why, there were wonderful new toys on the market every fall, just in time for Christmas.

  His blastic-laced flesh melted away, and the durium bonesheaths heated up. He didn’t know how high a temperature they could take before they went into shutdown, and he supposed he wouldn’t get a chance to record his findings if he did pursue the experiment to the end. His clothes had burned away instantly, as had all his bodily hair and most of his skin. Tarnished metal shone through his musculature as he walked through the fire. He stepped out of the wall of flame onto the steps of the saloon, and strode, still burning, into the street.

  A soldier tried to shove a bayonet into his throat, but the steel buckled against his adam’s apple superconductor. With fiery hands, he lifted the besuited killer off the ground, and bent his back until it snapped. Gunfire rattled against his pectoral shields, and he staggered backwards from the blast. He was holding up even better than he had hoped.